As in the preceding 99 episodes of this depressing series, we present diesel-powered visuals, the essence of which vividly contradict the original design and best present use of multi-modal streets running through densely populated urban areas -- streets once redesigned to interstate highway specifications, for reasons that were bad then and worse now, and which are in desperate need of reversion to their original aim as routes for people, not fast-moving machines.
All other expenditures and efforts we undertake to "revitalize" neighborhoods are flatly contradicted, and often cruelly usurped, by our arterial, one-way street design -- and yet, the political response in New Albany has been consistent in only one way: Ongoing, unprincipled and sniveling cowardice.
This needs to change.
Every one of 600+ trucks pictured in this series over a period of almost two years WOULD STILL BE ABLE TO USE city streets completed and calmed according to Jeff Speck's plan -- not to be confused with the idiotic Main Street beautification aberration -- and so would everyone else.
We'd all use the streets more slowly, and more safely. Walkability and bicycle use would be enhanced.
The "ripple effect" so often mistakenly cited by dime store time-servers to describe the mythical fallout from bonded capital projects actually would have the chance to occur, in both reality and real neighborhoods, as manifested by greater quality of life and heightened property values; as we've pointed out on numerous occasions, these two-way benefits are being objectively charted and are the subject of steadily amassing fact, not fiction.
Trucking interests and heavy industrial operators belong in an industrial park near the actual interstate, not in downtown areas more suited for human habitation and use, and we have the as yet unused acreage on the north side.
Let's make a deal, because multiple positive outcomes occur when business is being done where it should, and people are living their lives where they should.
Making it happen will require thinking outside matchbook-sized "economic development as usual" boxes, and a fair dollop of political courage.
See any of these qualities in candidates standing for office this November? Then vote for those who have them, and as for those who don't ...
... sorry, Jeff. We'll have to let you go, but maybe Mr. Padgett can hire you to run one of his coal trains.
You DO have a CDL, right?
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