What is the council waiting for?

Common sense dictates that Walmart will bring a tremendous amount of additional traffic to the streets around Empire Center (“Suit aims at stopping Walmart,” May 9). Why then does this City Council insist on waiting until these streets become gridlocked before making the needed traffic improvements? Where do council members propose the increased traffic be diverted to while the street work is in progress?

It’s strange that half of the $10 million fee paid for traffic improvements by the Empire Center developer got pooled with other fees and was used to complete traffic projects elsewhere in the city. Shouldn’t the remaining half have been used instead to purchase properties needed to complete the widening projects in streets around the center?

Walmart is not just another big box store. It is the grand-daddy of them all, and the traffic it will generate compared to the former tenant, The Great Indoors, will be enormous.

Molly Shore

Burbank