The four-way stop at Elm & 13th, and why openness and transparency matter.

At last evening's city council meeting, 3rd district councilman Greg Phipps used his speaking time to congratulate himself and the Board of Works for the two recently installed stop signs (complete with helpful flashing red lights) on Elm at 13th Street.

Their addition has created a four-way stop, and it only took the amount of time required for a kindergarten student to take his or her first university class.

It's hard to begrudge Phipps his small victory, given how little he's achieved overall during eight years as a council representative apart from rubber-stamping expenditures.

However, the problem with his victory is the way he first explained it (paraphrased):

I've been working behind the scenes with the powers that be to facilitate this four-way stop, which the neighborhood has been asking for since the inception of NA Confidential. Yay!

Consider that (a) HWC Engineering's voluminous campaign donations to Jeff Gahan have had the effect of establishing the company as a de facto arm of city governance, and (b) every public utterance on the topic of four-way stops by an HWC official during the time of the two-way street reversion and since has been accompanied by a disdainful disclaimer: hardly ever can this be done and when it is, that's because a traffic count was made and the INDOT Pass Through Oracle consulted for clarification and approval.

The Jeff Gahan Money Machine, Part 1: Mysterious CRS Marketing and the inevitable HWC Engineering tie-in.

This from a street engineering company that openly laughed at Jeff Speck's street grid recommendations (I was there and witnessed it) and operates from a strictly Talmudic old school perspective when it comes to traffic engineering, professing the necessity of keeping cars moving through town as quickly as they can on collector streets with as few impediments as possible -- and other considerations (quality of life for residents, perhaps?) be damned.

I'm not exaggerating. I attended the meetings and took note of what was happening. Having HWC implement Speck was like asking your goldfish to perform ballet.

So, we return to Phipps and his four-way triumph. It's good that we have a four-way stop at Elm and 13th, but the problem with "behind the scenes" is that we have no idea why something that kept being referred to as unlikely, if not outright impossible, suddenly occurred -- apart from an impending primary election and the obvious need to fluff the resumes of candidates.

What happened to change BOW's, Larry Summers' and HWC's minds?

What's the principle involved?

Is the principle involved useful as a precedent?

Will it take another 15 years to apply the precedent elsewhere?

Or is this four-way just an imperial decree and alms from Dear Leader, absent any coherent justification or explanation?

Rather than take to Facebook to announce his win, shouldn't Phipps explain the hows, whys and wherefores to residents?

Situations like this are why one is compelled to dismiss the boilerplate and look behind the curtain. A four-way stop at Elm and 13th was needed, but if the four-way is a one-off with no future applicability, what's the point?

We need to know, and Phipps needs to explain. He'll be hearing many more questions like this during the months to come.

HWC Engineering, municipal cowardice, Jeff Speck and reading the tea leaves through dry heaves.

There's a 4-way stop at Elm and 13th. The only question is whether it came with a ribbon.

Does this mean the forever variably apolitical Develop New Albany is endorsing candidate Phipps? Let's follow the Facebook sharing protocol of the presumed non-profits. First, from DNA back to ESNA.

Then ESNA to the source.

It's an election year, and candidate Phipps says he has been "working with the city for several months," as back-room and non-transparently as always, to get a 4-way stop at Elm and 13th.

Fair enough; it's been needed not for months, but for YEARS. After almost eight years of rubber-stamping City Hall expenditures, it's always good to achieve something.

So, ignoring the pertinent question of why Phipps took so long to work behind the scenes, and why his cherished overlord the mayor took so long to give his "superstar" BOW mentor Warren the okay to release this intersection just in time to become a nice pre-primary poll-boost, there’s an absolutely positive aspect to all this electioneering.

That's because the same Democrats who dragged their feet for months before making this needed change so a Democrat could take re-election campaign credit for it can no longer be the same Democrats resisting similar proposals (hint: 4-ways for Spring and 10th; for Main and Bank; rinse, repeat) because the statute of limitations has expired for the same Democrats who oft times before used the completely spurious excuse of a need for traffic studies and INDOT indulgences to avoid mustering the simple one-two cojones to do what's right.

All of which Phipps never questioned until his passive acquiescence to Gahan's hack job on Speck's plan produced tepid two-way street grid results.

But hear me out; this 4-way at Elm and 13th is genuinely important.

Finally a 4-way precedent has been set, so let’s hope future action to #slowthecars might someday occur when it ISN’T an election year.

Dude; that'd almost be PROGRESSIVE, wouldn't it?

Neither City Hall nor HWC Engineering sees a problem with this mishap-plagued intersection. Maybe we should appeal to Floyd County government for help.

