Speck's unfulfilled plan: Intellectually lazy carpetbagging shortcuts from clueless Louisvillians don't make New Albany's streets any safer.

On Wednesday in LEO Dead to Me Weekly, there was an extended hymn of praise for New Albany's Jeff Speck-inspired street grid reversion program, as written by the sort of useful dupe who formerly went to the USSR and asked Stalin's groveling, terrified minions what they thought about their dear leader's unparalleled success.

Care to guess what they said?

Of course, the article's befuddled author Chris Glasser is immune to criticism from those who actually live here as to the effectiveness of these epochal street grid reforms -- which in the end, weren't. Street direction did change, but the virtually all the remainder of the supportive mechanisms proposed by Speck were stripped away and tossed into HWC's rancid dumpster, as we've noted in this space time and again.

(Ironically, as with Republicans in the recent impeachment process, most of New Albany's senior Democrats will acknowledge privately that the truth about the post-Speck street grid differs from what they parrot aloud on a daily basis.)

Glasser's real aim was to criticize Louisville's sloth pertaining to these matters. That's fine; Greg Fischer is enduringly awful, but please, don't misrepresent our reality to further your propaganda. I'll repeat the offer I made to Glasser on Twitter:

Any time you want to come to NA, go for a walk, and get schooled about objective reality, I'm happy to guide you. You know very little about what actually happened here; it's like the American socialists who went to the USSR during Stalinism and came back glowing about paradise.

Jeff Gillenwater replied to Glasser with his characteristic command of actual facts, and the article's author devoted five or so minutes to defending his woefully gullible thesis before slinking back to Louisville to plot future intellectual carpetbagging.

This is a fantasyland recitation worthy of the Trump administration.

As is too often the case, a self-styled advocate/expert has little to no idea of what he’s talking about, no actual evidence to provide, and dismisses fact-based disagreement as the work of Internet cranks. Even his opening salvo that projects like New Albany’s are virtually unseen elsewhere is obviously false. As many of us spent a decade or more pointing out before Speck was even involved, reversions to two-way streets have been common for a long time. New Albany is just one on a long list and not a particularly good example. The only thing in the implemented plan that’s all that similar to the Speck plan is the two-way reversion itself. With as common as that has been around the country (not to mention lots of two-way, complete street advocacy in New Albany before Speck), specifically attributing two-ways to “the Speck plan” would be like attributing ice cream to Graeter’s.

Unlike the author, I have been providing a link to the actual plan the Speck design group created for the project. Anyone interested can see for themselves that the HWC plan that was actually implemented bears very, very little resemblance.

https://s3.amazonaws.com/cityofn.../NAReport.compressed1.pdf

Meanwhile Glasser, unable to connive a handy way to fit the wholesale discarding of Speck's bicycling plans into his convenient, fawning narrative -- has career bureaucrat and sophistry mangler John Rosenbarger ever been showered with as much adulation for doing little or nothing? -- Glasser merely glossed over bicycling safety as a necessary compromise.

Unalloyed bullshit, and Bluegill called Glasser's mealy-mouthed bluff.

An important point here. Because a majority of the Speck plan was cut, streets are still dangerous for people on foot or bike, more so in some places. It’s so “compromised” that very few benefits have happened. If this is what success is, why would anyone spend millions on it?

In New Albany, we have scattered bike lanes to nowhere - they just randomly begin and end - in areas where high volume, high speed automobile traffic makes them dangerous. Those lanes are hardly used, reiterating the idea they’re a waste.

The article suggests that Speck-proposed bike lanes were altered from protected to just painted. I’ve asked where all those lanes are. No answer, of course, because they don’t exist. It’s unpopular, but I persist in thinking facts matter.

We already had the fights, spent all the $$ without a good example to show for it. Re-doing what was just done isn’t likely. In some ways, we’re further from getting it right than we were. If everyone in L-Ville does go for similar “compromise”, we’ll be even further behind.

As for Speck, he's still talking from both sides of his mouth, which is unfortunate. Maybe his contract requires him to keep "selling" HWC's shambles. It saddens me tremendously, but there it is.

Of course the flunktionaries on the prom planning committee applauded on cue, safe from the horrible burden of comprehension. That's too bad. It's really not that hard to learn.

You merely must want to learn.

Jeff Speck: "NA hired a local engineer who un-protected our bike lanes."

Jeff Speck gave us hope, but Jeff Gahan gave us the same old boilerplate.

Recently when Speck returned to New Albany to give Gahan credit for what the latter failed to achieve with the two-way street reversion, do you think at any point Speck looked around at the actual paving project with bicycling infrastructure castration and said to himself, wow -- that clueless yokel left 75% of it on the cutting room floor.

It's actually political patronage politics which must be destroyed, not Carthage, but how would Gahan function in the the world without the money of special interests like HWC Engineering, which publicly laughed at Speck?

SHANE'S EXCELLENT NEW WORDS: Deaf Gahan has become Sardonicus, but what is to be our verdict?

Gahan's street grid sausage-making: CNA 27 tour attendees, please help us -- New Albany is being held hostage by New Urban Imposters.

Today's the 14th, and perfect weather for New Albany's leadership cadres to mislead people -- and make no mistake, that's exactly what they'll be doing.

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.

If any CNA 27 attendees are reading this note, and you plan to tag along on the New Albany tour this afternoon, please do me this one small favor: ask questions of these serial liars.

• Why the beg buttons? 
• Why the Main Street beautification median?
• Why the reformatted Market Street median? 
• Where are the bike lanes?
• Why so many fading sharrow markings?
• What's the reason for the plethora of routinely ignored pedestrian crossing beg-button-flashing-light "permission" stations? 
• Why is the traffic still moving so damned fast? 
• Isn't there more to walkability than bright shiny beautification projects?

They won't so much as attempt to answer, and you'll probably be hustled off to detention with the police chief.

But please try. Gahan's street grid bait 'n' switch is abhorrent, and the emperor is unclothed.

