Northeast News
September 17, 2014

Dear Northeast News:

Cliff Drive is a lovely and leisurely natural bypass of Benton Circle, Gladstone Blvd., Lexington Ave., the medical school and housing complex across north of it. It is a wonderful drive to show visitors and people who don’t know about what a hidden gem it is near to our downtown, away from the congestion and neighborhood streets or Independence Ave.

I am a regular user of Cliff Drive to and from my work and delivering Meals on Wheels throughout the Old Northeast everyday to 25 or 30 different residences. After two or three hours of driving around residential streets, traffic stop signs, lights, parked and moving cars, it is such a relief to go onto Cliff Drive for my drive home, near the K.C. Museum. It is a huge help in reducing the stress of delivering lunches via car.

The three or four miles of encumbered leisurely driving is beautiful and a definitive stress reducer. I would dearly miss this winding down time if you were to close this access off to me because I can’t ride a bicycle to do my job.

I would be hugely disappointed; along with people, friends and visitors I have proudly enlightened of this lovely drive. It would be a shame if after I tell tourists, friends and family about the “secret” Cliff Drive, they or I could not see it unless we rode a bicycle, skateboard or walked. What if they, or I, were not able to do any of those things? I guess we’d never see it. I guess one could take their wheelchair.

M. Dodge,

Indian Mound Resident