Photo by AGB.

Insightful observer AGB photographed the scene on Sunday afternoon after a driver deposited his car in the yard of the home on the southwest corner of Elm and 13th.

Yet another wreck at Elm and 13th. This time the cars hit and one went into the yard and hit the house. But those flashing pedestrian walkway lights that nobody pays attention to were a much better choice than 4 way stops ... there is only a 2-way stop here and you can't see around the cars parked. So there's often wrecks/near wrecks at this intersection.

Ironically, it was precisely this intersection that I mentioned last week to Jim Rice of HWC Engineering, the mayor’s preferred contractor for street design, as worthy of added study owing to sight lines and the completely ineffective solar-powered "high visibility" pedestrian crossings.

Rice quickly brushed me off, asking how I knew for a fact these crosswalks don't work. I replied that as a frequent walker, a couple hundred hours of direct experience is something not to be ignored; he answered by denigrating real-life observation as opposed to the sheer brilliance of that segment of the populace which has chosen to become engineers.

Sorry, Jim. If the choice is believing you or my own two eyes, you can hurriedly beat a retreat back to suburban Indianapolis (by car, of course) while as a walker, I'll continue crossing in the middle of the block -- because this is safer than the prevailing reality following your de-Specked abortion of a two-way street grid plan, which your presumably flawless firm of flunkies conjured between amassing campaign donations to a failed mayor who ordered the car-centric butchery in the first place.

As an aside, the idiocy of these "high irrelevancy" pedestrian crossing lights is so blatantly obvious that even 3rd district councilman Greg Phipps noticed it, and made at least one appeal to the somnolent Bored of Works, maybe two.

To no one's surprise, BOW has been completely unresponsive -- and as fatigued city engineer Larry Summers informed council just a few weeks ago, he's so busy coordinating campaign donations from paving companies that there's no time for the consideration of other matters.

Unfortunately, Phipps has a history of stopping short of useful action that might offend Dear Leader, so here we are. Perhaps it's time for residents of the 3rd district to learn from the instructive experience of Vulcan, West Virginia in the late 1980s. There's a crucial and delightful twist, seeing as the USSR and the GDR no longer exist.

Let's ask the Floyd County commissioners for help with this intersection, seeing as we're getting none from the Anchor Regime.

Feeling forsaken by their own government, after repeated pleas to have a new bridge constructed, the people of this West Virginia community made an unprecedented move which soon garnered international headlines. At the height of the Cold War, residents of Vulcan wrote to the Soviet Embassy in Washington, as well as to communist officials in East Germany, detailing their plight and requesting foreign aid from the nations.

Sensing an opportunity to shame the American government, the Kremlin immediately dispatched journalists to the United States.

Interviewing the residents of Vulcan and broadcasting their troubles to the rest of the world, the government in Moscow did what the residents of Vulcan had been attempting to do for years, bring attention to their transportation nightmare.

By mid-December 1977, newspaper headlines around the country were announcing, “Small Town Seeks Russ Foreign Aid” (Spokane Daily Chronicle).

The Spokane Daily Chronicle wrote, “Soviet officials were amused today by reports that the small town of Vulcan, W.Va. has appealed to the Kremlin for foreign aid… The town, with a population of 200, asked the Soviet government for financial help to build a bridge after the town was turned down by the U.S. and West Virginia governments.”

Embarrassed by the attention their lack of assistance was receiving, state officials wasted no time in committing $1.3 million and built a bridge for the tiny community.

ASK THE BORED: A few well-placed chicanes on 13th Street should send Tiger Trucking to a more appropriate location for doing its value-extractive business.

If 2017 really is to be the year when the Downtown Grid Modernization Project transitions from the mere rumor of a long overdue, messy compromise of a typically botched Gahanesque half-ass measure to these facets actually appearing in real life, then City Hall's favored minions at HWC Engineering should have long since moved past the stage of ensuring campaign finance rivulets flowing downhill like stormwater from Summit Springs, straight into the mayor's aspirational State Senate coffers, and started the task of rendering splendid Speck into adulterated sausage.

As such, perhaps it isn't too late to reclaim 13th Street for residential quality of life by the simple expedience of chicane installation.

Not chicanery ...

... but chicane, a concept recently explained here.

A chicane is an artificial feature creating extra turns in a road, used in motor racing and on streets to slow traffic for safety. For example, one form of chicane is a short, shallow S-shaped turn, requiring the driver to turn slightly left and then right again to stay on the road, which slows them down.

Yes, we've all been here before.

