As local Democratic Party mounts bowl-a-thon, Dr. Gilderbloom marshalls impressive evidence: "Turn one-way streets to two-way."

Where have we heard of Dr. John Gilderbloom over the years?

Well, to name just two, here: CART in the news (2): Gilderbloom on Quasi-Possibility City.

Substitute "New Albany" for "Louisville," and it's the exact strategy best pursued by the current mayoral administration for the remainder of its turn -- assuming, of course, that conservatives in the local Democratic Party don't commit us to Romneyism in the interim.

And here: How One-Way Thinking is Hurting Historic Downtown Neighborhoods.

... One-way streets also lower property values. Identical historic homes are valued
less if they are located on busy one-way streets where traffic goes faster and lacks the
steady flow of a two-way street. Real estate 101 tells us location, location, location, or
more plainly don’t buy the house across from the X-rated movie house, the glue factory
or fast and furious one-way street.

Look, ma -- it's that man again.

Once more, substitute "New Albany" for "Louisville" in the opening passage quoted here, and ask yourself: Even without John Rosebarger yammering his selective planning commandments from a public toilet stall in the City-County Building, what exactly is it about a plainly counter-productive municipal street grid that renders otherwise sane adults into quivering masses of cautious status-quo fetishists, unwilling to trust either their own two eyes or steadily accumulating reams of evidence to the contrary?

In New Albany, we must ask: What are they so scared of, unless it's their own Democratic Party?

 Turn one-way streets to two-way, by John Gilderbloom (Special to The Courier-Journal)

Louisville’s multi-lane one-way streets are a disaster for neighborhoods resulting in greater crime, traffic accidents and abandonment. If Louisville really wants to improve the safety and quality of neighborhoods, it should start immediately by converting its multi-lane one-way streets back to two-way traffic that results in slower car speeds and encourages greater use by pedestrians and bikes. Neighborhoods become more livable, safer and prosperous when residential streets are calmer.

While 100 cities have rushed to convert multi-lane one-way streets, few rigorous studies have been done to look at traffic calming’s impacts. Under my supervision, my University of Louisville planning graduate students (Winston Mitchell and Samantha Alexis Smith) produced a rigorous study of just two streets (Brook and First) that were converted nearly three years ago from multi-lane freeway-like to slow and sane streets for everyone. We could actually look at before and after the conversion of Brook and First and compare the converted two-way with the unconverted multi-lane one-ways (Second and Third) next to them.

The results were stunning. Two-way conversion improves the livability of a neighborhood with a significant reduction in crime, accidents and an increase in property values, business profits, bike and pedestrian traffic. Million dollars spent on outside consultants never predicted this ...