Tuesday, April 8, 2008

A good waste of a million dollars

I have been trying to figure this out for the longest time and I really have made no progress on understanding the reasoning for it. Why would the university spend a million dollars to put a bridge across the road that is so far away from the mountainlair that none of the students will ever really use. They spent a million dollars making a bridge that is basically useless. The reason for traffic being backed up so bad downtown is mainly due to the area in front of the mountainlair. The students always just want to walk in front of every car coming and going becuase it is a crosswalk. Yes that is the legal way to look at it, beucase every single car has to stop for any pedestrian in a crosswalk. This leads to us sitting in traffic for twenty minutes at a time just getting from the rusted musket to the mountainlair during busy times of the day. I just really dont see why they would spend all that money to put a bridge there when if they would have just made a walkway in front of the mountainlair it would have been used much more often, and also solved a large part of the traffic problem here in Morgantown. If anybody can make me see the reasoning, please try. -Nate

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

I totally agree with you. I use that bridge sometimes when i am leaving class to go to bus. and economics, but i dont have to. I can walk across the street on the crosswalk. Every time i use the bridge, there is like 8 students walking along it with me, when infront of the mountainlair there are 200. I really do feel the WVU really wasted their money. The only good part i can say about it, is that it can still help with the flow of traffic and when you are driving and you see that it is like a nice welcome sign almost. Other than that i feel like they should have spent their money on something else.

Anonymous said...

I do use the bridge and I know other people use the bridge as well because during some class changes the tiny stairwell and walkway can get crowded.I think that one reason to put the bridge there was to direct the flow of people coming to and from Oglebay.Since Oglebay had not previously been there they may have been trying to prevent a second crossing like the one in front of the Mountainlair. Although I think that having a bridge cross over in front of the mountainlair would be a good idea.

Anonymous said...

i also agree, it was a total waste of money. although, moving the crosswalk infront of the mountainlair probably wouldn't have done a whole lot to help the traffic problem here in morgantown. people would still simply walk across the street and ignore the bridge.
john roberts

Anonymous said...

i cant help you, since i dont understand it either. i use the bridge, and its helpful for one of my classes that i have twice a week. i see a lot of people using it, if they have a lot of business type classes and such and it saves some of those lsb steps. however, i think they should have made it somewhat closer to the lair to try and eliminate some of that traffic. maybe at the time they figured that most kids would use that to get across that road, however if you're going to armstrong or something in that area its way out of the way. the Lair is the main building on campus, pretty much in the middle of everywhere and people are always in there. maybe they will realize it someday in the future and move the bridge or make another one, but for now its going to be better to walk than to try and take a car if you're going to be going in front of the lair.

Anonymous said...

I agree. I have never had to use that bridge and I never want to walk anymore to get to it. I also drive though and I have to go around the MountainLair sometimes down on Beechurst where it is also backed up. There's almost always traffic problems in Morgantown and I don't think this city is big enough for all of the students that go here. I also think that if a bridge was built there at the MountainLair, no one would use it.. It would just create more steps for students, and we already have millions here.
-Natalie Northcutt

Anonymous said...

I agree with you at a point. I never use the bridge from oglebay to bus & eco. I always walk across the street in front of the mountainlair. Yea, it backs up traffic but i dont think it would get to much better. There really is no place to put a bridge infront of the mountainlair to me and people would probably just ignore it and still walk across the street.

Edward.A said...

Morgantown is rapidly growing because of West Virginia University and that Old bridge would certainly come in handy even though students barely make use of it and I don't think any of us would like what happened at Minnesota to happen here. I don't see any reason to complain over an old bridge that surely needs a renovation.I don't mind if it costs WVU billions to fix the old bridge so long the make it safe to use, which i believe is the sole reason why they want to renovate the bridge. I hope you get to understand

Anonymous said...

I agree with you, it is a pain in the ass to walk to the bridge and a pain to wait in traffic. They need to figure something out.

Anonymous said...

Thats really funny. I was one of the 8 students who enjoyed using that bridge (even though it only cut about 45 seconds off of my walk).