Last July, NAC explained in great detail (repeated below) that Tiger Trucking's use of 13th Street as an industrial connector, while intended as a petulant middle finger lofted in the general direction of City Hall, actually serves as a daily reminder to people living on this residential street that their quality of life doesn't matter -- and has mattered even less since the city lavished millions on an unnecessary Main Street beautification project, which freed more dysfunctional demons than it rectified.

Isn't it time for the spoiled brat to get a good spanking? Residents of 13th Street deserves better, and a relatively inexpensive chicane or three, backed by a city willing to enforce its own ordinances, might be able to achieve what our 3rd District councilman hasn't bothered recognizing.

Here's the rundown from last July.

Here comes the Tiger Truck Lines rig northbound on 13th Street. The driver has just crossed Market. Behind me is Spring.

Since the advent of the Main Street Beautification Project, Tiger has transformed 13th Street into its own company connector road, regularly using Spring for westbound trucks and Market for eastbound.

Ironically, even though so much of the Main Street project is pure blather, the designers actually did take Tiger's needs into mind when inserting those God-awful medians.

In fact, Tiger never has been somehow excluded from using Main Street, just as it did before.

This is 14th Street, looking south from Dewey. Just over the railroad track is Tiger's scenic headquarters. You can see the K & I Bridge on the horizon.

When a Tiger trucker emerges from its lair on 14th, he or she comes first to Dewey, then Main. Here's the view, looking north toward Main. Prior to the Main Street project, Tiger's employees drove straight and turned onto Main in either direction.

The next three photos show the intersection of Main and 14th. As you can see, the medians are pulled way back to allow for wide turns. It is a huge expanse of asphalt left open for only one reason -- for truckers like Tiger's to use.

And they don't use it.

Rather, ever since the Main Street project came about, Tiger's adolescent management pique has translated into a new access policy. First, let's go back to the intersection of 14th and Dewey, this time looking west, not straight toward Main.

Tiger's truckers now turn left here ...

 ... and then right (north) here, on 13th ...

 ... to come rumbling across Main here (headed to the right, or north), using 13th as the company road to go to Market and Spring.

Obviously, 13th is a residential street, never designed or intended for commercial vehicles of this Tiger's size. Plainly, Tiger's management has undertaken a program of civic vandalism these last two years, operating from a vantage point behind the billows of Padgett's litigious gown.

There's only one logical answer to this problem.

Give 13th Street a two-block-long road diet, with bike paths and 10-foot lanes, and force Tiger's trucks back onto Main, where they belong.

Or, place a weight limit on 13th and enforce it.

The likes of Irv Stumler instinctively side with the vandals in a case like this. Obsessed with flower pots, the Silver Hills resident pays no mind to the appearance of heavy industrial equipment on a residential street. Perhaps these residents are too poor for Irv's taste, or not sufficiently ambitious to get better jobs and move from the trucking ghetto to his neighborhood.

Irv aside (and he needs to be), the city has allowed Tiger to behave like a petulant brat. The city might alter this behavior, and should. The city made changes to Main. It can make changes to 13th.

It should.

The July 19 BOW: All Chloe Allen's family has is Keith Henderson's word for it. No wonder they seek more information.

At this morning's Board of Public Works and Safety meeting, I asked again about the investigation of the Chloe Allen case.

From roadway bomb craters to pedestrian death investigations: This morning's Board of Public Works and Safety meeting -- with the undermanned newspaper AWOL.

Interestingly, what Police Chief Todd Bailey told me this morning differs from what I was told last week by an investigator in the prosecutor's office. I was told last week that the CART (accident reconstruction) file was closed, and Keith Henderson had determined no charges were merited against the driver.

However, Bailey said that the investigation remains open because state toxicology lab reports have yet to be returned.

This revelation is unlikely to change anything, but I'll stay on it. Might as well; I can't dance.

In my other comments, I relayed the concern of the 3rd district resident about the intersection of Elm and 13th, as explained in this morning's post.

ASK THE BORED: "People go WAY too fast and even turn up the wrong way on Elm. There needs to be a 4-way stop at this intersection before someone gets killed."

My thoughts were noted, and are unlikely to change anything, but (see above).

Other highlights from the BOW of July 19:

His Irvness
Irv Stumler was on hand to support efforts to clean up a hoarder's derelict property on Hausfeldt Lane, an ongoing process that board chairman Nash noted was hung up in court. Stumler encouraged the city to petition the court for permission to send in the backhoes.

Jeff Eastridge
A first-hand account of the Big Dig at 5th & Elm was provided. Amid a repair effort that has resulted in the pumping out of water 24-hours-a-day, five separate open stormwater lines have been found, and two water line leaks repaired.

