SOUNDING OFF:

A tunnel below Newport Boulevard would probably get rid of all that crummy beach traffic that is passing through Costa Mesa from the 55.

But, even if it’s decided to do that, it’ll take years to get it done. We need relief now.

The night was moonless. The speed limit was 55. I was driving alone on a two-lane highway in the middle of North Carolina. Suddenly there was a blind curve. As soon as I got around the curve, a police car pulled me over.

“Good evening, sir. I stopped you because you were speeding.”

“But I was only doing 55,” I said. “My ‘caa’ won’t go much faster than that.”

In immediate hindsight, I realized in that time and place saying the word “car” with my Boston accent probably wasn’t the best thing I could have said.

“Well, sir, that admission that you were speeding can be used against you in court. The speed limit in town is 35. Didn’t you see the speed limit sign where the town line begins?”

He pointed at a sign that wasn’t visible until one entered the curve, and even then not unless one cast one’s eyes to the bottom of the curve.

“What? Not only did I not see a sign, I don’t even see a town.”

“When you came around that ‘kahna’ back there, you entered our town.”

My eyes narrowed to slits. Was it my imagination or did the cop just mock my accent? Or, could he also be from Boston? I calmly accepted the ticket and continued on my way through the half-mile long “town” which was nothing more than a gas station and a diner. When I got past the diner, there was a sign putting the speed limit back up to 55 mph.

At the time, I figured that was the stupidest place in the universe where a highway could end.

As it turns out, I was wrong. Costa Mesa is No. 1, thanks to the 55 freeway ending in our downtown.

That North Carolina town was probably set up just to get revenues from motorists who couldn’t slow down quickly enough to avoid a ticket even if they saw the sign.

Let’s put up a sign at the end of the 55, dropping the speed to, say, 25 miles per hour. Then, let’s put our entire police force over there. We’ll clean up. On second thought, there’s so much gridlock at that location that maybe no one can go more than 10 mph anyway. OK, we’ll drop the speed limit to 5 mph.

But, maybe we can even help out our local white elephant. On some days, we can put detour signs and send the traffic into the bowels of Triangle Square where we can turn the car occupants into shoppers. Of course, we’ll charge them a parking fee when they leave.

Call this silly, if you will, but something along these lines; maybe not as obvious as I’ve set forth above, might just get state officials off the dime and cause them to start coming up with fast solutions to get that miserable 55 traffic out of our downtown so the area around Triangle Square can prosper.

After all, our talk about having our cops enforce immigration laws got the feds to put an ICE agent in our jail.

M. H. Millard is a Costa Mesa writer.