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.

Jeff Speck's coming to the Congress for the New Urbanism's CNU 27 in Louisville. On Wednesday afternoon (June 12) in Louisville he'll be speaking about his new book Walkable City Rules.

On Friday (June 14) Speck returns to New Albany.

Whoa, boy.

We've long noted that Deaf Gahan, Pinocchio Rosenbarger and various other pay-to-play functionaries brutally gutted Speck's amazing Downtown Street Network Proposal, a renewal plan for the downtown street grid. They retained the two-way street reversion and quickly punted, discarding every other useful suggestion Speck made about bicycling, wasteful medians, the interstate intersections and so much else.

If any CNA 27 attendees are reading this note ("help us, we're being held hostage by idiots"), and you plan to tag along on the New Albany tour on June 14, please do me this one small favor: ask questions. Why the beg buttons? Why the reformatted Market Street median? Where are the bike lanes? What's the reason for the plethora of ignored pedestrian crossing beg-button-flashing-light "permission" stations? Why's the traffic still moving so fast? Isn't there more to walkability than bright shiny beautification projects?

We could have had transformation. Gahan, Rosenbarger and their coterie settled for dull shrapnel reflecting their fundamental cowardice. They should be ashamed of themselves, but as we've seen oft times before, there's nowhere near the level of self-awareness necessary for shame.

About The Congress

The Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU) is the nation’s oldest international nonprofit working to build great places and walkable, vibrant neighborhoods. CNU will host its 27th annual Congress, CNU 27.Louisville, in Louisville, KY June 12-15, 2019.

The Congress is the premier national placemaking event, convening 1500+ diverse, interdisciplinary urbanists and placemakers from all 50 states and around the globe to exchange ideas, explore urban places, work alongside residents, and learn in the field.

Congress programming is varied and accessible to urbanists and members of the public at any level of knowledge and understanding of New Urbanism.

Three years later, it's still the essay Jeff Gahan doesn't want you to read: "Want Community? Build Walkability."

Originally published on February 4, 2016. There's a compelling argument to be made that by doing as little as humanly possible to broaden the two-way mandate beyond the simplest of directional changes, Gahan has made the streets worse for walkers and cyclists. But, as we know, making a more walkable and bikeable city wasn't ever the incurably car-centric mayor's plan, anyway. 

I've said it for years, and will continue to say it.

If Jeff Gahan has any intention of implementing street grid reform, as he continues to hint privately and evade publicly, his base instinct will be to "sell" the idea of street grid reform to the public on the basis of cars alone.

He'll say, "It's all about traffic safety."

When Gahan has bothered referring to the Jeff Speck study -- and this has been very seldom -- he has studiously avoided referring to the concept of walkability, which after all is Speck's entire rationale, a variation of which appears on almost every one of the study's pages.

To Gahan, the fact that he cannot comprehend walkability himself implies that no one else can, either. Suburbanites are like that, aren't they? If Gahan somehow does get it, better late than never. The mayor might still manage to make something positive from the muck he has created through his silence and timidity. He needs to come out from hiding, say aloud what's true, and lead the city.

The point Gahan needs to make is eloquently stated in this essay:

Changes are needed. We need to fix our zoning codes to enable traditional mixed-use neighborhoods. We need to challenge our transportation policies and stop prioritizing car travel over all other modes. And we need to eliminate the regulatory obstacles that make it difficult to obtain financing for renovation or construction of small, mixed-use buildings in walkable neighborhoods.

Cities evolve. We create our future one building at a time. So there's no time like the present to start building -- and rebuilding--places that are great for people and communities (again).

Does Jeff Gahan understand, or not?

Every day he waits, we lose ground to places like Jeffersonville. Too bad NA's civic spirit doesn't approximate its zeal in cheering for a basketball team.

Want Community? Build Walkability, by Sarah Kobos (Strong Towns)

Municipal zoning ordinances separated commercial uses from residential ones, and enshrined car-oriented design at the local level. Transportation engineering standards transformed our city streets into high-speed stroads. Meanwhile, changes to lending practices and federal mortgage insurance regulations made it easy and cheap to get a loan on a single-family home in the suburbs, while making it significantly harder to finance mixed-use buildings in the urban core.

We pay for these mistakes with our bodies, as decades of car-centric design have transformed us from active humans into motorists reliant on machines for movement. But our communities also pay a price, as people who drive are more isolated and detached from the cities they call home.

I don’t mean to knock people who drive. (I live in a city where driving is often the only practical choice.) I simply mean that when you walk or bike, you experience your hometown in a much more intimate way.

ON THE AVENUES: Pretty in pink slips, aren’t they? Those who mutilated Speck need to be cashiered.

Yes, it's true that I've been indulging in reruns, but hear me out.

For the past two weeks I've been using all my spare moments to go swimming in the rank, toxic, soul-crushing sewer otherwise known as Mayor Jeff Gahan's CFA-4 campaign finance reports.

Y'all know I'm a hardcore cynic -- and the pay-to-play is worse than even I thought.

The Jeff Gahan Money Machine, Part 5: In 2019, Gahan will pass the half million dollar mark in campaign fundraising since 2011.

There's another reason for dipping into the archive.

Many readers weren't with us back when a column like today's was first published (January 8, 2015). At the time, consultant Jeff Speck's draft report about the two-way future of the street grid had only just appeared.

It took another two years for Gahan to commission the ever servile HWC Engineering to butcher Speck's overall perspective, stuff the remnants into sausage casings, spread the largess among the usual suspects, and declare victory.

In short, Gahan gleefully botched the street grid modernization as trucking special interests applauded and the mayor's sticky sycophants sagely nodded -- among them the East Spring Street Neighborhood Association, the brain trust of which concluded with all due terror that "modernization" was far too dangerous a concept to risk in New Albany.

ESNA was catastrophically wrong, and its timidity was both short-sighted and unforgivable. Now Greg Phipps wants four more years as councilman because he's not finished yet -- doing the mayor's daily bidding, that is. We need a principled, independent choice in the third district, don't we?

