Looking south toward the 11th and Warren intersection
The Mud Bay Blog played a role in getting Bremerton to start providing more timely information about construction projects in the city. Well, not actually the blog, but its purveyor. That would be me. But what does it matter who gets the credit as long as Public Works keeps updating the Construction Projects Status and Updates page on the city’s web site?
If they don’t and you want to know more about some road (or other) project that seemingly started up without warning, send email to Public Works. Email links are supplied on the Contact page.
It used to be that we could rely on the Kitsap Sun to keep us posted on stuff like this. A reporter would write an article giving the construction schedule before a city street went under the knife. Those days are gone now that the paper’s staff is stretched so thin. Coverage of road projects is too hit or miss to be reliable. Even the Road Warrior can’t be everywhere as he has the entire county to cover.
What got me to wondering if there is a better way is the long-awaited project to improve traffic flow from southbound Warren Avenue to westbound 11th Street. The turn-only lane is too short and tends to get blocked when cars going straight ahead are stopped by a red light. Backups there are so common that most of the time I rely on the Olympic College bypass to avoid the intersection.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Several years ago the city bought land at the northwest corner of the intersection and seemed to be committed to lengthening the turn lane. But nothing happened. Perhaps a year ago I read in the Kitsap Sun (give them credit there) that the project was scheduled to happen in 2012. That tantalizing tease was all I could find. Nothing further showed up in the paper or on the city’s web site.
Then it hit me: ask Public Works. I wrote directly to the department head and suggested that the city provide a single place on its web site to get up-to-date information on road construction projects. We traded a couple of emails with the end result being that I helped convince them to provide one. One of the traffic engineers put it this way:
I should have added, it was your suggestion that was instrumental on getting this launched.
The new page isn’t perfect. It still relies on Public Works passing on the information in a timely manner to the web person, who probably has other duties. In fact, the information on the web site about the 11th-and-Warren project was out-of-date when I wrote to Public Works this week. But it has been updated since then. So keep those emails flowing if you want Public Works to keep us informed.
Mud Bay Blog 
Way to go.