Open the roads
Sometimes the best option when it comes to the horses being in the pasture rather than in the barn, is to accept that they aren’t hurting anyone by being there and roll with it.
The Medford city council should look at officially opening city streets to golf cart traffic along with motorized scooters, and those one-wheeled funky skateboard like contraptions.
All of these modes of transportation can be seen operating around the city by otherwise law abiding members of the public. However, all of them are technically not allowed to be used on the city streets.
Fortunately, the Medford city police recognizes that there are bigger fish to fry than cracking down on motorized scooter scofflaws. If there is ever a (very) low speed chase between one and the police squad car, it would be sure to make headlines.
The city of Medford has had several years of having local roads open to ATV and UTV traffic. The number of incidents involving these motorized vehicles on city streets has been relatively minor, with most reports being youth going too fast or motors being too loud. These are the types of calls that would have come 40 years ago from teenagers borrowing their brother’s Grand Am and taking it out for a spin, and will come 40 years from now on whatever loud vehicle youth are driving then.
Chapter 349.18 ( c ) of the Wisconsin State Statutes states “a municipality may, by ordinance, allow the operation of golf carts on any highway that has a speed limit of 25 miles per hour or less and that is located within the territorial boundaries of the municipality, regardless of whether the municipality has jurisdiction, for maintenance purposes, over the highway.”
It would take very little effort to amend the city ordinances allowing UTVs access to the roads to essentially decriminalize these other modes of transport.
As with UTVs and ATVs, not all roads should be open to golf carts and other types of personal transportation devices — at least not during regular working hours when there is truck traffic. There is simply too much opportunity for a personal transport to get lost in a truck’s blindspot than to risk it.
Even this would be a relatively minor inconvenience with there being alternates to get just about anywhere in the city.
I would also go one step further and, again, patterning it on the city’s rules for UTV and ATV use on the roads, put an age restriction for operating any sort of motorized vehicle on the roads.
There are a lot of ways to get from point A to point B. The role of government should be to look out for public safety rather than preventing the natural consequences when adults choose to take actions that impact themselves alone. *** I was saddened to hear of the death of Steve Kalmon. I knew him for many years, working with him on projects and while he was writing a local history column in The Star News. The comprehensive history project of the county that he led will be a reference for generations to come.
He was always a deep thinker who would be quick to share a story of decades past and note how the issues faced then are the same as those being faced by families, businesses and governments now.
More than a personal loss to his families and close friends, his death is a loss to the community leaving a tear in the fabric that binds the community together.
