Just another driver "flipping" over the beauty of the East Main Street Project median.

Copied from a post at the Nextdoor web site.

The daytime view.

This is the fourth such wreck I can recall; there may have been others. I looked around on local media and could find no coverage of this one, so kudos to the citizen journalist at Nextdoor.

It is a matter of genuine curiosity for me as to why so many drivers bounce off the median eastbound at the starting point of beautification. I'd guess the drag strip speeds coming out of the stop light at Pearl, given that the city refuses to calm the section of Main Street between Pearl and 5th.

Maybe someone will ask during the CNU 27 tour on June 14. I seem to recall Speck speaking against medians.

Gahan, Rosenbarger set to go full frontal Pinocchio about their urbanism credentials when the Congress for the New Urbanism 27 meets in Louisville June 11-15.

City Hall, Jeff Speck and "The Death of Expertise."

On Wednesday, March 18 at 6:00 p.m., there will be a third "public information session" on Jeff Speck's downtown street network proposal, to be held at the Pepin Mansion at 1003 E. Main Street.

With the dysfunctional grandiosity of John "Pinocchio" Rosenbarger's pet Main Street project boondoggle festering just yards away, the Bored of Works will eschew the irony.

Not only that, it will boil, skewer, braise, sear, poach, roast, fry and stew the irony.

That's because the survival rate of irony in New Albany is even worse than the odds of Kevin Zurschmiede ever grasping the dimensions of human trafficking.

Once again, the public will be invited to air its views on a study few have read. As I noted recently, the meeting will accomplish almost nothing, because no effort will be made to answer questions or educate the public.

ON THE AVENUES: As Admiral Gahan steers his Speck study into the Bermuda Triangle, crewmen Padgett, Stumler and Caesar grimly toss all the rum overboard.

Gahan and his merry minions continue to hint privately that they're altogether for Speck's proposals, while doing everything possible to publicly distances themselves from them. With every passing day, the mayor works to sabotage what he insists he supports.

If that's not bipolarity, I await a better definition of the phenomenon

Meanwhile, at The Federalist, Tom Nichols describes "The Death of Expertise." I link to the essay with no small trepidation, given that it may be viewed as an endorsement of the current regime's operational philosophy.

... The death of expertise is a rejection not only of knowledge, but of the ways in which we gain knowledge and learn about things. Fundamentally, it’s a rejection of science and rationality, which are the foundations of Western civilization itself. Yes, I said “Western civilization”: that paternalistic, racist, ethnocentric approach to knowledge that created the nuclear bomb, the Edsel, and New Coke, but which also keeps diabetics alive, lands mammoth airliners in the dark, and writes documents like the Charter of the United Nations.

This isn’t just about politics, which would be bad enough. No, it’s worse than that: the perverse effect of the death of expertise is that without real experts, everyone is an expert on everything. To take but one horrifying example, we live today in an advanced post-industrial country that is now fighting a resurgence of whooping cough — a scourge nearly eliminated a century ago — merely because otherwise intelligent people have been second-guessing their doctors and refusing to vaccinate their kids after reading stuff written by people who know exactly zip about medicine. (Yes, I mean people like Jenny McCarthy.

ON THE AVENUES: Egg, meet face: How many different ways can we botch the Main Street Deforestation Project?

ON THE AVENUES: Egg, meet face: How many ways can we botch the Main Street Deforestation Project?

A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.

My usual Thursday column space has been pre-scheduled for the timely "rewinding" of a 2013 essay about the annual advent of Harvest Homecoming.

In our municipality’s case, it isn’t workers’ rights but uncomfortable irony that bedevils the citizenry, second only to bed bugs, and so the dire threat posed by ironic detachment must be recast into simpler truths, like the prevailing fiction that Harvest Homecoming has anything whatever to do with economic development apart from the money necessary to perpetuate the fest itself.

However, there is so much to write about, isn't there?

Concurrently with Harvest Homecoming's arrival, this administration's signature "shining path" public works project is inching toward an abysmal conclusion, and so for those too busy chuckin' punkins to pay attention, let's take a look at what Jeff "Walkable City" Speck has been doing.

Speck is the man hired by the city of New Albany to study our ragtag, dysfunctional streets and recommend changes to enhance walkability, make these streets safer, and in a presumably comprehensive way, bring this persistently dirty river town into modern times.

