Keep an eye on the future

There is a school of thought in journalism that a newspaper should strive for immediacy. The idea is that readers won’t be interested in stories about events too far in the past or in the future.

In many instances, we find this school of thought has merit. Unless there are unusual circumstances, our neighbors aren’t interested in reading in December about car crashes that happened in February.

But writing about the future, we believe, is a good thing.

Sticklers for immediacy might have rejected a story like the one we published today about a project to build a bypass road around Wasilla.

For now, the project is in its most nascent planning stages. And what’s the point of writing about something that won’t even be designed until 2016 in a world where plans change so frequently?

We think there is plenty of merit in it. Planning is the lifeblood of city and borough government. We would point out that Wasilla’s traffic flow is the way it is because city officials insisted the highway come through the town at street level.

That was a decision made about a then-future project that has had a major impact on our region for decades. Wasilla at rush hour can resemble a parking lot as commuters compete for space with truckers, grocery shoppers and people running errands. Parks Highway traffic doesn’t really reach highway speeds again until it passes through Wasilla and most of Meadow Lakes.

And it will get worse before it gets better. Over the past few years, the state has embarked on a series of traffic calming measures to help address the stretch of the Parks Highway through Meadow Lakes, which has long been one of the most dangerous in the state.

We are very much in favor of traffic signals that improve safety and reduce accidents. But one of the effects of the lights at Vine and Stanley roads has been to back up traffic farther into Wasilla.

Something needs to be done, and we applaud the efforts of the Wasilla bypass project and a list of others that are aimed at alleviating the traffic snarl on the Parks Highway and other core-area roads.

We will watch with interest as these projects are designed and move toward construction. We share a responsibility to invest our public tax dollars in well-planned roads projects with an eye to the long-term and to the greatest public good.

We don’t fault the leaders of the day who all those years ago insisted Wasilla would be best served by a highway running though the town center. But we do urge policymakers and voters to think deeply about the long-term consequences of such local planning decisions.