A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.
To be sure, attempted expository writing commencing with heartfelt thanks for the “fair and balanced” pandering of the News and Tribune’s forever oblivious Chris Morris generally is destined for the ground floor of the parakeet’s cage faster than Dan Coffey can switch sides, but because City Hall’s in hiding, and I couldn’t pawn the job off on the assistant editor, permit me to show you this nifty postcard.
It was the last remaining item on closeout at Endris Jewelers.
 |
| Thanks AG |
Then there’s this.
PADGETT: Look at New Albany as a whole, by R. James Padgett
... Safety must be paramount. Everything else is secondary
Trying to follow Padgett's reasoning is like watching a neophyte learning to drive a stick, but let's give the crane mogul his due, and acknowledge that while Padgett has only one, solitary, universally valid point, it is an entirely fair point.
Too bad it's on John Rosenbarger's head.
Yes, Rosenbarger's pate should have been adorned with a bonnet of pink slips long ago, and at least on that much we can agree, because Padgett gets this part of it right: The East Main Street Improvement Project is an abomination, a perfect storm of a travesty of everything wrong with street refits, a gift that keeps on shafting on, an unfathomable civic own goal, and such a thorough poisoning of the design well when it comes to inclusive, progressive street sense that you’d be mistaken for thinking it was the act of a crazed, sworn enemy ... not the city's favorite inept son of a Rasputin.
Unfortunately for Padgett's current self-centered jihad against the city’s future, his one fair point has everything to do with the Main Street alone, and nothing whatever to do with Jeff Speck’s Downtown Street Network Proposals. For example, to my knowledge, not a single median is proposed within Speck's report, although he mentions the weirdness of the medians dividing Market Street downtown. Not a word in Speck's study is devoted to measures to prevent trucks from using New Albany's streets. His suggestions incorporate them within a broader context.
So, the first task for the reader of Padgett's rant to the News and Tribune is to realize that in terms of effective argumentation, fatally flawed premises cannot possibly lead to a correct conclusion. You’d sooner expect the muffler to rotate the drive shaft -- or something like that.
Padgett’s primary flawed argument, currently being borne by a conceptually unclothed Irv Stumler, is that because Main Street sucks, so do Speck's proposals. In his own words:
The problem was created because the Main Street changes were designed in a vacuum without analyzing their effect on other streets and businesses. And now, the City of New Albany is again proposing to do more of the same.
Padgett’s eagerness to conflate the two is his biggest lie, although he doesn't stop there. His secondary flawed argument, and his slightly smaller of lies, is that he alone possesses the key to “safety” on the streets, as based upon yet another shaky premise:
The streets exist for trucks. After that, we'll distribute sloppy seconds.
This argument is egotistical, to say the least:
I decree that the Main Street project has created unsafe streets according to what trucks need, and will consider no evidence beyond that which I've provided., and so therefore what Speck proposes is unsafe according to what the trucking community needs, because those needs come first, and street safety pertains only to the relationship between trucks and the detestable remainder of the non-trucking human population, because I said so, and I’m Jim Padgett, gazing at my reflection in a serene pool of industrial badassedness.
Let’s let Bluegill address this one.
The funny thing is that Padgett tries to pitch street reform and anybody but him as being responsible for danger. Somehow I don't think my bicycle imposes as much risk on the folks in my neighborhood as several thousand pounds of steel and drivers that apparently can't drive in a slow, straight line. There's a concept of proportionality at play here. He or she who creates the most risk also incurs the most responsibility.
As for Padgett’s labored renderings of truck safety issues on Main Street, our friend Iamhoosier has a few rejoinders.
If a semi driver cannot drive down a 13' wide street safely, he/she needs to have their license rescinded. Oversized loads are called that for a reason -- they are oversized. They still move. It takes a little more time and effort but they still get where they are going. And how many legit oversized loads are moved through NA in an average week? (my company makes deliveries every day with semis, so I know a little about this topic, too) Padgett is complaining about 13'. An interstate highway lane can be as narrow as 12'. His argument is hogwash. I'm sure there are times that an accommodation will have to made to move some of Padgett's products. I don't think anyone objects to that.
Interestingly, Padgett freely acknowledges that Main Street remains the “only legal travel route” for large vehicles and oversize loads. Apparently he does not contest this, so we’ll accept it, too, seeing as we've been saying it for many months.
As noted, Padgett is able to supply several disingenuous scenarios explaining why Main Street’s changes “have created dangerous travel,” but according to Padgett, short of removing the medians and starting over, the only solution is for the city to designate “another wide, clear and unobstructed travel street” for the use of his trucks, and the trucks of others. From this, we can infer that such a re-designation has not yet been established.
So … if by Padgett’s own admission, recent changes to Main Street may (or may not – do we have corroborating testimony?) be dangerous, but among these have NOT been any explicit changes to the street’s status as sole legal travel route, then how could I have seen this Padgett truck on Spring Street earlier in the week?
The sign even says “oversize load,” right?
Recalling that city officials and Wes Christmas, its Main Street project engineer, have insisted all along that changes there would not divert truck traffic elsewhere, and with Padgett himself in agreement that Main Street remains the only legal travel street, why are his trucks (and others) traveling on Spring Street at all?
Why haven’t these truckers been ticketed?
Is Padgett serving notice of overt civil disobedience?
Is he ordering them to avoid the only legal travel route?
Shouldn’t someone’s wrist be getting slapped?
As we’ve asked countless times, if Main Street remains the designated truck route even after the installation of garish medians, then why is the city not ticketing trucks for the very act of being on Spring Street? At the very least, why aren’t they being issued warnings?
Looking at Padgett's argumentation as a whole, it's filled with holes, and his me-first narcissism is way off the charts. However, and undeniably, we’re only at this idiotic, bile-ridden juncture because of the astounding wretchedness of Jeff Gahan’s and John Rosenbarger's massive Main Street boondoggle. Both should be cashiered, and as soon as humanly possible.
Meanwhile, one more time so Jim Padgett can hear it over the din of his fleet ...
Speck ain't Main Street, not by a long shot. To suggest otherwise is a lie, period.
---
Recent ON THE AVENUES columns:
No comments:
Post a Comment