New Albany is a state of mind … but whose? Since 2004, we’ve been observing the contemporary scene in this slowly awakening old river town. If it’s true that a pre-digital stopped clock is right twice a day, when will New Albany learn to tell time?
Tuesday, June 25, 2019
ASK THE BORED: Can't City Hall just stop lying about 4-way-stop upgrades on Spring and Elm between Vincennes and downtown?
Last week at the Bored with Works meeting some rote cowardice broke out.
It's genuinely maddening.
Of course, City (Mike) Hall just finished an artful mini-propaganda blitz for dupe-worthy CNU27 attendees, insisting that Jeff Gahan's half-ass two-way street conversion has magically resolved all automotive-related safety issues.
They're lying, but after all, it's an election year.
Once again, when presented with safety concerns pertaining to traffic speeds from a neighborhood resident who witnesses the problem every single day, Gahan's compromised minions spout craven nonsense: the "manual" prohibits them from doing anything at all, except in those case when they decide to do something from motivations of politics, as opposed to safety.
The criteria for action? It's written on a fortune cookie hidden in Jeff Gahan's down-low bunker.
Accepting city engineer Larry Summers' slippery explanation (above) at face value, and recalling that he used the same well-greased explanation as a convenient excuse not to convert Elm & 13th into a 4-way stop -- right up until the morning it WAS converted, sans coherent explanation -- how can there be enough traffic to justify a 4-way at Elm and 13th, and at Elm and 10th, but not on Spring, one block over?
Are we to surmise that there is a flood of cross traffic between Spring and Oak, which never crosses Spring to get to Market and Main?
Why can't someone in Gahan's administration, ANYONE at this point -- conceding city officials are so thoroughly discredited that Gahan can pick a random janitor to deliver the message, or maybe hand it off to the who sells weenies out front of the City County Building in summer -- simply tell the truth about the street grid?
"We are car-centric to the core. None of us know what it means to walk or ride a bicycle, much less to navigate a wheelchair, but one thing we know for sure is that we're absolutely terrified to offend drivers. We'll continue to make meaningless gestures and co-opt "progressives" who are just as car-centric as us, and we'll talk a great game about our brilliance even as we ignore safety concerns and refuse to take substantive efforts to slow traffic."
That's Gahan's only "manual," isn't it?
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