The South End's obstacle course

Today's news of a couple of wrecks at a Beacon Hill Sound Transit construction site over the past several months comes as little surprise. The only surprise is that there haven't more. It's a strange obstacle course that greets any visitor to the south end of town near the emerging light rail line.  On Martin Luther King Way, the course of lanes change daily if not hourly, in swirling patterns that go from one side of the road to the other, bypassing the excavation site of the moment. A turn may be blocked off or not--there's no way of telling in advance--or a makeshift platform may appear allowing you to cross to businesses on the other side of the road. Bus-riders often have to get out at stops that are little more than poles perched bizarrely between orange canisters along a ridge of dirt edging the traffic. Where people are supposed to walk is a mystery. And yet, sometimes, accommodations surface when you least except them. Twice, I stepped off a bus on Martin Luther King Way to be greeted by a personal escort. Wearing an orange safety vest and hard hat, she was a member of the construction crew who had been designated to see that bus-riders made their way safely around a stop bedecked with slabs of concrete, dirt paths and bruising equipment.