As for Gahan's trashing of Speck, you can't say I didn't predict it. Read on, and don't forget to vote these under-achievers out of office as soon as you have the chance.

---

ON THE AVENUES: Pretty in pink slips, aren’t they?

A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.

On Tuesday, the very morning when City Hall at long last hazarded a first halting, wheezing, asthmatic step toward taking proper possession of Jeff Speck’s seminal street study, it was disturbingly sunny outside.

Now, I’m so old I can remember when Speck was Jeff Gahan’s Big Idea, prompting his very own commissioned mayoral study, at least right up until that fateful moment when the Tiger Trucking semi rig’s headlights froze Hizzoner dead in his tracks, at river’s edge, like a bedraggled, matted raccoon without a paddle, stuck in the middle of an arterial one-way Highway to Birdseye.

Where was I?

Oh, yes: It was sunny outside.

I muttered a choice epithet and spat as I walked downtown, past the doomed urban corner where a quarter million is about to be squandered to permanently anchor a temporary seasonal farmers market on one of the city’s hottest future infill parcels.

Damn. It really needed to be cloudy outside on this, our auspicious Speck Study Day.

After all, if Mayor Gahan (or more likely, the hardest working hologram in Indiana municipal governance) were to surface from Das Subterranean Command Bunker on Speck Study Day, only to see the sun actually shining, we’d be condemned to eight more years of foot-dragging, feeble excuses and DemoDisneyDixecrat appeasement, with little hope of street grid reformatting taking place in our lifetimes.

However, and we can only hope fortuitously, agoraphobia is the cruelest of mistresses. Mayor Gahan sent the city engineer, Larry Summers, to the Bored of Works in his stead, and poor Larry was far too nervous performing his assigned task of explaining how something and nothing can occur simultaneously to notice the prevailing atmospheric conditions.

Tinkerbell Dickey was there, too, but the Democratic major domo was preoccupied with feverishly emitting ear-lobe-tugging, nose-scratching procedural signals to the BOW chairman Nash, who gazed in bewilderment at the Power Point slides:

“Wow, Larry, you mean a road diet isn’t a Disney theme park ride?

"Why, this is the space age!

"Next thing you know, they’ll have color TVs playing at the Waffle House.”

---

Unsurprisingly, those of us most thrilled by the comprehensive efficiency and vigorous optimism of Jeff Speck’s Downtown Street Network Proposal are just as dour and pessimistic about the chances of it ever being carried out hereabouts in any substantive fashion.

That’s because in Come to City, we’ve never really come to, and what’s Groundhog Day, anyway? In New Albany, it’s just another word for tomorrow, and the day after that, and …

---

In 1989, several previous fallen dominoes (Solidarity’s election victory in Poland and the partial opening of the Austro-Hungarian border, to name just two) culminated with the collapse of the Berlin Wall. The USSR stood aside, and the Warsaw Pact was no more.

The subsequent experiences of these East Bloc nations varied, but to some extent in all of them, surely more so in Romania and Bulgaria, the period of post-Communism possessed a decided aura of déjà vu, because there, in the seats of power, occupying elected as well as appointed offices, sat the very same functionaries as before.

Rather like a species of rapidly evolving insect (remember, Franz Kafka was Czech), they either chose the proper moment to switch sides just prior to the outbreak of revolution, or merely shifted into a dormant stage of Down-Low to wait out the post-crash euphoria, reasoning that in the cold light of day, their bureaucratic skills would be deemed essential, and their previous careers worthy of selective forgetfulness.

In this context of adaptability, formerly Communist officials in newly democratic Eastern Europe drew upon an irrefutable pedigree, because after all, denazification in Germany following World War II proved to be schnauzer that simply wouldn’t hunt. Apart from a low percentage of high-profile examples, numerous adherents of the “Heil Hitler” persuasion made a seamless transition from discredited losers to irreplaceable stalwarts of the new/old system now harnessed to a different master, whether West or East.

Why mention Europe’s 20th-century totalitarian hangovers?

It’s because Speck’s street study is more revolutionary than all the (Groucho) Marxists and (John) Lennonists combined, meaning the chances of its implementation in the Land of C and D Students is embarrassingly slight.

But what if a miracle occurs?

What if Speck Happens?

Maybe Tricky Dickey was right all along, and all it takes is faith, and a little bit of pixie dust, and BOOM – Speck in our time!

The good guys win, the city’s future brightens … prosperous times are around the corner, with Tippecanoe and Walkability Too … get out those bikes, people, and skates, and … hold on.

Just wait. It couldn’t be, could it?

Those guys with the clipboards, managing the Five Year Speck Conversion Plan, working for the New Boss … OMG, say it ain’t so.

Not him.

Anyone but him.

---

That’s right. You guessed it. Even in the very rosiest of street scenarios, which most of us reckon might – just might – yield a Speck Study Quotient conversion rate of 15%, quite likely we’ll be asked to accept a state of affairs wherein the same street-disfigurement criminals wreaking havoc all along are magically transformed into courageous reformers.

We’ll be asked to believe that zebras can shed their stripes, as they set out at the usual bloated pay scale to dismantle the very same dysfunctional one-way, auto-centric edifice they spent the previous three decades perfecting, the sheer idiocy of which comprised the fundamental cause for the revolution in the first place.

Specifically, if John Rosenbarger has anything to do with the implementation of the Speck plan, which clearly calls for ridding the landscape of previous masterworks undertaken at Rosenbarger’s dull instigation, like the rock-strewn bump-outs on State Street, then we’ll have final, irrefutable proof of New Albany as default Groundhog Day, every day, forever.

Wonderful. Rosenbarger and his compatriots, some departed, and others still secured within the Third Floor woodwork like termite larva, built a street grid that Speck’s study relentlessly, mercilessly eviscerates – block by block, and lane width by asphalt expanse. Now, he’ll fix it.