Yesterday morning, Speck released an article at City Lab: Why 12-Foot Traffic Lanes Are Disastrous for Safety and Must Be Replaced Now. I made it the basis of a posting at NAC; more about that in a moment.

States and counties believe that wider lanes are safer. And in this belief, they are dead wrong.

Speck left absolutely no doubt as to the ultimate importance of the lane width topic. It is a foundation of his platform. Here is what he tweeted about the article:

ATTENTION! This is the most important article I have ever written. Please read, share, and join the fight!

Later in the day, Speck wrote words that may come back to haunt him when he returns to NA to present his street study, and is confronted with our generations-old, institutional imbecility.

Reading comments to my article, I wonder: what makes people who have never travelled so confident that things they haven't seen don't exist?

Someone might say: "Roger, why all the pessimism?"

First, there are those long years of experience listening to illuminating barroom opinions about Europe, spouted by people who've never been any further east than Cincinnati.

More pressingly, there's this: As the streets specialist we've hired to advise us makes it perfectly clear in national forums that 10-ft traffic lanes are the mantra for any street grid's makeover, the city of New Albany prepares to put the triumphant finishing touches on a multi-million dollar Main Street project with lanes that have grown in width like John Rosenbarger's nose, from 10 feet to an "official" 11 feet, with a "two foot offset" rendering them into ... that's right ... 13-foot lanes.

In turn, if a traffic project ostensibly intended to calm traffic fails miserably to implement the one sure mechanism for doing so, chances are that traffic will not be calmed, in which case every bit of the Main Street project's expense and squandered opportunity cost has been devoted to cosmetic fluffing, not altered function.

And about those ritzy sidewalk address engravings? A reader beings this to our attention, asking:

"When you look at the existing city ordinance pertaining to street numbers, do you feel spending 'our money' on horizontal, inset sidewalk plaques makes sense, as they don't meet the City's own ordinance requirements?

§ 99.02  POSTING OF HOUSE NUMBERS.

   (A)   All owners or occupants of commercial or residential buildings located within the city limits should be and are required to conspicuously post their address so as to be easily visible from the street on which the building or home lies.

   (B)   The address shall be in standard arabic numbers no smaller than three inches high and shall be posted either on the improvements or on a sign or mailbox on the street.

   (C)   The numbers shall be of a color in contrast to its background so as to be easily read.

(Ord. G-93-156, passed 8-19-1993)

The city of New Albany has opportunistically spent "free" state monies, as intended to be used for future maintenance, on a showpiece project, the engineering of which contradicts most of what paid consultant Speck is about to advise us to do.

With the remainder of the city increasingly disgusted at the attention lavished on one neighborhood to the exclusion of all others, a few functionaries have fanned out to privately issue promises that given time and someone else's money, they'll botch Spring Street (for example) in precisely the same way as Main, meaning that traffic will not be calmed, walkability will not be enhanced, and bikers will be provided street access by means of sharrows symbols drawn on every uncalmed street.

Victory will be declared, and nothing will have changed. Our own Jeff provides his usual succinct (and damning) summary.

The distance between the parking lanes and median on Main Street is indeed 13 feet. With those wide lanes in place, the median itself will act as a buffer against oncoming traffic, further reducing any sense of car-slowing friction that would normally occur from pushing sufficiently narrow, opposite direction lanes closer together. Bike lanes have proven effective at helping to slow traffic (not to mention providing a transportation alternative), but they're absent as well. In short, there's little reason millions of dollars later to slow down on Main Street.

My biggest concern with the City's potential implementation of Speck's plans for the remaining grid isn't that they won't do anything but rather that they'll do a lot of something, inserting their own stunted reasoning into it instead of just following directions. If Main Street and other recent projects are any indication, there's a strong likelihood that they'll spend an enormous amount of money building something ineffective in a way that will make it much more difficult to correct in the near future. To do Main Street well, for instance, would likely involve removing or at least substantially reducing the median. Who's going to pay for that having just built it?

So far, it's area residents who are eating crow and the City that's serving it.

If you ask me, "stunted reasoning" is a polite way of referring to a steaming cow pie, but for once, perhaps I might profit from some semblance of ironic detachment.

Municipal hypocrisy shifts into unmistakable gear with 20 mph speed limit on Rosenbarger Allee, sidewalk repair rationalization.

