To the editor:

Area road construction this summer has caused numerous delays, but those from work on the Portage Lake Lift Bridge make all the rest look like small potatoes. With construction workers in one lane each of southbound and northbound roadways, often working within a foot or two of passing traffic, it’s understandable and even commendable that motorists proceed cautiously.

To be sure, with only one lane, if a single motorist slows significantly, then so do all following vehicles.

One wonders whether the engineers responsible for planning recognized the likelihood of massive delays, both at rush hours and every time the bridge lifts for a passing boat, already amounting to countless thousands of hours wasted, not to mention the extra gas consumption.

Unless there are some mechanical issues which would forbid it, you’d think the more sensible approach would have been to repair all the “fingers” in, say, both northbound lanes, with two-way traffic in the southbound, and then vice-versa. This would have required a little creative artistry with a jackhammer to temporarily reshape the entrance and exit from the bridge, but that added cost would have been a tiny fraction of the multimillion-dollar budget. With this approach, vehicles could have safely proceeded at the posted speed and only the funneling to a single lane each would have moderately slowed the flow. (As a historical note, up until Dec. 20, 1959, there was only one lane in each direction on the old swing bridge. But then traffic was lighter too.)