Not only is it bullshit, but it’s also unconscionable, absurd and intolerable. In New Albany, these four words are considered synonyms for “bound to happen” – again, and again, and again.

Good grief, people.

Just during the brief period of the Speck study’s gestation in 2014, Rosenbarger merrily shepherded our Main Street equivalent of Nicolae Ceaușescu’s destructive pre-1989 boulevards and palaces chaos in Bucharest, placing a colossal raspberry of damp flatulence on the street grid he has had such a prominent hand in pillaging over 30 long, wasted, impotent years.

Imagining him at the triumphant Speck photo op, equipped with kiddie hardhat and requisite rubber shovel, those glow-in-the-dark reddened eyes leering, makes me reach for my garlic cloves and nice, sharp, wooden stakes. Ceaușescu wasn’t the only vampire on his Romanian bloc, you know.

Yet, in the end, there is very good news … and also very bad news.

The good news is that Rosenbarger probably will have no part whatever in implementing the Speck study in New Albany.

The bad news?

There’ll probably be no implementation of street modernity in New Albany.

Once upon a time, Speck was to have been Gahan’s Big Idea, but now the odds makers are unanimous, and persuasive: All we get is this lousy Potemkin Village – Hooterville and Caesartown, and again tomorrow, and the day after that, and …

Wouldn’t it be nice, just for once, to escape the recurring cycle of stupid?

---

Recent columns:

February 22: ON THE AVENUES SPECIAL: Take your cult of personality and shove it, Dear Leader.

February 19: ON THE AVENUES: I'd stop drinking, but I'm no quitter (the 2019 Gravity Head remix).

February 12: ON THE AVENUES: If it's about learning and knowledge, then by definition it's a Gahan Free Zone. You're welcome.

February 5: ON THE AVENUES: Our mayor hates non-elected boards -- except when they're his own, which is why "hypocrisy" is spelled G-A-H-A-N.

January 29: ON THE AVENUES: How has the 3rd district councilman fared since this question from 2015: "Et tu, Greg Phipps?"

ON THE AVENUES: How has the 3rd district councilman fared since this question from 2015: "Et tu, Greg Phipps?"

ON THE AVENUES: How has the 3rd district councilman fared since this question from 2015: "Et tu, Greg Phipps?"

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.

It's coming around again, isn't it?

Since the column reprinted today first was published on April 27, 2015 councilman Greg Phipps (D-3rd) has blithely cast Jeff Speck to the dire pleasantries of HWC Engineering, in the process supporting and defending a long delayed and thoroughly botched Gahanian two-way street reversion so hideously disfigured that random speedway band-aids still are being applied ... by HWC Engineering.

That's no plus. More importantly, given Phipps' previous stated interest in transparency, analytical analysis and political integrity, these theoretical priorities have long since been subordinated to the fix-is-in needs of Jeff Gahan's pay-to-play political patronage machine.

Has Phipps held a single public forum during the past seven years?

Then there's this, from 2011: “I have no desire to become a career politician.” Except now Phipps wants four more years, which would total 12. Matt Nash, Bob Caesar and Pat McLaughlin also want extra time: respectively, 2nd, 4th and 4th terms.

Extra time? I can't agree. All their terms combined have totaled previous little in terms of genuine achievement, although Mayor Gahan surely appreciates their assistance in feathering his own nest.

It's time for a change, isn't it? 

#FreeDistrict3

---

ON THE AVENUES MONDAY SPECIAL: Et tu, Greg Phipps? Or: Anger and the electoral variability of transparency.

I’ve been thinking about 2011, when Greg Phipps defeated Steve Price in the primary, and then won the 3rd district city council seat against Jameson Bledsoe in November. For one shining moment, there was dancing in the streets; then we met the new boss, but I won't look back in anger.

On October 26, 2011, Daniel Suddeath previewed the contest in the News and Tribune.

Phipps was unable to be reached for additional comment, but stated in his election questionnaire submitted to the News and Tribune that some council members have been more interested in “playing politics than finding solutions to our city’s problems.”

“Integrity needs to be restored to the city council,” said Phipps, who is a 50-year-old senior lecturer and coordinator of sociology in the Indiana University Southeast School of Social Sciences.

It is Phipps’ first campaign for elected office, but he’s the president of the New Albany Board of Zoning Appeals and was president of the East Spring Street Neighborhood Association in 2007.

He said better transparency is needed in local government, and said he would hold semi-annual public forums, if elected.

“I honestly believe I can provide new and progressive leadership for the residents of the third district and the city as a whole,” he said.

The calendar reads 2015, and Phipps is running for re-election. He is unopposed in the May 5 primary, and has little reason to be substantive, but last week, on April 21, he offered a genuine bolt-from-the-sky, out-of-the-blue revelation, posting a Facebook assessment of Mayor Jeff Gahan's position on street grid reform in New Albany, which centers on Jeff Speck’s downtown street network proposals, whether they’ll ever come to fruition, and if so, when.

Note that like Phipps, Gahan seeks re-election.

Mayor Gahan is committed to making our downtown streets more friendly to drivers and walkers. Three concepts are being developed to address this issue. What makes it great is that the federal government is going to cover 80% of the cost. Soon we will have options to improve the way we move, which will include more 2-way streets, better signage, and safer crossings. I’m sure downtown residents and businesses will be pleased with the results. Two additional items must be considered before moving forward: 1) the cost of the project. 2) There must be a plan to allow trucks in and out of downtown.

Why is this noteworthy?

To date, Gahan has made no verifiable or attributable public statement suggesting a positive position on the topic, openly and for the record. The mayor has made numerous private comments, most of which have come with “not to be repeated” warnings appended.

Love or hate Jeff Gahan, this much is beyond dispute: He has maintained a rigorous, non-committal public neutrality on street grid reform. At least on this one topic, he has been transparently non-transparent.

