When the Bloomington City Council met in June 2008 to hear from citizens and Bloomington Hospital officials about the hospital's proposed move, Jim Allison suggested that moving the hospital from our center city to the county suburbs deserved to be in the Museum of Stupid Ideas. There it would join ideas that the citizens of Bloomington had thankfully not embraced, such as tearing down the Courthouse or moving the library to the suburbs. Well, I want to nominate the Indiana Department of Transportation's (INDOT) State Road 45/46 Bypass widening for inclusion in this pantheon of foolishness.

As for the museum, I want to curate this particular exhibit. At the center I shall have a squawking Chicken Little, predicting not only that the sky is falling, but also that, as Christy Gillenwater of the Bloomington Area Chamber of Commerce put it, "The Bypass expansion project is critical to the future of the community." Hearken, her right-hand man has warned without the widening, Bloomington commerce will suffer.

Let's throw in a few other dire predictions for good measure. IU's North Campus will be a disastrous failure without this proposed widening. Plus, in the words of Ron Walker, of the Bloomington Economic Development Corp. (BEDC), "Failure to move forward on the Bypass expansion could be a monumental setback for our community's economic development efforts."