This is welcome news, and takes on added importance given the resistance with which City Hall initially greeted the idea. I'll never forget being informed in detail as to the absolute impossibility of such a human-friendly notion -- although negotiating with INDOT to ensure 2015 election-year street paving on Main rather than substantive dialogue about safety proved to be a very do-able priority.
Thanks again to Barksdale and others who helped resolve the impasse, which as this excerpt from October, 2016 was facilitated by the Redevelopment Commission, not BOW.
Note that while Bob Caesar remains a hypocrite concerning the sanctity of budgets and expenditures, his question here is timely, and you're reading it right: $250,000 to get this done. Might it have cost less had the work been incorporated with "get out the vote" paving, rather than resisted by functionaries who hadn't yet bothered to read Jeff Speck's book?
Only Deaf Gahan knows for sure. Here's a repeat of the most recent summary of the long march toward safety at Main and W. 1st.
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November 8, 2016
ASK THE BORED: Red carpet pedestrian treatment for Hausfeldt Lane as the trucks roar past the corner of Main and W. 1st.
As a prelude to a discussion that occurred at last week's Bored Conclave, where the plume of white smoke indicates a pants leg on fire -- a meeting kept mercifully short so the political appointees could resume their partisan beak-wetting campaigns -- recall that NA Confidential has placed the topic of crosswalks and pedestrian safety on the front burner way for years.
Here is a sampling of links since 2014. Recently, we've placed the spotlight on the increasingly busy corner of Main and W. 1st, but there are multiple candidates for scrutiny throughout the city, most of them being ignored by the somnolent timer-servers in municipal government.
Must we wait for a traffic study to slow traffic and put crosswalks at the corner of Main and W. 1st?
Walkability might as well begin with the intersection of Main and West 1st, so can it begin now?
As Team Gahan snoozes, the intersection of West 1st and Main is an accident waiting to happen.
Two weekend posts about Team Gahan's arrogant auto-centrism.
Team Gahan's breathtaking passive/aggressive answer to the question of making a safe pedestrian crossing at Main and W. 1st.
ON THE AVENUES: Requiem for the bored.
There is no crosswalk at Main and W. 1st Streets, and yet there's one in the middle of the block by the hospital (2 of 2).
City engineer Larry Summers and INDOT explain why there is no crosswalk at Main and W. 1st Streets (1 of 2).
Dangerous intersections: Something for Greg Phipps to consider, though it's unlikely they will.
Back in June, thanks to the intervention of councilmen Barksdale and Knable (if memory serves), the art of the possible suddenly came to the attention of the snoring usual suspects.
A crosswalk at Main & W. 1st? One month ago it was utterly impossible, but now Redevelopment says anything's possible.
Taking all this into consideration, you'll understand why we're fascinated to learn of the following conversation at last week's Bored of Works gathering.
In short, on Hausfeldt Lane we'll sound alarms, construct non-standard guides and post a city employee to escort folks back and forth across a street made potentially dangerous by passing trucks, but at Main and W. 1st, with thriving businesses on all four corners, and the same dangerous trucks barreling back and forth, uncontrolled in terms of speed on a street too wide, the same argument will be deferred, and until recently ignored, by virtue of ineffectual gurgling sounds, at least until an elected official or two applies pressure and calls the city's perennial bluff.
Why is Team Gahan constantly contemptuous of pedestrians and cyclists?
Could it be, at least in part, that none of them know what it's like to walk?
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