Our street grid + human rights + social justice = what needs to happen right now.

Photo credit: City of Muenster, Germany

Via the Board of Works, Mayor Jeff Gahan has surreptitiously signaled that up to 18 months will elapse before anything at all is done to implement the principles embodied in Jeff Speck's downtown street network proposals.

That's 18 more months for the neighborhood fabric to be mocked by the anti-social disruptions of one-way traffic patterns, and 18 more months for independent small business to suffer restricted growth from one-way chaos that favors pass-through trucks over people who live and work right here.

Passivity and secrecy -- the ethos of the fear-gripped down-low -- do not constitute genuine leadership, not in this or any other city.

Therefore, we must ask: As we await the cure by design, what is the city of New Albany going to do to stop the bleeding during the next 18 months?

 (Or, more accurately, for the remainder of the year 2015, seeing as there'll be a new mayor next year)

Two city council members, Greg Phipps and John Gonder, both Democrats, have consistently transcended City Hall's institutionalized timidity by advocating openly for the Speck proposals. True, both of them meekly returned to the Democratic Party standard prior to the primary, and yet the election now is over, and somewhere in the carefully shielded party platform planks therein, there is a vague call for two-way streets modernity. It's buried beneath the crypto-Disney palaver, but it's there.

Consequently, with the Democratic Party itself at least paying lip service to the idea, and with both Gonder and Phipps implying at various times that Gahan is the city's single greatest hope for street grid reform -- even if Speck remains the Gahan project that dares not speak its name -- isn't it time for a city council resolution to this effect, or an ordinance stipulating a bill of rights for non-automotive street users, detailing the human right and social justice imperatives of same?

Aren't these among the ways that Phipps and Gonder might actually propel a cause they both espouse? Aren't these paths the ideal answer to the despairing question, "But what can a mere city councilman do to help?"

Isn't this the way we've moved other balls forward, including the human rights commission and various statements of non-binding principle for Scott Blair to ignore unless they pertain to prayer? After all, most recently on Monday, it was illustrated that the votes are there to do whatever Jeff Gahan and the Party wish. Both these entities are said to agree with the title of this posting.

Let's hope (gasp) that Gahan and the Party are not sending mixed signals.

That would be positively scandalous, wouldn't it?

Protected bike lanes and the social justice of urban space (Broken Sidewalk, via Street Roots and People for Bikes)

It’s one of the most famous images in modern urban planning: three simple photos showing how much city space 80 people take up when they get around by bike, by bus, and by car.

The poster was made in Muenster, Germany, in 1991. Here in Portland and around the world, it’s been used to show how you can reduce congestion by getting more people to ride bikes or mass transit. In cities, where no resource is more precious than space, that’s a powerful gift.

But keep looking at the photos and you might see another idea embedded in them, too: one about human rights.

It’s an idea that may have been best phrased by Enrique Peñalosa, who served as mayor of Bogotá, Colombia, in the early 2000s. “The first article in every constitution states that all citizens are equal before the law,” Peñalosa said. “If this is true, a bus with 80 passengers has a right to 80 times more road space than a car with one.”