The Mercer Island City Council voted 5-2 on Monday to put Island Crest Way on the Paleo Road Diet.
“The road diet on Island Crest Way has been such a huge success from a safety and traffic flow perspective,” said Mayor Bart Bastion, “that we decided to take the next logical step.”
The Paleo Road Diet is based on the principle that modern advances in transportation have outstripped human evolution, with ensuing negative effects on human health and the environment. The diet dictates that no modes of travel invented in the past 10,000 years can be used. Starting in late June 2016, crews will be ripping up the asphalt on Island Crest Way from Merrimount Drive south to Island Park Elementary School. The road will be resurfaced with a combination of Lake Washington mud and the reclaimed carcasses of woolly mammoths.
Prior to the vote, the measure drew spirited opposition from some residents of the South End. “This is just another example of the city council infringing on our personal freedoms, in this case the freedom to drive as fast as possible,” testified Ronald Grump, president of The Lakes Homeowners Association. “What right does our government have to tell us how we can use our roads?”
Still, the majority of the city council is confident that the benefits of this proposal will outweigh the costs. “By this fall,” added Bastion, “we’ll have the median speed of traffic on Island Crest Way down to five miles per hour.”