What's right for Main Street is right for all the streets. Right?

There was a breakfast meeting of the Downtown Business Owners group yesterday, and before making any further comments, thanks to Sweet Stuff for providing the doughnuts.

My waistline disagrees. Foolish waistline.

The prime topic for discussion at the gathering was to have been the city's future plans to implement two-way, complete streets downtown.

Unfortunately, no one from the city was able to attend.

However, Rep. Ed Clere was there, and he was able to brief us about Monday's public meeting on the Main Street corridor work. It's a meeting that few of us knew was occurring, but metaphorically critical nonetheless; as Ed noted, if the city is saying that Main Street needs to be completed, then there really isn't any way to simultaneously suggest that other city streets do not need to be completed.

Thanks to Ed for making this point and several others of extreme relevance to the immediate future of the street grid. Granted, I often publicly disagree with him. But fair play compels me to publicly agree, too, and this is one of those times. I believe that if, like me, you favor a modern, rational, complete street grid for New Albany, one in which all users are created equal, where traffic is calmed and both neighborhoods and businesses prosper as a result, just like they have in other cities where progressive thinking is more common, then Ed Clere is an ally to the cause. I thank him for it.

I also believe City Hall when it says that it favors complete streets.

My trust is absolute.

Now, all we need is verification, the sooner the better.

The Main Street project is a beginning -- but only a beginning. If it is undertaken without a system-wide plan of action, it might well become a vacuum, in which the usual declarations of victory are announced, and tired excuses like "but Main Street is different than other streets" and "but we don't have any more money" are trotted out to justify the dragging of feet.

Verification.

Just a bit of it, please.

Let's reason together for a change ... all of us.