I've been seeing a lot of earth movers lately, both in the fields and on the roads, operating in the general vicinity of the intersection of Frank Scott Parkway East and Green Mount Road. It reminds me of a line from an old Joni Mitchell song, "They paved paradise and put up a parking lot," only with the promise of much more dramatic impacts to drivers.

Considering current construction, not to mention the St. Elizabeth Hospital and Memorial Hospital projects still to come, one might wonder who's staring into the crystal ball that will reveal an effective means to manage all that additional traffic. There are already countless times every day when one can barely get through the stretch between Interstate 64 and the Frank Scott-Green Mount intersection with a shoehorn, yet construction continues unabated.

Reminiscing as to what that area was like just a few short years ago, Mitchell might have had something there when she sang, "Don't it always seem to go, that you don't know what you've got till it's gone."

Bill Malec

O'Fallon