“If you build it, it will never get done.”

—An anonymous, disembodied voice emanating from a cornfield near Loop 288 and McKinney Street

Pay no attention to what all those orange barrels and roadblock sawhorses seem to be telling you on Loop 288 between Interstate 35E and McKinney Street. They do not mean that the loop widening project is the same mind-numbing, ire-inducing, engine-overheating experience that it has been since the mind of man runneth not to the contrary, although it seems that is what they mean, since the driving experience on the Loop is essentially the same today as it was in 2006, when the first radiator boiled over while waiting to make a left turn into a Popeye’s chicken joint.

No, says Cynthia White, all those barrels and barricades mean that workers are putting the “finishing touches” on the project between McKinney and I-35E, and traffic should be zipping along unimpeded by the time we set off our first bootleg fireworks to celebrate Independence Day.

Ms. White is now a spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Transportation. She is a former Denton County commissioner, so you can take her information to the bank.

All of those barrels and barricades look formidable, she told our man Lowell Brown for an article in Sunday’s paper, but they’re actually a sign that the job is nearly done. All that remains, she said, are such piddling chores as sidewalks and wheelchair ramps. As soon as they’re done, she said, all the orange glop will be removed and the loop will be six glorious lanes from McKinney to the interstate. The remainder of the project, widening the loop from McKinney north to U.S. Highway 380, is “on track” to be finished by Sept. 27, which is apparently the latest deadline TxDOT has set for itself.

It is not, however, the first deadline. Back in the dim mists of time, we are told the loop was supposed to be built in 2005, but that is probably just a legend. More recently, on April 6, 2006, TxDOT’s deadline for completing the widening project was this summer. Now White is saying it’s this fall, but what’s a season among friends?

Man-on-the-street interviews, or, more accurately, motorist-stalled-in-the-middle-of-the-loop interviews, seem to indicate that long-suffering Denton drivers have pretty much given up hope that the loop project will ever completed. John Phillips, who lives just off Loop 288, told our man Brown that he avoids it altogether, taking Mayhill Road when he needs to get to I-35E.

(Our editorialist says he’s a little perturbed that Phillips has spilled that can of beans. Our scrivener has been using the Mayhill dodge for months now, and he’d hate to see it get any more congested.)

It seems to us that Loop 288 was an ill-conceived project from the very beginning. It is our understanding that loops are built so that long-haul motorists on an interstate or other major highway can get off that highway when it passes through a city. By using the loop, they can zip around the city and avoid the inevitable traffic that builds up on the main highway within the city’s busy core.

If anybody ever envisioned Loop 288 as that kind of loop, the concept got lost pretty quickly, it seems to us. It seems to have been planned, if “planned” is the correct word, as a bonanza for commercial developers, not as an artery to move traffic swiftly around the city. It doesn’t do that now, and we doubt that it ever will, even when the orange barrels are gone.