‘Cause there can’t be too much about the Cypress/Centre intersection, there’s this from the TAB article*:

Ward 6 Alderman-at-large Gregory Schwartz, a doctor, appreciated the reference to the Hippocratic oath and carried the medical analogy a little further calling the new, constricted configuration a “stenosis,” which is the medical term for a blockage.
“We need to open this stenosis and get this plaque pushed back,” said Schwartz. “We need to get this blockage opened.”

Blood is good. It carries vital nourishment, oxygen, and other goodies to the far-flung outposts of the corporeal realm. Increasing blood circulation is healthy.

Traffic is not blood. Traffic is not good. Some quantity of traffic may be a necessary evil, but vehicular traffic is more like a poison in our municipal realm. Increasing traffic circulation is not healthy, it just leads to more traffic volume.

I’m not sure what medical metaphor is correct, but stenosis is not. It’s the stuff that’s flowing that’s bad, not the stuff that’s blocking the flow.

If the good Alderdoctor Schwartz wants to use a medical metaphor to illuminate the discourse, might I suggest vaccination? Every parent who drives a child to school out of concern for the child’s safety is like a parent who refuses to vaccinate out of fear of the risks of vaccination. Those parents may be protecting their own children, but they do it at the risk of other children. Cars that carry children are a risk to others in a way that children on sidewalks are not.

*Note to Emily Costello: Village 14 is probably way over its fair-use quota from a single article. How ’bout I make it up to you with an op-ed? No charge.