LIVING HERE

Traffic lights were out again at the intersection of Edwards Boulevard and Main Street on Sunday morning.
This is the very busy, and sometimes dangerous, intersection located near where the Lake Geneva Walgreens and Taco Bell are positioned. Late Sunday morning the traffic lights went out, flashing red, and were expected to be out of service into Monday morning. Thankfully, they were back up and running again in a matter of hours. This’s not the first time this has happened, and in previous incidents (like an auto accident traffic or another damaging emergency) traffic has been directed manually by members of the Lake Geneva police department. This outage was expected to last longer than normal due to technical difficulties and drivers were directed via social media to avoid the area, proceed with caution, or treat the intersection as a four-way stop. However, the intersection is already dangerous, and when you add the confusion of lights not working it becomes much more dangerous.

There’s also the added confusion of the intersection not being a simple four-way stop either. This intersection is on the Lake Geneva Public Works list of things to improve, and the department already has some small changes in the works to improve the area. The Mobil station on the north side of Main Street has entrance and exit issues that directly affect the intersection, and the department is currently working on changing that. The other recent changes are the traffic flow lines on Edwards, and the elimination of one of the left turn lanes from Edwards onto Main Street. The public works department also has the intersection listed for future road construction and plans to find ways to make the traffic flow better and create a safer intersection for all vehicles.

It’s all about the sand, the beach, and the identity and ambiance of Geneva Lake.

The perfectly ugly little beach waiting to be saved.

The best beach in all the areas around the lake should be at Big Foot.  There should be a small wall all along the west side of the road.  There should be more parking across South Lake Shore Drive.  The speed limit during summer should be 15 MPH, but the really big thing that could so easily be done is to truck in about a hundred and fifty big dump trucks of sand.  Sand is one of Wisconsin’s biggest commodities and so very available at decent prices.  Tom Earle could then put his men to work, over a meter of only a few days, and make a real beach that would extend out about twenty or thirty yards.  None of that would interfere with the rather strange offshore boat culture and certainly, none of that would damage the ridiculously guarded ‘rights’ of the people who own a slice of that shore no matter how they came to get it.  There would be no need to charge for the beach or even guard it, as the water is mostly waist deep for quite a way out.  Then, let the good times roll.  Not only would the sand add beauty, but it would allow for much more usage by everyone.  Is this likely to happen?  Not on your life.  Much of the ‘upper reaches’ of lake society do not want to allow ‘free’ anything.  Will the people ever really rise up and demand some quality from Lake Geneva and the surrounding communities?  Flowers, minimal, and holiday decorations, minimal are what people get.  Only walking around the lake path and up and down through town is free, and wow is that popular during the summer.  Open up the beach, and expand the parking across the street.  We could even widen the road but please, that would be revolutionary. Once again, this summer, that wondrous stretch of beach area will be left to lay there like a dead pig laying in the sun.  It’s a shame but there we are.

Lake Photo of the Week

A view from the Riviera Pier on the warmest day of the year and the lake sparkles like the green and blue gem it is.