INDIAN MEADOWS: Don’t ruin it

I live in the Indian Meadows neighborhood. This legacy neighborhood was built in the 1970s and has a rural feel due to narrow streets, minimal traffic and old-growth pine trees. The current proposed plan for Coeur Terre’s 2,800 residences is to route all eastbound traffic through Indian Meadows. The traffic study indicates the development will produce approximately 24,000 car trips per day and 2/3 of those trips will be heading east. That’s 15,840 cars driving through a neighborhood that is absolutely not set up to handle such volume! Indian Meadows, and the adjacent neighborhoods, will be drastically impacted should this current proposed plan succeed.

The absurdity of the plan is shocking. Our quiet, narrow streets are not designed for heavy traffic and they have no sidewalks. What will it be like if they have thousands of cars traveling down them each day? It will be chaos!

There is a better solution and that is to route eastbound traffic onto Industrial Loop, which is a commercial district. I understand that development is necessary for a growing area, but I feel strongly that new development should manage its own traffic and not shift the risks/burden onto adjacent, established residential neighborhoods. The Coeur d’Alene City Council should be more than just a friend of developers but also a protector of existing neighborhoods. I urge all residents in the neighborhoods that will be affected by Coeur Terre traffic to get involved in the fight.

ALLYSON CROSE

Coeur d’Alene