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| Proposed yard signs for the new "There's Only One Way to NA" anti-Speck group. |
I heard this one yesterday morning. It seems that an employee of a downtown NA business was approached by a well-dressed elderly gentleman (read: Irv Stumler) and asked to sign a petition.
One-way streets or two-way streets?
He ticked the two-way side, and was told: But wait, you don't understand -- they're going to ban cars on our streets!
While knowing this wasn't true in the least, he quickly gauged his options and decided that the quickest way to convince Irv to go away and leave him alone was to change his vote to the other side.
That's right.
A candidate for city council is walking the streets, spreading the manure, and saying whatever he thinks is necessary to scare someone into signing his piece of paper. This somehow strikes him as leadership.
It strikes most of the rest of us a pretext for hospitalization and the administering of happy drugs.
Tonight is the final streets "forum" at the Pepin Mansion (1003 E. Main Debacle; 6:00 p.m.) If you have not attended one of the previous two meetings, I suggest you go. As for me, having attended the second presentation at the Carnegie, the Extol Magazine launch party sounds like a far better idea.
But let's go through this one last time.
In essence, even before any of us knew Speck, this blog has been beating the drum for his downtown street network proposals for a decade or more. If you don't know what we think by now, there's little that can be done for you, and there is no need of me repeating any of it tonight. Wake up, use coffee, and see a changing world all around you.
For residents bothering to read the streets document (Stumler evidently remains among those who have not), Speck's obviously done all the necessary engineering, and yet the heart of the matter lies not in these numbers and figures, but in the opportunity to harness our most basic infrastructure in support of the other forward-thinking measures we've already somehow achieved against the addled resistance of people just like Irv Stumler, rather than shackle and erode them with past imperatives that no longer have relevance in the here and now -- like one-way streets.
Yesterday I asked Mike Kopp whether the topic of Speck's two-way proposals arose during discussions with Flaherty & Collins Properties, the Indianapolis firm bidding to build apartments on the old Coyle Chevrolet property in downtown New Albany. Mike replied in the affirmative, and that representatives of the company said that far from discouraging them to proceed, the implementation of Speck's measures would be an enticement and a bonus to doing business in New Albany.
Whether or not one favors this particular living space project, the verdict is clear: The target demographic for downtown apartments, as for existing housing, small independent businesses, recreational opportunities, greatest future use and the Speck plan itself is one and the same. If you look around you and see 1965, Irv can tell you where to sign. If you see 2025, opt for Speck ... and watch as your property values increase.
In a broader sense, what we've spent all this time and money trying to achieve in New Albany stands to be boosted by Speck's ideas, rather than suppressed by traditional heavy industrial and trucking interests, which rely on harnessing infrastructure to extract its value for their enrichment, as opposed to compounding value for humans.
It doesn't mean they're bad people, merely that they're doing business in the wrong place, period. No one seems eager to say this aloud, so I will. They're the ones compelled to compromise, not the city's residents. Ironically, the net effect of universal Speck implementation only increases the possibility that property like Padgett's will become future redevelopment panaceas, with profits untold for the owners (i.e., Padgett) -- but as a place for people to live, not cranes to haul.
In closing, Jeff Gillenwater offers this observation.
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One of the more interesting aspects of the whole streets topic is the still pervasive yet inaccurate notion that our dominant car culture is somehow the result of free market principles. The exact opposite is actually true.
A lot of streets in New Albany as well as all over the country were initially privately built specifically for multimodal use as it was understood as the best bang for the buck, that which would create the most opportunity and make connected properties the most valuable. Likewise, the street cars, commuter trains, and buses that used to populate and move New Albany and the broader metro area were all privately constructed and run.
It was only after the government stepped in to dictate and heavily subsidize outward growth, road building, and fuel prices that we ended up with a strong car culture. In more recent years, we've been borrowing heavily from non-vehicle revenue streams to subsidize a majority of road building and maintenance precisely because neither the market nor auto-related government user fees come close to covering those costs.
A relative dab finally going back toward alternative forms of transportation can hardly be construed as an attack on motor vehicles. It's funny to think about, given the source of recent political diatribes, but trucking just might be one of the most "socialist" industries in the city.
Though the term is abused, I'd proffer that it really is common sense: If you're a resident, do you want one, comparatively expensive and dangerous way to get around or do you want several options, including much safer, cheaper ones?
And, if you're a business owner, do you want just the one or multiple options for getting to and from your business, with some of those options leaving a lot more money in customer pockets for spending on something other than transportation?
We have a chance, a choice, really, to allow our city and neighborhoods to move toward functioning like they were originally designed to function-- with greater mobility and an increase in the opportunities that come with such mobility.
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