When we took up residence on Spring Street in 2003, it was one-way arterial, three lanes wide, and with parallel parking on both sides by the curbs.
Doug England's self-congratulatory Spring Street restriping in 2009, for which John Rosenbarger now claims glorious triumph whenever he finds himself speaking to people who don't know any better, actually involved increasing the number of total one-way lanes to four, albeit by reducing the number of automotive lanes to two, and adding two bicycle lanes, one on each side of the cars.
(Why anyone would think that two bike lanes starting nowhere, leading nowhere, and running in the same direction was a good idea, in any imaginable universe, is impossible to fathom. After all, these are locally educated functionaries.)
For a brief period, the change seemed to have a calming effect, but ultimately, traffic got fast and wild again. Recently, many more heavy trucks than before have been using Spring Street and adding to the problem, even as Rosenbarger habitually denies that these vehicles are being diverted from the Main Street Deforestation Project.
More on that utter fabrication, tomorrow.
Well ... who are you going to believe, Rosenbarger or your own eyes and ears? If his nose gets any longer, the Greenway can use it to bridge Silver Creek. So, why did Diamond John's 2011 Spring Street restripings not help at all?
Primarily, because nothing whatever changed.
The street is 50 feet wide from curb to curb. Before, there were three traffic lanes and two parking-only lanes by the curbs, but the parking lanes were not delineated. On the north side of the street, one's driver-side door just opened into speeding traffic.
Therefore, in essence, there were three 12-ft wide lanes for automotive traffic (36 feet in all) and two for parking (approximately 14 feet). One traffic lane of the three was removed. 10 of its 12 feet became bike lanes at 5-ft each. The parking areas were delineated at 8 feet. The two remaining traffic lanes remained 12 feet wide.
As for what it means to have 12-ft wide traffic lanes running through the middle of a neighborhood that politicians wish to be seen promoting as "revitalizing," let's turn to Jeff Speck and an article from Butte, Montana explaining Speck's street reform recommendations there.
... “A fight I’m fighting in state after state is the 12-foot lane width standard that most states apply,” he said.
The federal government in the past few months set new standards that differ from the states however, setting the travel lanes at 10 feet in width and parking lanes at 8 feet, he said.
“A 12-foot lane is a 70 mph lane,” Speck said. “Twelve foot lanes versus 10 foot lanes are the DOT versus us. There is no measureable decrease on urban street (traffic) capacity with 10-foot lanes. The burden is on DOT to prove why they need 12-foot streets.”
Speck argues that 10-foot lanes are safer for everyone, too, by slowing traffic.
“A person hit by a car going 30 mph is 10 times more likely to die than a person hit by a car traveling 25 mph,” he said.
That's right.
England and Rosenbarger claimed victory, by changing absolutely nothing. They built two unbuffered bike lanes next to 70 mph traffic lanes. They did nothing else, and they want you to believe that what they did was heroic and innovative, primarily so one of them can run for office again while the other keeps his job -- again.
Unfortunately, the Gahan administration has spent three years endorsing the status quo, and the status quo was, and is, a mistake, which puts the lie to all other efforts aimed at "revitalizing" the neighborhood.
Presumably, Speck will advise them to correct the idiocy, and perhaps they will. I'm guessing a Spring Street fix involves two-way traffic lanes at 10 feet, with a slightly wider turn lane in the middle, and the removal of biking lanes, which are largely useless. Should there be lanes for bicycles? Yes, somewhere. Just imagine if we had an actual plan for them, in the sense of actually leading from and to a destination ... but then a traffic lane might have to be changed, and we know how THAT inconveniences Democratic Party grandees.
Of course, in all likelihood, Rosenbarger will take credit for the correction to the problem he created. Almost surely, England will run for mayor, or council, or maybe dogcatcher. He'll claim credit for the results obtained by doing nothing. New Albany will languish because we've never met a box we didn't prefer to be constrained within.
And nothing will get done.
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