Has it been less than a year?

My God, it seems like a lifetime ago that the good idea fairy found her way to the corner of Pleasant and Mill streets and decided that there was a better way to allow traffic to move more freely and safely onto Brunswick’s most traveled way.

It was September of last year that the state Department of Transportation swooped in and became our knight in shining armor. They were going to fix the mess of an intersection. They were going to make it safer.

Or so we thought. At this point it would appear that the road to Hell, or in this case, Pleasant Street, was paved in good intentions.

The pace of cars making it through the intersection make Toby the Tortoise, of the Disney film, “Tortoise and the Hare,” look like Usain Bolt. I have actually seen someone walking on the sidewalk as I was awaiting my turn to move making far better progress than I. For a street that carries that much traffic around town it should not be that way.

The traffic moves so slowly that I have been able to ponder whether it takes longer to travel that stretch by the old black bridge than it did to construct that head-shaped sculpture on Mill Street.

We have only ourselves to blame for this.

Over the years the Yield sign that sat at the intersection became little more than a suggestion to oncoming vehicles. If you felt lucky you could gun the engine and make your way on to Pleasant. Maybe there was a car coming, maybe there wasn’t. You only found out when and if your multi-ton missile came to screeching halt. Over time people liked this way less and less.

At least traffic flowed through.

Now, in the morning, when I find myself on the greatest parking lot this side of Wiscasset, it is not unusual to be backed up to somewhere around the off ramp that goes from Maine Street over to Topsham. Reading and rereading the sign on The Daniel imploring diners to take three left turns is all I have to amuse myself as I begin my long trek to salvation. Nearly a mile stands in my way of traveling along wishing there was another route out of town.

Back in the mid-1980s, there was a bumper sticker that was popular with some people in Brunswick and Topsham. If I remember correctly it read, “Brunswick/Topsham Home of the 30 Minute Mile” due to trying to navigate between the two towns over the green bridge. As a youth it was torturous to have to go to the Commissary every two weeks for groceries over that bridge, fighting traffic all the way. You can imagine that shopping for six took a while. That extra 30 minutes each way made it even more dreadful.

More than 30 years have passed, and we are still sitting in those long lines. Now, they are just moving in different directions.

In the fractured world we live in there are few things that most everyone can agree on. It is funny though that friends of mine, whether they are on the left, or the right or walking somewhere aimlessly in the middle, agree that enough is enough. We need to see some change at the intersection on Pleasant and Mill.

The DOT attempted to right a wrong with the directional signal. Unfortunately, in the quest to make a situation better, they have made the situation so much worse. Maybe that was their intent, as I have heard some in town proclaim. The fact is that there needs to be a better answer or some other solution to fix the traffic tie-ups. Maine DOT, if you are listening, we deserve better.

That’s my two cents…

Jonathan Crimmins can be reached at j_ [email protected].