Tuesday, March 11, 2014

ORBP antidotes: “The mayor has already made the case as to why these improvements are important."


It's a feature-length piece (1,400 words) by local newspaper standards, and presses most of the relevant buttons. Go read it, while considering a question I've asked before: What is the nature of the opposition to complete streets in New Albany?

By "opposition," I'm not referring to scattershot sniping from the briefly inconvenienced. Rather, I mean organized, coherent opposition. I can't seem to find any, although certain possibilities are obvious (Padgett, for instance, although there seems to be no record of the company's position either way). Proponents, including the East Spring Street Neighborhood Association, have been making a coherent and public case for a decade, and yet successive mayoral administrations seem constantly paralyzed.

I'm not entirely sure Jeff Speck knows what he's in for.

New Albany alone might well comprise sufficient material for a whole new book, and while I'd like to think it would be because we elect to institute a bold, vibrant laboratory to promoting modernity and the merits of infrastructure adjustment to achieve desired ends ... well, I've lived here for too long. I know we can do it. The problem is whether we know we can do it.

BRIDGING THE FUTURE: Examining the Ohio River Bridges Project impact on New Albany, Daniel Suddeath (N and T)

... With the Ohio River Bridges Project underway, the (East Spring Street) neighborhood group is pushing for the city to address what they feel is a dangerous traffic grid before more motorists head to New Albany to avoid tolls which will be placed on downtown interstate bridges and the new east-end bridge.

Roads such as Spring, Elm and Market Streets are already sped through by motorists who show no concern for the neighborhood they’re endangering, Roberts and other members of the group said.

“They don’t live here and they don’t care about the people that live here every day,” Harshfield said.

Overwhelmingly, the residents and business owners interviewed by the News and Tribune for this story said they support two-way streets in downtown New Albany for safety and commerce reasons, and added that the bridges project should make that decision even more clear for city leaders ...

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