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Show Progress vs. Tradition With all the plans being rumored and officially announced, it appears that the Utah State Road Commission soon will have as much to say about how and where we live as any branch of the state or federal government. The commission which certainly has its problems handling an ever-increasing traffic load holds vast influence over the (Continued on Page Four) Progress vs. Tradition lives of Utahns through its power of routing highways and freeways. free-ways. The recent widening of Fourth South Street is a good example. ex-ample. This once rather shaded street is being made wider. But in the process virtually every tree along its curbs had to be cut down. It may move more cars but it looks like the devil. N Few people who drive down the new Seventh East will not agree that it is a nice thing to have a broad north-south highway through town. But what of all the people who had to give up their homes along the way and those who will have to give them up before the road is completed? These people had no say in the matter. The road was going through and they had to give up their property at the state's price. Condemnation is, of course, necessary in the public interest. But one sometimes wonders if official bodies such as the road commission always gives proper consideration to the human side of these projects. One wonders if they really try to find the route which will do the best job, yet hurt the fewest people. There is talk once more of putting a bridge across Memory Park to serve the increased traffic expected to flow from the new state office building and the proposed federal building in the area. The bridge would empty traffic onto one of the avenues which, of course, would mean that one of these narrow, residential resi-dential streets would be torn open, houses ruined or torn down, property values hurt and the whole area started on its way to becoming another slum. A bridge across unique Memory Park will no nothing to enhance the beauty of that island of peacefulness in our fast-expanding fast-expanding concrete desert. It would seem that men of imagination if any there be in the Republican-dominated state capitol could find some way to solve traffic problems without creating new problems in other fields, without wrecking lives and property. Progress is fine and necessary, but progress tempered with tradition and proven values is better. |