Consequently, for Phipps to suggest mere days prior to the primary that Gahan now advocates street grid reform, albeit as a bizarre milquetoast on the down-low, whimpering in a watered-down variety of bureaucratically-worded pablum, constitutes real news.

As such, given months of mayoral silence, we must ask for proof.

Exactly when did Gahan say this, and to whom?

Where can I read it in his words?

Can you show me?

How do we know it’s really true?

More than once since last Tuesday, I've asked the Phipps camp to verify the source of this statement with something (anything) attributable to Gahan himself.

I've received no answer, and yet as a university instructor and sociologist, surely Phipps understands that the validity of any affirmative claim is suspect if it cannot be verified and attributed in precisely the same fashion as my requests for proof of mayoral street grid intent, on the record, in the open, for all to see.

Without such standards of evidence, academic research would be rendered moot. They’re also questions any reputable journalist would ask, aren’t they?

Obviously, politics constitutes a different set of rules, most of them dubious, and yet during his first run for office, it was Phipps himself who raised the bar and said he'd approach such issues “analytically,” adding that “I have no desire to become a career politician.”

And yet four years later, certain shoes seem to have shifted feet -- and it's getting ugly.

Some might say that by asking reasonable questions, I’m unfairly stalking or bullying Phipps. It isn't true. My satiric references to yard sign sizes aside, what I’m doing is requesting intellectual accountability from a university professor who has chosen to be a public official, and who has previously indicated with explicitness that he accepts precisely such scrutiny.

Except when they're my questions,

Moreover, I’m asking for accountability from Phipps as it pertains to his specific role as public official. After all, I remain a constituent. If Phipps wishes to explain which questions from constituents are deemed proper for his response and which are not, it’s an explanation of potential interest to all voters in his district, and not just me.

He should offer this parsing of  constituent service now … verifiably, openly, and for attribution. That’s what greater transparency in local government is all about, right?

In my insistence on making these points, is there negativity, cynicism or anger?

Not much, if any. It may resemble the act of trying to assemble a jigsaw puzzle in a pea soup fog while wearing mittens, but I’m not angry about it. Providentially, my colleague Jeff G. has helped me understand this “oversimplification” of anger with an excerpt from an interview with the late comedian, George Carlin.

April 3, 2004: Dirty old man: George Carlin on obscenity in the age of Ashcroft, by Charles Taylor (Salon)

... When people say, “What are you so angry about?” Well, that’s a terrible oversimplification because I don’t live an angry life as people who know me for five minutes or five years will say. They rarely see me in an angry mood. I get irritated like anyone else, in traffic or in a long line that’s not moving. But I don’t carry anger around. What I feel is a sense of betrayal by my species and by my culture — that they lost their way and misled me, too, to a degree.

I’m a disappointed idealist. I think of myself as a skeptic, a realist. I think the cynics are the people who left the gas tank on the Ford Pinto, companies that kill people and just cross them out because they can’t afford to retool. That’s a cynical position. But the saying goes, if you scratch a cynic, you find a disappointed idealist, and that’s what’s going on with me. Down deep and underneath, the flame still flickers. I wish for an idealist, utopic world but the realist in me says it’s never gonna happen because of the way they’ve structured power and money and control and the hierarchies they’ve established.

I'm not angry.

But I'm quite capable of voting my disappointment.*

---

* If I were to rewrite this sentence in 2019, it would go like this: "But I'm quite capable of filing my disappointment."

---

Recent columns:

January 22: ON THE AVENUES: Democrats should judge city council incumbents in districts 2, 3, 4 and 5 by their regressive deeds, not their progressive words.

January 15: ON THE AVENUES REWOUND: Jeff Gahan and Adam Dickey are Trumping the Donald when it comes to breathtaking moral turpitude. Have they no shame?

January 8: ON THE AVENUES: In the 3rd district, that "stepping aside" time finally has arrived.

January 1: ON THE AVENUES: As a new year dawns, I’m existentially yours.

Grid Control, Vol. 30: These weird, useless "enhanced" crosswalk gizmos remind us that HWC's and Deaf Gahan's "complete roads" downtown are not "complete streets."

They've been called "enhanced" crosswalks and "high visibility" crosswalks. They're a prominent feature of downtown New Albany's new two-way street (or is it "road"?) grid.

In the following announcement from the University of Virginia, crosswalk safety remains entirely about the pedestrian, who must "use" these mechanisms correctly in the faith-driven hope that drivers might understand their own responsibilities to share the patch.

Not everyone pushes the button.

But how many drivers are paying attention?

How many know what this means?

Rapid Flashing Beacons Enhance Crosswalk Safety at the Push of a Button

... “Rapid Flashing Beacons allow the University to put more lights in more locations across Grounds in ways that are less invasive, easier to maintain, and less disruptive to traffic. Most importantly, RFBs are very reliable. All of this points to increased pedestrian safety if used correctly,” said Director of Safety and Emergency Preparedness Marge Sidebottom.

Because these lights are above ground at approximately eye level, it’s easy for pedestrians to check that lights are flashing before entering the crosswalk. Drivers should be aware that flashing lights means that a pedestrian is near. Unfortunately, though, not everyone pushes the button.

“The key to safety is that pedestrians must activate the lights,” Sidebottom said. “Studies have shown that the rapid flashing lights are effective in getting drivers' attention, but pedestrians need to push the button. Then, they need make sure that cars have stopped before entering the road. Pedestrians always face the greatest danger in a run-in with a car, regardless of who has the legal right-of-way.”

This passage might have been written by HWC Engineering, hence the sad reality of the imperfect implementation of two-way roads (are they streets?) in New Albany.

That's because as a non-automotive user of the city streets, I've found these credit-card-sized flashing beacons to be complete and utter jokes.

People walking still will find it far safer to look both ways and cross in the middle of a block; in spite of claims that traffic is moving more slowly since the reversion, the fact is that far too few calming measures were built into the rebooted grid. Team Gahan bet the farm that "friction" alone would calm traffic sufficiently for the myriad other two-way benefits to emerge.