Where the rest of us live.

Wes Christmas thought it through, and now the traffic displaced from Main will "whiz" even faster on Spring, and as the sincerely myopic Mr. Hawkins correctly notes, it's the city's responsibility to enforce it.

But, as we know, Main Street is "special," and those residents who live along Market, Spring and Elm, who have brought precisely this same complaint before city officials numerous times before as it pertains to the situation on their streets, continue to be ignored.

And Jeff Gahan's team cannot begin to explain why, and has not even tried. 

Then there's the sidewalk upgrade issue presented by Bill Cash, who evidently does not live close enough to Rosenbarger Allee to merit the lavishness.

If I have any say in the matter while writing the history of New Albany's contemporary era, Warren Nash's quote in response to Cash will never be forgotten: "That’s our goal. To not have blighted areas."

Really, Warren? If so, the scale by which you'll be graded might not resemble the curve you assume. 

But that's okay. As long as the Democratic Party doesn't give a damn, why should you, or for that matter, anyone else?

Speed limit lowered to 20 mph on Main Street in New Albany

Speed limit lowered to 20 mph on Main Street in New Albany; Affected area includes work zone

By Chris Morris (Tuscaloosa Plain Dealer)

 ... Wes Christmas, with Clark Dietz Inc. — the engineering firm which designed the East Main Street improvement project — asked the New Albany Board of Works on Tuesday to lower the speed limit from 30 mph to 20 mph in the work zone, from East Fifth Street to Vincennes Street. The board unanimously approved the request (after) J.B. Hawkins, who lives off East Main Street, told the board he was concerned with vehicle speed with construction crews working nearby.

“People need to get in the habit of slowing down on Main Street,” Hawkins said after the meeting. “People are still whizzing down Main. Now it’s a matter of the police department enforcing it.”

Dude, couldn't you just buy a house by the Culbertson Mansion?

Resident raises concerns about sidewalk conditions in New Albany

Resident raises concerns about sidewalk conditions in New Albany; Man calls stretch of East 18th Street one of the worst in city

By Daniel Suddeath (Coupon Digest of Montgomery)

NEW ALBANY — Sandwiched between East Main Street and the Ohio River, New Albany resident Bill Cash said a stretch of roadway needs sidewalks and other improvements ...

... With the city undertaking a $2.3 million improvement project to East Main Street, Cash said other areas should also be considered for upgrades.

“If you could do a whole street of Main Street, can’t you do one block of 18th Street,” he asked ... Warren Nash, president of the New Albany Board of Public Works and Safety, said the city has the opposite aim.

“That’s our goal. To not have blighted areas,” he said.

ON THE AVENUES I thought I heard Buddy Bolden say.

ON THE AVENUES: I thought I heard Buddy Bolden say.

A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.

If it’s the right thing for Main Street, it’s the right thing for Market, Spring, Elm, and the city’s other streets -- right, John Rosenbarger?

If it’s the right thing for Main Street, it’s the right thing for Market, Spring, Elm, and the city’s other streets -- right, John Rosenbarger?

If it’s the right thing for Main Street, it’s the right thing for Market, Spring, Elm, and the city’s other streets -- right, John Rosenbarger?

If it’s the right thing for Main Street, it’s the right thing for Market, Spring, Elm, and the city’s other streets -- right, John Rosenbarger?

If it’s the right thing for Main Street, it’s the right thing for Market, Spring, Elm, and the city’s other streets -- right, John Rosenbarger?

If it’s the right thing for Main Street, it’s the right thing for Market, Spring, Elm, and the city’s other streets -- right, John Rosenbarger?

If it’s the right thing for Main Street, it’s the right thing for Market, Spring, Elm, and the city’s other streets -- right, John Rosenbarger?

If it’s the right thing for Main Street, it’s the right thing for Market, Spring, Elm, and the city’s other streets -- right, John Rosenbarger?

If it’s the right thing for Main Street, it’s the right thing for Market, Spring, Elm, and the city’s other streets -- right, John Rosenbarger?

If it’s the right thing for Main Street, it’s the right thing for Market, Spring, Elm, and the city’s other streets -- right, John Rosenbarger?

If it’s the right thing for Main Street, it’s the right thing for Market, Spring, Elm, and the city’s other streets -- right, John Rosenbarger?