These stormwater lines had slots cut into them, under the apparent theory that water would travel down into them, but when the lines were full, the water came up instead, loosening sand and dirt, and flushing them back into the line to be carried off.

Pilings have been driven onto bedrock. As soon as the water company finishes cleaning up its mess, the hole can be filled. MAYBE next week.

Upper Spring Street Road Diet 
Wes Christmas said all is going according to schedule, and the target date for completion is late September or the very beginning of October. Once finished, bicyclists will be able to enter this section of Spring from Beharrell, travel to Vincennes, then have absolutely no place to go.

The Jeffersonville Chain Newspaper
It sent a steno this morning. Film at 6. Yawn.

ASK THE BORED: "People go WAY too fast and even turn up the wrong way on Elm. There needs to be a 4-way stop at this intersection before someone gets killed."

Maybe this one from last Thursday?

I just saw an interesting thing on Market Street: the street sweeper with an unmarked car in front of it, an unmarked car behind it, and a traffic division cop car behind that. It was a convoy just for the street sweeper.

That's odd, seeing there are no bike lanes on Market for the street sweepers to shift debris into. Are we militarizing street sweeping? I've heard it's a trend. Or, perhaps aquatic revenues are down, and increased parking citations are necessary to balance the ol' budget -- but can't we just TIF it?

Here's what I did to beat the "blocking street sweeper" citation scam. Why should anyone pay?

This one from Saturday hits (literally) a bit closer to my house.

There was a pretty bad wreck on Elm and 13th this morning. This is not the first time since I've lived around here. It is VERY hard to see around the parked cars if you're crossing over Elm. That being said, there are 4-way stop signs every couple blocks down Elm until you get down this way. People go WAY too fast and even turn up the wrong way on Elm. There needs to be a 4-way stop at this intersection before someone gets killed. Kids (and adults) cross this intersection all the time. So how do we get this done?

I'll bring it up this morning, though in the most general of senses, making Elm Street safer starts here, with this comment by Jeff Speck, from his Downtown Street Network Proposal.

Because one-way streets provide passing lanes and eliminate opposing traffic, they encourage higher-speed driving and create a more highway-like environment for properties along them ... there is no justification for a one-way Elm Street east of State Street, since it contains ample width for two-way traffic, which will provide greater utility and safety than the current condition.

As for the utility of four-way stop signs ... Speck again.

Research now suggests that four-way stop signs, which require motorists to approach each intersection as a negotiation, turn out to be much safer than signals. Unlike at signalized intersections, there is considerable eye-contact among users. Drivers slow down, but never have to wait for more than a few seconds, and pedestrians and bicyclists are generally waved through first.

As with other such observations, the truth of the matter is that the only way to get this/anything done is for the city of New Albany to grasp the reality of the problem, and in the past, the Board of Public Works and Safety has squirmed every which way but loose when it comes to denying the problem of speeding on Elm.

So, let's ask again. The series introduction is reprinted below. From last week:

From roadway bomb craters to pedestrian death investigations: This morning's Board of Public Works and Safety meeting -- with the undermanned newspaper AWOL.

---

New Albany's Board of Public Works and Safety exists because the State of Indiana says so.

IC 36-4-9-5

Board of public works and safety; establishment Sec. 5.

(a) A board of public works and safety is established in each city.
(b) Notwithstanding subsection (a), the legislative body of a second class city may by ordinance establish as separate boards: (1) a board of public works; and (2) a board of public safety; to perform the functions of the board of public works and safety.

As added by Acts 1980, P.L.212, SEC.3.

As for what the board is supposed to do each Tuesday at 10:00 a.m., you can visit the American Legal Publishing site, search "Board of Public Works and Safety," and sift through various powers accorded the board over the decades by dint of ordinance.

Exactly how much power does our Board of Public Works and Safety possess?

If Jeff Gahan were to stray from the protection of his Down Low Bunker and comment, no doubt he would assert that the board has just the power it needs. He handpicked it, and he's perfectly content to see his program implemented by non-elected boards, as opposed to elected officials.

According to Dan Coffey, the answer surely is "too much." At the city council meeting of June 6, Coffey proposed that our council, as a body made up of elected members, should take back authority ceded to non-elected boards.

Agreed.

The Board of Public Works and Safety may be established by state, not city, and it may be appointed by mayor, not council, but the board's powers appear to derive from the legislative body.

I mention all this as prelude to a new feature at NA Confidential: Ask the Bored.

It has long been NA Confidential's position that given the board's accumulated powers -- justified or  otherwise -- and its current function as arbiter of myriad conditions that impact the lives of citizens, for it to hold all its meetings at 10:00 a.m. on a Tuesday meeting is an affront (note that during the Garner Administration, a fledgling but doomed effort to democratize meeting times was made).