Maybe, though these streets are still straightaways, just like before. They're still built to promote speed and indifference, just like before, though now with "enhanced" crosswalk beacons intended not as a legitimate means of rectifying a root problem, but as a "hey, we did something" gesture, another bright, shiny paste-over symbol, this one pointing to how the fundamental mobility issues downtown have not been addressed at all by a "modernization" program that preserved (certainly on purpose) the downtown grid as composed of "complete roads" rather than altered into "complete streets."

Charles Marohn nails the explanation of this difference in a six-year-old post from Strong Towns. It is published here in its entirety. Jeff Gahan made sausage out of Jeff Speck's prime proposals by handing them to HWC Engineering, and HWC Engineering co-opted it in precisely the fashion described by Marohn.

Speck understood the transformative nature of a genuine complete street. Gahan feared it.

Cowardice won.

---

CO-OPTING COMPLETE STREETS

The idea of a Complete Street is compelling in almost every way, but when the engineering profession begins to adopt it wholesale, we need to pause and look at the outcomes. Are we getting Complete Streets, or are we getting Complete Roads. The difference is tremendous and will impact the financial viability of an approach to building places that is long overdue.

The Complete Streets concept is one that is long overdue. We've spent two generations transforming a public realm once comprised of walkable, mixed-use neighborhoods into auto-only zones. These are places where the kids used to play ball in the street. Today a kid can't even play safely in their own front yard.

At Strong Towns, we've worked to illuminate the fact that this transformation has been done at tremendous financial cost. This is not only because the construction of wider, flatter and straighter streets has been expensive, but because the auto-centric nature of the transformed public realm drives private-sector investment out of traditional neighborhoods, dislocating it to places that provide more buffering to the car.

Not only that, but the redevelopment that has happened in these neighborhoods has largely been on a suburban framework, using the parking ratios, setbacks and coverage restrictions of modern zoning to reduce density (and the rate of return). Financially, these places are largely insolvent, lacking the tax base to maintain their basic infrastructure.

Enter the concept of a Complete Street. To me, the fundamental contribution of Complete Streets to the discourse surrounding the future of our towns and neighborhoods is the recognition that our streets must serve more than just cars and that the public realm can no longer be an auto-only zone. The fact that the Complete Streets model has broken the stranglehold that the auto-only design mentality has had on our streets should be the cause of unending rejoice.

In March I was able to have dinner with Kaid Benfield. During the course of our conversation, he enlightened me on how the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standards were tweaked with Neighborhood Design principles. The result, LEED-ND, takes a great concept -- buildings that are energy efficient and environmentally friendly -- and overlays it on a development framework that reinforces these principles. In other words, no more "green" buildings in the middle of a greenfield, with 30 mile commutes each way.

In a similar vein, we're going to now, humbly, suggest a way in which the Complete Streets concept can evolve to achieve what I believe is its principle intent, that being Complete Neighborhoods.

I've now seen two projects where engineers promoted the use of "complete streets". In each I see the engineering profession co-opting the Complete Streets moniker without any thought to a Complete Neighborhood. For the engineers on these projects, the approach remains the same. I'll quote from our piece, Confessions of a Recovering Engineer:

An engineer designing a street or road prioritizes the world in this way, no matter how they are instructed:

Traffic speed
Traffic volume
Safety
Cost

The rest of the world generally would prioritize things differently, as follows:

Safety
Cost
Traffic volume
Traffic speed

In other words, the engineer first assumes that all traffic must travel at speed. Given that speed, all roads and streets are then designed to handle a projected volume. Once those parameters are set, only then does an engineer look at mitigating for safety and, finally, how to reduce the overall cost (which at that point is nearly always ridiculously expensive).

One of the places I've seen Complete Streets applied is My Hometown's Last Great Old Economy Project (also known as the College Drive project). In this instance, the design starts with a minimum design speed and a projected traffic volume, the latter being the stated impetus for the project. This analysis provides us with four lanes of fast-moving traffic. The engineers then move on to the "safety" criteria and the mandate that -- if we can afford it -- we accommodate bikes and pedestrians. This is done, of course, at tremendous cost - estimated at over $7 million for a mile of road.

Now notice that I called this route a "road" and not a "street". Understanding the difference between a road and a street is critical to understanding the problem we have with engineers misusing the Complete Streets approach. From our Placemaking Principles for a Strong Town:

To build an affordable transportation system, a Strong Town utilizes roads to move traffic safely at high speeds outside of neighborhoods and urban areas. Within neighborhoods and urban areas, a Strong Town uses complex streets to equally accommodate the full range of transportation options available to residents.

Roads move cars at high speeds. Streets move cars at very slow speeds. We should build roads outside of neighborhoods, connecting communities across distances. We should build streets within neighborhoods where there are homes, businesses and other destinations. The auto-road is a post-WW II replacement of the rail-road. The street should be what it has always been; the street.

The fundamental design flaw of the post WW II development pattern -- the false premise upon which every other design tragedy has been committed -- is the transformation of our streets into roads.

High speed auto travel has no place in urban areas where the cost of development demands a complex neighborhood pattern with a mixing of uses, multiple modes of travel and a public realm that enhances the value of the adjacent properties. High speed traffic destroys value in our neighborhoods. It drives out investment. There is no amount of pedestrian enhancement that we can build to offset the negative response people have to being in the close proximity of speeding traffic.

Without aggressive traffic calming -- which is part of the Complete Streets playbook -- we will simply be building Complete Roads. A Complete Road will not transform the public realm, no matter how much money we put into accommodating pedestrians and bikers with bridges and tunnels. A Complete Road will not attract significant private-sector investment in the key neighborhoods where we have so much existing infrastructure liability. And a Complete Road will cost a fortune, without changing the insolvency problem facing our cities.

