Cincinnati moves forward with city-wide Complete Streets initiative, by John Yung (Urban Cincy blog)
... Complete Streets are regulations that allow streets to be redesigned to focus on shared use with bicycles and mass transit as well as better conditions for pedestrians. The problem in Cincinnati, and throughout much of the United States, is that people drive past what used to be viable places. The initiative, in theory, would improve conditions for many of the city’s struggling neighborhoods by reorienting them towards the users for which they were originally designed.
“We need to ensure that our neighborhood business districts are destinations and not just raceways through town for commuters,” Vice Mayor Qualls explained in a recent press release.
The standards aim to improve walkability and slow traffic in business districts. This can be done by adding on-street parking, converting one-way roads to two-way traffic, and providing connections through smaller block sizes.
New Albany is a state of mind … but whose? Since 2004, we’ve been observing the contemporary scene in this slowly awakening old river town. If it’s true that a pre-digital stopped clock is right twice a day, when will New Albany learn to tell time?
Tuesday, May 01, 2012
"Complete Streets" in New Albany?
Once you grasp that cars are here to serve people, and not the other way around, it's a lot easier to understand how ideas like these can happen right here. After, Cincinnati isn't exactly far-off Amsterdam. I've underlined the passage below that we all might remember, just in case Kerry Stemler's and Ed Clere's tolls ever actually begins, because New Albany will be in danger of becoming Speed Thru City.
Given the financial straits in which the states have put TARC, we should be talking with them about New Albany-centric transit service as well.
ReplyDeleteDepending on the costs of maintaining routes, it could be well worth an annual City investment, particularly since bridges and tolling project documentation show New Albany neighborhoods will bear an inequitable share of that project's negative impacts.
The feds are already pushing the states for more transit to mitigate those negative impacts and Indiana and Kentucky are already negotiating a deal to increase TARC funding as a result, but so far only temporarily during bridge construction. That combined with a city effort could lead to a substantial transit demonstration project that would help raise awareness of the comparative value both New Albany and transit provide.