If it’s the right thing for Main Street, it’s the right thing for Market, Spring, Elm, and the city’s other streets -- right, John Rosenbarger?

If it’s the right thing for Main Street, it’s the right thing for Market, Spring, Elm, and the city’s other streets -- right, John Rosenbarger?

If it’s the right thing for Main Street, it’s the right thing for Market, Spring, Elm, and the city’s other streets -- right, John Rosenbarger?

If it’s the right thing for Main Street, it’s the right thing for Market, Spring, Elm, and the city’s other streets -- right, John Rosenbarger?

If it’s the right thing for Main Street, it’s the right thing for Market, Spring, Elm, and the city’s other streets -- right, John Rosenbarger?

If it’s the right thing for Main Street, it’s the right thing for Market, Spring, Elm, and the city’s other streets -- right, John Rosenbarger?

If it’s the right thing for Main Street, it’s the right thing for Market, Spring, Elm, and the city’s other streets -- right, John Rosenbarger?

If it’s the right thing for Main Street, it’s the right thing for Market, Spring, Elm, and the city’s other streets -- right, John Rosenbarger?

If it’s the right thing for Main Street, it’s the right thing for Market, Spring, Elm, and the city’s other streets -- right, John Rosenbarger?

If it’s the right thing for Main Street, it’s the right thing for Market, Spring, Elm, and the city’s other streets -- right, John Rosenbarger?

If it’s the right thing for Main Street, it’s the right thing for Market, Spring, Elm, and the city’s other streets -- right, John Rosenbarger?

If it’s the right thing for Main Street, it’s the right thing for Market, Spring, Elm, and the city’s other streets -- right, John Rosenbarger?

If it’s the right thing for Main Street, it’s the right thing for Market, Spring, Elm, and the city’s other streets -- right, John Rosenbarger?

If it’s the right thing for Main Street, it’s the right thing for Market, Spring, Elm, and the city’s other streets -- right, John Rosenbarger?

If it’s the right thing for Main Street, it’s the right thing for Market, Spring, Elm, and the city’s other streets -- right, John Rosenbarger?

If it’s the right thing for Main Street, it’s the right thing for Market, Spring, Elm, and the city’s other streets -- right, John Rosenbarger?

If it’s the right thing for Main Street, it’s the right thing for Market, Spring, Elm, and the city’s other streets -- right, John Rosenbarger?

If it’s the right thing for Main Street, it’s the right thing for Market, Spring, Elm, and the city’s other streets -- right, John Rosenbarger?

If it’s the right thing for Main Street, it’s the right thing for Market, Spring, Elm, and the city’s other streets -- right, John Rosenbarger?

If it’s the right thing for Main Street, it’s the right thing for Market, Spring, Elm, and the city’s other streets -- right, John Rosenbarger?

If it’s the right thing for Main Street, it’s the right thing for Market, Spring, Elm, and the city’s other streets -- right, John Rosenbarger?

If it’s the right thing for Main Street, it’s the right thing for Market, Spring, Elm, and the city’s other streets -- right, John Rosenbarger?

If it’s the right thing for Main Street, it’s the right thing for Market, Spring, Elm, and the city’s other streets -- right, John Rosenbarger?

If it’s the right thing for Main Street, it’s the right thing for Market, Spring, Elm, and the city’s other streets -- right, John Rosenbarger?

If Jeff Speck doesn’t vomit in your yard, I might. You've been forewarned.

Missing from Main Street? A sustainable future.

I'll have more to say as I prepare my list of objections and suggestions for City consideration but, for now, suffice to say that, as someone who resides a half a block from there, I'm less than enthused about the current plan for East Main Street.

Among other negative impacts, a ten foot median completely precludes the possibility of any sort of bicycle infrastructure. As East Main is the first major city path people will encounter as they exit the multi-year, multimillion dollar Ohio River Greenway Project, the complete lack of consideration shown for what will be a primary form of Greenway transportation is misguided.

It would be nice to think that maybe city planners have some other methodology in mind for connecting our city and neighborhoods to what is an obvious bicycle connection between cities but we haven't seen it, heard about it, or been given much indication they're even considering it. All we know at this point is that we have hundreds of thousands to spend on a median for Main Street rather than a local match in acquiring $2 million in federal funding to address the remaining downtown grid.