If there is one thing our current financial situation should teach us about the engineering profession it is this: engineers will bankrupt us if given the chance to build our cities and towns the way they envision them. It is predictable that the engineering profession will embrace the concept of a Complete Road -- which is nothing more than a bad design made PC by throwing an expensive bone to bikers and pedestrians -- because it fits with their hierarchy of values (speed, volume, safety and then cost). Insidiously, promoting Complete Roads will ensure them more funding than they would otherwise receive. You can call them "streets" all you want - unchecked, they are going to build "roads". (For example, check out the 14-foot highway lane widths on the Complete "Street" cross section on My Hometown's Last Great Old Economy Project).

We love Complete Streets. They are essential to a Strong Town. Let's get out there and build them, but make sure the engineers don't con you into a Complete Road. Demand slow cars and a Complete Neighborhood to go along with your Complete Street.

---

For previous Grid Control series links, go here.

Tractor trailer tradeoff? After all, we want trucks to visit and spend time here in New Albany.

Thanks again to AG for the photo.

Uh oh.

"They" are at it again.

They have made New Albany where it is almost impossible to drive a truck in there I had a lady one day say what we don't want any trucks in New Albany why do you think you're going to get your fancy coffee if it was up to me it wouldn't be a single truck come into downtown New Albany they can come and pick up their own stuff and see how people would like it then

That's 77 words, no punctuation; I have preserved this primal scream in its original form. We turn now to Charles Marohn for an opposing point of view: "No, semis are not a valid reason to build dangerously wide streets."

TRACTOR TRAILER TRADEOFF, by Charles Marohn

... During Big Box Stores Week, I received the proverbial semi-trailer comment. Chuck, I agree that we need to look at street design, but we can only change things so much because we need to accommodate semis.

So logical yet so wrong ...

... To receive federal and state transportation dollars, your city may be forced to design local streets so as to accommodate semi tractor trailers. For streets funded with local dollars, however, that decision is a local one. If you choose not to make accommodating the efficiency of tractor trailers your primary design criteria and perhaps decide that wealth creation, solvency and safety of residents are more important, just know that – while there will be some wailing and gnashing of teeth – nobody in your city will starve.

Then there is our friend Ted, in a classic Facebook post from March 18, 2015.

"We want trucks to visit and spend time here in New Albany."

We are a community of trucks. Trucks that invest time and money in local business. Trucks that invest time and money in our neighborhoods. We want trucks to visit and spend time here in New Albany. We want more trucks to move here. So of course we should take actions in our street grid that makes the downtown more truck friendly. Easier for trucks to walk. Safer for trucks to ride bikes. There is a preponderance of factual data to support the benefits to trucks and communities that embrace the changes in the Speck study.

Oh wait. I meant people not trucks. My bad. Because you would be a dumb ass to think otherwise. Or you might own a bunch of trucks. I support the full implementation of the Speck study at the earliest opportunity. Meaning freaking now.

Alas, Jeff Gahan didn't implement Speck's study. He implemented an alternative on the part of favored contractor HWC Engineering, one that stripped Speck's layout of significant portions of its future merits so as to appease Luddite Democrats and trucking magnates.

It was an incredible opportunity lost to timidity, cupidity and outright stupidity. At least in 2019, there'll be a chance to #FireGahan.

Yes, Virginia, there was a time in 2011 when Dan Coffey insisted on the immediate implementation of two-way streets.

"Coffey is arguing that it's the pedestrians that are causing trouble

for the 'poor' motorist. Poor is a quote. Subject new crosswalks."

I missed a city council meeting last Thursday, and so was denied the orgasmic opportunity to witness the latest configuration of the Contortionist Copperhead, our Councilman Cappuccino.

Of course, in many world languages the hard variable "C" of English is represented with the letter "K", which would render the preceding usage a delightful quartet: KKKK.

But enough of strikeouts.

If you're just coming to NAC's coverage of New Gahania, you may not know why we often refer to Dan Coffey as a Copperhead (Kopperhead).

Actually, we didn't pioneer this appellation. It's how Coffey once referred to himself.

Dan Coffey's copperhead shake described: "Hot toadstools and cold cappuccino" (2015/2011/2009).

... surrounded by witnesses numbering at least one fellow council member and various other public officials as well as ordinary pub patrons, Coffey initiated a heated discussion with (Jeff) Gillenwater that ended with Coffey aggressively grabbing Gillenwater by the shoulders and vowing to be “like a copperhead” and to “strike when you least expect it.”

In case you’re wondering, here is the definition of assault ...

Naturally, nothing whatever was done about Coffey's bullying then, nor will it be now. New Albany's "pillars" of leadership -- chief among them Dear Leader, Jeff Gahan -- always tolerate Coffey's antics because they think he can be used, when in fact, he's almost always the one pushing their buttons.

Beyond this idiotic cowardice on the part of presumed community standard bearers, it also may be surprising to learn there was a time when Coffey not only supported two-way traffic on New Albany's interstate-grade streets, but also wanted to be seen as the valiant leader of the effort.

From March 11, 2015, this remembrance of the forgotten time in 2011 when Coffey thought he could fool a new generation of downtown business operators into respecting him.

For once, he miscalculated. They laughed -- and that's why Coffey has returned to bashing them, and defending our beleaguered universal autocentrism.

(thanks Mark)

---

Our long civic nightmare finally ends as CM Cappuccino returns to the country comforts of obstructionism.

Boy, that was strange.

Around the time the Sherman Minton Bridge became ill back in 2011, Dan Coffey started making sense on occasion. I remember him convening a meeting at Lancaster's, and speaking stridently of the importance of using the opportunity of the bridge shutdown to restore two-way traffic to New Albany's streets, RIGHT NOW.

Why? Because it would be beneficial to small, independent businesses downtown.

In subsequent years, the unknown space alien continued to occupy Coffey's body. Heads were scratched raw as he actually became the voice of reason at council meetings. Perhaps the makeover was a run-up to the county commissioner's race in 2014, when Coffey -- with no city council seat to wager or lose -- was unable to muster any semblance of a fighting spirit, and suffered a humiliating 22-point defeat to Mark Seabrook.

