You can put lipstick on a pig but it’s still a pig. And you can dress up Shell Oil’s big gas station with a “Seasons  corner grocery” but it’s still an ugly highway pump station — unwanted, unneeded and unwelcome.

And right in the middle of a neighborhood of quiet law-abiding, tax-paying, property-owning residential neighbors, many of them elderly. So why does Shell Oil want it plunk it down there?   

Simple. Because it is the closest possible location to the busy and getting busier Route 24 corridor.

And therefore closest to the thousands of passing cars, looking to gas up as they speed through town, googling for gas pumps that are just off the highway, the easy off and the easy back on.  The kind of gas station that gets those little signs on the highway. “Next right, Shell.”

And for just that reason Shell Oil wants it. It’s perfect. For Shell Oil. 

And for just that reason it’s bad for Tiverton. 

That’s because it brings many more cars, much more traffic, going up a narrow winding Main Road.  Passing through a dangerous intersection at Souza to come in.  And then passing through it yet again to get back out to the highway, and doing so against oncoming and crossing traffic that’s moving fast, downhill.

In and out. In and out. A quick stop. Zip, zip. And not just cars seeking gas but also the coffee drive through. A business that’s all about cars coming in and out.

Dangerous, you bet.

And much more so than would be the case with any other permissible business — regular stand-alone retail — where fewer people would linger for longer.

And that “fact” is all the zoning board needs to know. And that “fact” is all it needs to find. And it’s right there in the record.

Shell put up a single fancy traffic “expert” who incredibly tried to sell us the story that this wasn’t so, that traffic wouldn’t increase, even though that’s Shell’s business model.

But that well-paid (refused to tell us just how much) “expert” showed himself to be worthless and unreliable.

He testified, that is to say he “swore,”  that the traffic coming down the Main Road hill would be no problem because it could just pass on the right shoulder. But wait, there is no shoulder on the right.  And anyway it’s illegal to pass on a shoulder even if there were one. And it’s illegal precisely because it’s downright dangerous. Dangerous anywhere, but especially so heading into an already dangerous intersection. Given that crazy testimony, no fair-minded person could give any credit to a word that “expert” said.

So the zoning board must rely on the other witnesses, and on its own common sense, that show that this highway gas station indeed creates a far more dangerous intersection than would other permitted businesses.

The people of Tiverton know this gas station will create a dangerous situation: that it harms the public welfare, is detrimental to safety, adversely affects the neighborhood, and creates a nuisance.  They know it is bad for the town.

And the only credible evidence before the zoning board should lead it to the same conclusion.

John Reed

Tiverton