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| Amid the craters of recently paved 5th Street, a safe haven. |
Let's return to the city's press release yesterday. Ignore the bad grammar in the last sentence.
Additional infrastructure improvements include numerous changes to local roads and streets. McDonald Lane is being expanded and improved to allow for better traffic flow. Spring Street in downtown is receiving major improvements at dangerous intersections to help improve both safety, traffic, and pedestrian accessibility.
A regular blog reader delves more succinctly, and it raises another valid question of the sort asked by malcontents:
How did those intersections come to be dangerous, and if we knew, why has it taken so many years to (feebly) address the fact?
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Two things come to mind when reading this press release:
1) Only "dangerous intersections"? How many are there and how are they determined? By pedestrian death count?
Why not address every intersection in the same manner, so pedestrians and drivers can come to understand the importance of crosswalks within the city?
Spotty, piece-meal "solutions" prove there is no real plan, just lazy, knee jerk reaction.
2) "Accessibility" is a bullshit word used to sound impressive. Every intersection in New Albany is already "accessible" by walkers (although not by those in wheelchairs).
Most of the intersections on Spring Street are simply not safe for pedestrians to cross due to the street's one way width and traffic speed.
The missing word is "safety" - as in "pedestrian safety" - and the reason the city won't use that phrase is they don't want to make any promises of real effort.
I'm surprised that Mr. Phipps isn't more concerned about pedestrians dying while simply trying to cross the street in the Spring Street neighborhood district. New Albany citizens asking for safer cross walks are "malcontents"?
The next victim will be someone's daughter or son, father or mother, grandmother or grandfather, neighbor or friend.
"Malcontents"?
Really?
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