Previously, setting aside legitimate and persistent concerns as to whether there exists within City Hall the requisite political courage for implementation of street grid reform, we speculated as to the future configuration of Spring Street, as reconstituted via Jeff Speck's forthcoming recommendations.
Jeff Speck on John Rosenbarger's 12-ft wide Spring Street traffic lanes: “A 12-foot lane is a 70 mph lane."
... 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.
The photo above tells the rest of the story. Speck himself recently has crusaded very publicly as to the street grid reformer's equivalent of "Remember the Alamo":
It's "10 not 12!"
Not since "Fifty-four forty or fight!" has there been a numerical equation so compelling.
Why 12-Foot Traffic Lanes Are Disastrous for Safety and Must Be Replaced Now: Let's make "10 not 12!" a new mantra for saving our cities and towns
... States and counties almost always apply a 12-foot standard. Why do they do this? Because they believe that wider lanes are safer. And in this belief, they are dead wrong. Or, to be more accurate, they are wrong, and thousands of Americans are dead.
With this background established, yesterday the Green Mouse was fed an interesting rumor: Main Street project lanes soon are to be striped at 11 feet (a namby-pamby Rosenbarger compromise in itself), which is the same lane width proposed for a future two-way Spring Street -- not by Adam Dickey, but by Speck.
Noting that the number 11 does not even exist in Speck's "10 not 12" slogan, how could it be that I've been reading the 10-ft lane width fighting words all across the Internetz, and then see 11-ft lanes proposed for the de facto interstate trucking route currently operating right outside my front door?
Since Speck invariably has been responsive, a trait hitherto unknown to the likes of John Rosenbarger and the majority of cloistered city officials, I thought I'd ask him directly.
Here's the exchange on Twitter.
Roger A. Baylor: Rumor has it that in New Albany, 11-ft lanes for Spring are advised. True? If so, how does it jibe with your 10-ft advocacy?
Jeff Speck: I'm surprised of rumors, since recs are in flux. That said, every street has to make best use of it's existing curb-to-curb.
JS: And I would generally keep bike lanes at 6 feet max so cars don't use them. This may lead to 11-foot lanes.
RAB: City's been talking about sharrows, so I assumed the bike lanes would be ditched. As constituted now, they are useless.
RAB: High-speed, pass-through heavy truck traffic is killing us. Looking for relief any way we can.
JS: Yes, very aware and concerned!
RAB: Thanks; it has been highly stressful.
Interestingly, the Green Mouse's same informant stated just a few weeks ago that the city's real and abiding secret wish is to inflict medians on Spring, as have been built on Main, seemingly precluding bike lanes, and replacing them with the dreaded, ineffective sharrows.
That's insanity, but then again, this is New Albany.
To be sure, these are no more than bits and pieces, leaks and rumors, and they only hint at broader outlines, which we'll not be privy to until the moment, at long last, when the Speck report is finished and the city decides to share it with us prior to doing whatever City Hall already had decided to do -- because that's the way this administration has chosen to operate, and by extension, that's why it has broken faith with those supporting it.
As Speck wrote, it is in flux, and we must wait and see.
The frustrating thing is that bike lanes should have been on Main Street, period. Now that Main Street has been ingloriously (permanently?) botched owing to changes there being conducted politically without consideration for their connectivity to our current dysfunctional street grid, or to any future street grid rendered functional, what is the ripple effect for subsequent alterations?
Apparently one of them is gifting Spring with 11-ft lanes, so as to allow for bike paths that lead nowhere and shouldn't be located where they are, and with all due respect to Jeff Speck, doesn't this only compound the perpetual foolishness rather than ameliorate it?
After all, as most of us can see all too well, the compounding of foolishness is this city's historic mission and legacy. New Albany fails because it refuses to begin at the beginning, and to decide what it wants to be prior to spending millions of dollars on incompletely implemented plans that tend to change with the prevailing seasonal (and political) winds.
As the Complete Street project recently tweeted:
Before we talk about transportation we have to ask what city we want and how we want to live!
That never happens here, does it? You see, what it comes down to is Abraham Lincoln.
If I could calm this street grid without changing any lane I would do it, and if I could calm it by changing all the lanes I would do it; and if I could calm it by changing some and leaving others alone I would also do that.
But it makes a fairly good campaign platform plank ... almost as good as "10 not 12!"
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