However, NAC can attend many, if not all, meetings. Public speaking time is allowed, and on occasion in the past, we've used it for the precise purpose of making comments, raising issues or asking questions, so that these are included in meeting minutes and become part of the public record. This way, it cannot be claimed later that "no one said anything."

Readers, I know you have questions. Many of you cannot attend these meetings, and so when possible, NAC will ask them for you. Generalized questions probably are best, but give us the brief, and we'll do what we can. Submit them at mayorbaylor@gmail.com ... and ask the bored.

Do the work crews do this on purpose?

Wednesday, corner of 13th and Spring. That's not very much notice, and there's no crosswalk across Spring, where the traffic is uncontrolled, and therefore the city can do nothing except continuing ... to do nothing.

At first I thought we were beginning the 13th Street "Go Away Tiger Trucks" Road Diet.

Tiger Truck Lines and 13th Street: Isn't it time for the spoiled brat to get a good spanking?

Alas, disappointed again; just another impediment for walkers, although there are several churches in the vicinity that might benefit from shiny new spires.

Tiger Truck Lines and 13th Street: Isn't it time for the spoiled brat to get a good spanking?

Here comes the Tiger Truck Lines rig northbound on 13th Street. The driver has just crossed Market. Behind me is Spring.

Since the advent of the Main Street Beautification Project, Tiger has transformed 13th Street into its own company connector road, regularly using Spring for westbound trucks and Market for eastbound.

Ironically, even though so much of the Main Street project is pure blather, the designers actually did take Tiger's needs into mind when inserting those God-awful medians.

In fact, Tiger never has been somehow excluded from using Main Street, just as it did before.

This is 14th Street, looking south from Dewey. Just over the railroad track is Tiger's scenic headquarters. You can see the K & I Bridge on the horizon.

When a Tiger trucker emerges from its lair on 14th, he or she comes first to Dewey, then Main. Here's the view, looking north toward Main. Prior to the Main Street project, Tiger's employees drove straight and turned onto Main in either direction.

The next three photos show the intersection of Main and 14th. As you can see, the medians are pulled way back to allow for wide turns. It is a huge expanse of asphalt left open for only one reason -- for truckers like Tiger's to use.

And they don't use it.

Rather, ever since the Main Street project came about, Tiger's adolescent management pique has translated into a new access policy. First, let's go back to the intersection of 14th and Dewey, this time looking west, not straight toward Main.

Tiger's truckers now turn left here ...

 ... and then right (north) here, on 13th ...

 ... to come rumbling across Main here (headed to the right, or north), using 13th as the company road to go to Market and Spring.

Obviously, 13th is a residential street, never designed or intended for commercial vehicles of this Tiger's size. Plainly, Tiger's management has undertaken a program of civic vandalism these last two years, operating from a vantage point behind the billows of Padgett's litigious gown.

There's only one logical answer to this problem.

Give 13th Street a two-block-long road diet, with bike paths and 10-foot lanes, and force Tiger's trucks back onto Main, where they belong.

Or, place a weight limit on 13th and enforce it.

The likes of Irv Stumler instinctively sides with the vandals in a case like this. Obsessed with flower pots, the Silver Hills resident pays no mind to the appearance of heavy industrial equipment on a residential street. Perhaps these residents are too poor for Irv's taste, or not sufficiently ambitious to get better jobs and move from the trucking ghetto to his neighborhood.

Irv aside (and he needs to be), the city has allowed Tiger to behave like a petulant brat. The city might alter this behavior, and should. The city made changes to Main. It can make changes to 13th. It should.

New Albany's new slogan: "Truck Through City" ... Part 47: As the Board of Works convenes, we record a "negatory" for Main Street medians, good buddy.

Uh oh -- this doesn't look very good.

Dude, we haven't even FINISHED the boondoggle ... but it means at least one oversized rig is voting with its tires while city officials snooze.

I took these photos where 13th Street crosses Main, then started walking home, only to be reminded that in recent months, quiet little residential 13th Street has become Tiger Trucking Boulevard ... while city officials snooze.

Let's dedicate the remainder of the Tuesday "does the Board of Public Works really exist?" edition of Truck Through City to Tiger Trucking.

In fact, so many of the firm's bigger-than-your-house rigs are out on city streets where they have no business being that sometimes, it seems like they're both coming AND going.

However, usually they're just speeding past your residential quality of life ... while city officials snooze, which of course they do, seeing as so few of them reside anywhere close to the problem areas.