ON THE AVENUES: It’s the wrong way, pal.

ON THE AVENUES: It’s the wrong way, pal.

A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.

Every now and then, you just have to suck it up and admit that Dan Coffey was right about something.

As a case in point, here’s a stray thought from Chairman Cappuccino’s little unread book, as relayed by the News and Tribune’s Daniel Suddeath on September 9, 2009.

The way it looks right now, the lane changes are confusing, City Council President Dan Coffey said. He feels the bike lanes were added to appease a certain segment of New Albany. “The mayor is going to do anything he can to help the progressives out because he figures they’re going to help get him re-elected,” Coffey said.

Really? The bike lanes on Spring Street are almost four years old? And we’ve done nothing else since then to augment them?

Yep. Overnight in 2009, the street was reduced from three one-way Indy car lanes to just two, an improvement that calmed traffic, albeit briefly. Two bike lanes were added on either side of the traffic lanes, both running in the same direction toward the city center.

Was there dancing in the streets?

Hardly, because New Albany’s street grid is designed to accommodate cars alone, not people, so dancing is best done wherever there’s a pole -- but let’s leave Rustic Frog out of it.

It’s true that “progressives” applauded the addition of the bike lanes. We clapped while waiting for the remainder of the biking and walking plan to unfold, and of course it didn’t, because there never was a plan, just a re-election campaign that failed. Then it became clear that we HAD been fooled again, and the crickets chirped anew.

And so I used to be a fan of bike lanes on Spring Street. Now I’m not even sure they matter.

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Clearly, the dilatory and deservedly defunct England III administration created the Spring Street bike lanes in a self-congratulatory mode of bare minimalism, and it isn’t surprising that they’ve functioned as well as any strictly symbolic, otherwise orphaned project might be expected to work – which is to say, half-assed at best.

But victory was declared, balloons were released and press bromides were distributed, after which ruling class attention spans quickly lapsed back into sloppy microdot patterns. The carrot dangling just behind the traffic lane reduction and dual bike lane addition was that they were undertaken in preparation for restoring two-way vehicular traffic to Spring Street.

There was none. The stick?

It was soggy and flaccid, because the England administration lacked the political cojones to initiate anything that might have required the expenditure of political capital, this being because their wallets were utterly bereft of cash, and their minds incapable of pursuing ideas or ideals, as opposed to petty small-pond lap swimming.

Four years later, Spring Street as yet runs one way, with too few stop signs or lights, still tailor-made for speeding and reckless driving. Although you’ll see knowledgeable recreational cyclists using the bike lanes on the north side alongside traffic (as they should), dozens of others merrily pedal the wrong way on both sides of traffic -- when not engaged in doing the same on adjoining sidewalks, with scant regard for walkers.

I’ve never seen a policeman stop one. I’ve never seen any effort on the part of the city to educate cyclists, or to enforce any outdated laws pertaining to them. This would require having a plan, a scheme, a semblance of an outline, rather as Jeffersonville is doing right now in trying to coordinate a master plan.

New Albany’s chosen methodology is plainly piecemeal, now and always. If there was a way to picture half-assed piecemeal, it really should have been the bicentennial logo.

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The hardest thing for me to concede is that these serial vagrants riding their bicycles against traffic in existing bike lanes, and navigating sidewalks as recklessly as they would in their automobiles had their licenses not been confiscated owing to persistent drunkenness … well, they’re not entirely stupid, after all.

They’re displaying understandable defense mechanisms in a hazardous environment. In the absence of calming on Spring Street – because Doug England didn’t see fit to finish the job he started, because those nasty bullies on the council wouldn’t let him (sniff, sniff ... HONK) – today’s rogue cyclists correctly intuit that regularly tolerated vehicular chaos in the traffic lanes makes the bike lanes intrinsically unsafe to use as intended.

That’s why bike lanes are ineffective in a vacuum, in such a setting, where everything else about the street grid around is designed to fail.

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It is as yet unclear whether any elected official will come out in the open and truly get in front of this issue. Most of them seem to feel that furtive non-transparency conducted behind-the-scenes is the best tactic to proceed, while I tend to prefer revolutionary notions like openness and public meetings.

There is a palpable fear that any changes to the street grid will prompt complaints from the usual elderly Luddite (Democratic Party) suspects, which are the same elderly Luddite (Democratic Party) suspects typically bothering to vote – and that’s the scary part for the politicos.

And yet, openness surely would rally at least some support for street grid reform among New Albany’s younger cadres.

If we finally begin having public chats about such matters, it is my view that a Spring Street finally properly right-sized, calmed and returned to two-way traffic probably means doing away with the bike lanes, although reduced lane widths might allow one bike path to remain.

But there'll need to be two traffic lanes, one running east and the other west. With street parking on both sides (the street is primarily residential), it’s either the bike lanes or a center turn lane – and a center turn lane is inevitable on a former arterial street intended for taming.

We’d lose the bike lanes, but right now, they’re pretty much useless, anyway. They were built wrong. There’s been no follow-up; the city has no comprehensive biking and walking plan apart from assuming that until the end of time, everyone who votes will drive a car. It may well have become even more dangerous for a cyclist on Spring Street since the lanes were installed. The rapidly fading bike lane stripes inhibit a degree of non- vigilance already sorely tested by mobile phones and in-car curling irons, and drivers think more about the cyclist’s duty to stay within his boundaries than their own obligation to pay attention to the road.

We set up speed traps, and pretend they work.

Pretending.

That’s New Albany’s real bicentennial legacy, isn’t it?