Do you live or work in Carson City? Do you have occasion to travel to or through our city?
Are you excited about the future bypass because you envision that it will cut out a few minutes of your commute time? Do you assume that the freeway will be a community asset, a landscaped oasis leading up to and away from our capitol building?
Perhaps you don't know that NDOT is not planning to fund a linear park or landscaping along the bypass. In fact, NDOT is planning to seek an amendment to the state's transportation plan to totally eliminate the bike path that is currently included in both the city's and state's transportation plan (reportedly because of cost).
Although many Carson City officials are sympathetic to the idea of a linear park along the bypass, they are also feeling some pressure at the current time to hurry up and build the bypass and worry about landscaping at some later date.
It is, of course, more prudent to landscape now. It will be quite difficult to landscape the freeway years from now when right-of-way land (that should have been purchased now) has become expensive and difficult to obtain, when retaining walls along the freeway have been built with no thought of future landscaping, and when substandard planting soil will need to be removed and replaced.
If Carson City is to realize our vision of a landscaped bypass, we will have to act now. We need to work together, talk to our neighbors and city officials and speak out at public meetings to make sure our voices are heard. Please help support a landscaped bypass.