Our story wasn't on the streets for more than a couple of hours when the buzz began. It was our lead story last week about the fact that the city will resurface California Avenue from Admiral to Edmonds.

That was a good thing, people thought, but one wanted to know if the city was reacting to our editorial of a couple weeks earlier that noted the craters of West Seattle were on California Avenue. We wish the editorial did get the paving, but the city has been planning the work for some time. Maybe the editorial hastened them a bit, but the fact is the rutted arterial is in dire need of a makeover.

What had people mad was not the paving, but the facts the city is considering the elimination of the all-way pedestrian crossing at California and Alaska, end the mid-block crosswalks and that parking meters may be placed on the Junction streets.

We are not traffic engineers, but we shop there and consider the area part of our city, important for the shops and the services there. Rarely have we seen any sort of traffic jam and the few we do see last for all of five minutes. At 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. there is a lot of traffic waiting to turn left from Alaska to California. There are no left turns from California. There is the slightly longer wait for the Alaska left turns and the all-way pedestrian light.

But that all-way light lets the elderly in the area get across safely in one light.

Parking meters? Meters will doom many businesses on the edge in the Junction. Meters will run business off to the free parking of malls.

A final blow was the fact some engineer thinks it would lessen the city's legal exposure if the mid-block cross walks on California were eliminated. We wonder if that person has been locked in city hall too long. Those blocks are very long and the mid-block crossings are necessary to navigate around the area.

City, leave our Junction alone. Pave California and go back downtown.