Buckeye RINO

Lorain residents, and especially Lorain merchants, are getting a close-up look at the importance of transportation infrastructure in keeping the wheels of commerce greased.  In downtown Lorain, there is a drawbridge along U.S. Route 6 that crosses near the mouth of the Black River on the Lake Erie shore.  The name of the bridge is the Charles Berry Bascule Bridge.  The drawbridge doesn’t work.  It’s been stuck in the open position for months on end, creating detours for motorists and killing commerce along both banks of the river.  Not only is this an object lesson about the importance of infrastructure, it’s also an object lesson in red tape and the inefficiencies of state and county bureaucracies (in this case, the Ohio Department of Transportation is a prime example).  Ohio Governor Ted Strickland urged voters to support Tony Krasienko in Lorain’s mayoral race last year.  Guess what?  Krasienko won.  Now Krasienko needs Strickland’s support.  Now, Lorain needs Ohio’s executive branch to spring into action.

Governor Strickland, can you leverage some immediate relief for Lorain please?

Check out this pictorial from the Lorain County Photographer’s Blog to see the bridge with your own two eyeballs.  Then, from the same blog, hear the speeches of Lorain’s merchants and politicians while the residents gathered at the bridge to plea for assistance.

For the latest communication on the bridge matter, check out That Woman’s Weblog.  Things just aren’t happening.  Please, Governor Strickland, involve yourself in this matter long enough to get speedier results.

Of course, as noted before, I keep plugging for even more infrastructure.  The transportation grid upgrades I’ve proposed on the map below (the routes shown in red) would include at least one more bridge across the Black River, and it wouldn’t be a drawbridge.  It would also route traffic within a stone’s throw of the downtown at highway speeds of 65 m.p.h.

More details on the mapped proposals are here, here, and here, at Word of Mouth.

[UPDATE] More pics and correspondence from Lorain County Photographer’s Blog.