Praise the Lord and pass the Hoptimus, it's a miracle! Sister Hicks' sidewalk escapes Rosenbarger's (wrecking) Balls.

Gravel to the left of it ...

 ... debris to the right ...

 ... here it is, stuck in the middle, mon Dieu! But let's have a closer look before looking away in disgust.

John Rosenbarger's crowning achievement, the Main Street Deforestation Project, continues to amaze and excite.

Other tourist haunts on Denuded Street remain verdant and cloistered.

Meanwhile, the heavy trucks speed through Spring and Elm, and the city says and does nothing.

Welcome to Nawbony: We're all here because we're not all there.

Just your basic everyday "planned" occurrence on Spring Street -- right, John?

As the East Main Street Deforestation Project progresses, we're seeing more and more of these.

The truck was moving so quickly that even after spotting it a block away, I almost was unable to squeeze off an iPhone image before it passed. Contrast the hurtling steel overkill on a residential streets with the quaint poignancy of that bike lane in the foreground, of which John "My Way IS the Highway, So Long As It Is Your Street and Not Mine" Rosenbarger was so inordinately proud when recounting his many lifetime planning achievements at the FAN Fair earlier this year.

Of course, it's the second of two bike lanes, both pointed in exactly the same direction on opposite sides of a one-way arterial street intended to enable this truck's excessive speed, and to utterly defeat livability in a neighborhood in desperate need of federal stabilization funding -- bike lanes leading from nothing, to nothing, as enabled by the nothingness of the third England Doug regime.

Think of this truck at 50 mph on an unenforced street as the cascading storm water eroding one's nice garden plot, and thus washing away any megabuck efforts at stabilization, and then ask yourself this question: Is it really the sort of photo you'd point to as evidence of your career achievement?

Ah, the blessings of one-party rule.

By the way, are there any?

Environmental protection? We go "Deep Inside the Main Street Deforestation Project."

Who will win the Great Walkability Debate?

If job security is any indication, we already know the answer, but maybe, just maybe -- for once in thirty years -- New Albany will get lucky. Best of fortune to you, Jeff Speck. You're going to need it when your recommendations are undercut, one by one, from within Redevelopment ... even as your ostensible local "ally" blames it all on them pesky political entities, meanwhile moving ever closer to his pension.

All we can do is hope he gets there, as soon as possible. Maybe Maalox can use him to featherbed Columbus.

New Albany Now: John Rosenbarger meets Leni Riefenstahl, and a situation comedy is born.

The problem, as it has been for 30 years, is that John simply isn't funny.

Bluegill writes:

When Jeff Speck was in New Albany, he spoke directly to the folly of spending millions on one street - citing New Albany's number exactly - when so much more could be done holistically for the grid for less money. His comments, along with many others damning to NA's current projects, elicited knowing chuckles from the crowd. Here, though, city hall manages to make it seem as if the Main Street Mistake, their own multimillion dollar, single street project that contradicts Speck and likely won't slow auto traffic owing to poor design, is an example of his thinking. It features the same J. Rosenbarger who's been preaching that Speck's approach won't work in New Albany. Sometimes the absurdity of it all ...

The non-walkable North Y ... and why you should be disputin' Rasputin.

In general terms, New Albany's "North Y" is where Charlestown Road, Grant Line Road, 8th Street and the railroad tracks converge. Sidewalks of fairly recent vintage line Charlestown Road as it approaches the Y, facing almost due south.

That's where the sidewalks end. Looking north on Grant Line Road and the rail crossing, there is no refuge for walkers. It's a few hundred yards before sidewalks resume at the intersection with Vincennes Street.

The same goes for 8th Street southbound, under the railroad bridge. Needless to say, without sidewalks, the many walkers spotted thereabouts tend to be strolling on the pavement.

A complete (and sadly typical) absence of speed enforcement means that typically, traffic moves quickly. What's more, northbound traffic on 8th is not required to stop, while southbound traffic on both Grant Line and Charlestown Road must stop -- and on widely scattered occasions, actually does. Otherwise, the intersection is a scrum of rolling stops and confusion on the part of drivers.

On the downtown side of the Y, sidewalks don't begin again until the alley north of Jackson. It's a long way between the alley and Vincennes.

---

In New Albany, 8th Street leads from a downtown junction with Spring to the Y, and in turn, to Grant Line Road and IU Southeast, perhaps six miles away. In any remotely walkable and bikeable city, this would be a natural route for close examination. Not here, because in this benumbed place, ideas are for being kept captive by those presumably in the business of minting them.

One time a few years back I tried to engage John "The Rasputin of Redevelopment" Rosenbarger on this topic, only to inadvertently sentence myself to his rambling chronology about the merits of using the railroad pictured above to run a trolley from IU Southeast to Main Street, via 15th Street, which he estimated might be achieved for a mere $70 million dollars, assuming the track itself could be confiscated.

I repeat this story only to illustrate the futility of attempting to introduce any ideas to Rosenbarger differing from those he's already pre-conceived and nurtured through a 30-year career of purely selective, arbitrary interpretation. Again and again, I've made honest efforts to engage him on two-way streets -- and I've yet to receive either a straight, unambiguous position, or an expression of his usual repetitive bias which is free of condescension.

And so, I've had it. You should, too. Yes, Rosenbarger knows a lot. But in my mind, he isn't necessarily using what he knows to the benefit of the city. Rather, it's mostly to the benefit of his own quixotic plan-centricity -- and as molasses-cum-glacially slow as humanly possible. I suppose that's how you kill an underachieving bureaucratic career's worth of service time, and as such, good for him.

But not so good for the rest of us.

From crosswalks to double talk, in a New Albany Minute.

Can you even imagine it?

No, not crosswalks like these actually becoming common in New Albany.

Rather, New Albany's driver's recognizing what crosswalks are, and why they exist ... and the city actively aiding and abetting walkers, rather than concentrating on exurban Rosenbargerbouts.

Boys can dream. Has the Main Street project by John's house started yet?

(photo credit - the linked article)

How to Make Crosswalks Artistically Delightful, John Metcalfe (Atlantic Cities)

Sure, crosswalks have their uses: marking corners, indicating stop signs, saving, you know, human lives. But when was the last time they wowed, delighted, or engaged?

Strategies and amenities suitable for Redevelopment to ignore.

At urbanscale.com, two collections of strategies and amenities help make the point that even for a city of New Albany's relatively small size, we can leverage our location in metro Louisville to punch higher than our weight.

Assuming, of course, that we read books and think outside self-imposed boxes.

Coming in at Number One on John Karras' hit parade is the strategy we seem determined to get wrong, and probably will continue to botch for so long as John "My Way Means the Highway" Rosenbarger has influence to peddle about it, even as he blames his sad political predicament for the situation. Sorry, John; we're not buying the BS any longer.

Vibrant Downtown Strategy #1

Turn one-way streets into two-way streets.

Why?

One-way streets are great if your only goal is to channel traffic through your downtown, but they are bad for pedestrian activity and retail opportunities. Two-way streets create a more comfortable pedestrian environment and have been shown to increase property values.

There is a good reason that the Main Streets that sit at the urban core of small towns and cities across the U.S. are almost always two-way streets. From Wichita, KS to Charleston, SC, cities across the U.S. are realizing the benefits of two-way streets in their urban cores.

12 Strategies That Will Transform Your City’s Downtown

10 Small Cities With Urban Amenities That Most Big Cities Lack