Maybe he just decided that urban demolitions were more lucrative kicking back than exurban bulldozing.

Whatever the rationale, the universe has been out of sync, and the gods obviously weren't happy, and so now, at long last, we have our Cappuccino back, merrily contradicting himself on the topic of streets, and -- unopposed in his re-election to the post of Wizard of Westendia -- freely caterwauling and chewing scenery on topics of which he knows next to nothing. It's just like old times. Now all we need is Professor Erika blowing rancid cigarette smoke in his face.

The odds that Coffey actually read Speck's report?

Same probability that I've chugged a Miller Lite in the last five years, which is to say: Zero.

Welcome back. We've missed you so very much.

(Click through to read reporter Suddeath's redevelopment report in its entirety)

River Ridge may gain Toyota instead of New Albany, by Daniel Suddeath (N and T)

TIF ALSO TIED TO TWO-WAY STREETS

New Albany would likely use TIF funds to provide its 20 percent match to a $2.5 million federal grant for calming traffic in the city’s downtown.

The money could, for example, be used to flip one-way streets to two-way traffic.

On March 18, the city will hold its final public hearing on planner Jeff Speck’s street study, which is strongly in favor of two-way conversion, smaller traffic lanes and more on-street parking.

It’s one step the city has taken as it prepares its strategy for utilizing the federal grant, which was awarded through the Kentuckiana Regional Planning & Development Agency, or KIPDA.

But New Albany City Councilman Dan Coffey believes the city might need another report.

“I still don’t think it would hurt to have another, unbiased study,” said Coffey, who is also a member of the redevelopment commission.

Speck’s study is a plan “that’s been slanted toward one view,” he added.

“I’m really disappointed in the way that turned out,” Coffey said.

Mayor Jeff Gahan’s administration has largely remained noncommittal on Speck’s recommendations. With the Ohio River Bridges Project expected to bring more motorists to New Albany, Gahan has acknowledged the city will likely need to make adjustments to the traffic grid.

The final public meeting on the Speck report will be held from 6 to 7:30 p.m. on March 18 at the Pepin Mansion, which is located at 1003 E. Main St.

Fearing an auto apocalypse on two-way streets? Why not have a drink, pop a Valium, and relax.

I asked Jeff Speck the hottest question in town.

Roger: Has there ever been credible evidence documenting a tsunami of crashes and deaths in the wake of a two-way street changeover?

Speck: The only studies I have seen document improved safety from 2-way.

Waiter, I'll have a Caesar Salad with the grilled crow, and a side of humble pie. No, not for me. Take them over to that sad looking man in the corner booth with the bicentennial book.

The magic number is 2,228 ... days since Bob Caesar vowed to protect Pearl Street against the damned pergessives.

Speck's noteworthy New Albany Downtown Street Network Proposal was submitted to the city of in December, 2014. Following is a passage from the study briefly rebutting some of the claims I've been forced to endure ad nauseam on social media these past few days.

As a side note, it's interesting to contemplate that while Speck's study deals at length with tolling pass-throughs, the level of ORBP refugees hasn't been as high as most of us imagined. There was a palpable increase, just not an epic one.

At first during the run-up, City Hall used the predicted tolling dynamic as a cover argument in favor of the street grid changes, but then implementation was delayed until after tolling began, suggesting that even as thick-headed a luminary as Jeff Gahan saw at least some merit in the many ancillary benefits of two-way streets beyond deterring toll dodgers.

If so, that's a rare check in the mayor's favor. He simply wouldn't be undertaking this reversion if he thought there were more votes to be lost than gained.

Now, to Speck.

---

Potential Outcomes

To be intelligent, this political discussion must be informed by two other discussions. The first concerns urban vitality, while the second concerns relative impacts.

Urban Vitality

Few people will argue that, in the heart of a city, the desires of commuters just passing through should trump the safety of pedestrians and the success of businesses. 

However, there are many people who reasonably fear that slowing down traffic might create such congestion that the city fails to function properly, and that all residents and businesses will suffer as a result. While this fear is reasonable, it is not based in fact. 

The experience of many dozens of cities all across America has been consistent: there is not a single record in the extensive annals of urban planning of a city’s vitality suffering in any way from a one-way to two-way conversion. To the contrary: there are many reports of business success and a rebirth of street life, but never has the additional traffic friction presented by two-way streets caused a city to perform less well socially or economically.

Relative Impacts

For the above reasons, this discussion becomes a simple argument between those who want to get through the downtown as quickly as possible, and those who want a downtown worth arriving at. While only those who prioritize speed over vitality can argue for the former, it is worth considering what the true speed impacts are likely to be.

Here we must revisit our earlier discussion about the Proper Number of Lanes. As noted, unless the planned tolling regime for Ohio River bridges is changed, New Albany can expect to have a considerable increase in traffic downtown. That traffic will fill the space allotted, and behave according to the cues that it receives from its environment.

If this traffic continues to be funneled down multi-lane one-way streets, drivers will continue to think of downtown New Albany as a highway, and use it as such. More drivers will be drawn to these downtown streets. They will not think about stopping to shop or eat, and their principal impacts to downtown will be more pollution and increased danger to pedestrians, cyclists, and other drivers. 

If instead, downtown is reverted back to its original two-way grid, a few things will happen differently. 

First, a less expedited path through downtown will cause fewer drivers to take the New Albany detour. 

Second, the distribution of these drivers among two-way streets, with fewer opportunities for lane-jockeying, will result in a safer environment for all. 

And, finally, the more comforting “main street” experience offered to these drivers, and the time spent lingering at intersections, will make them more likely to shop or dine. Experiencing New Albany as a place, and not just a conduit, they will be more inclined to spend a little time and money there.

---

These past few days have been wearying, indeed -- but what about Harvest Homecoming?

Yawn.

What about it?

Grid Control, Vol. 23: City's fuddy-duddies losing their minds as the debut for a two-way Spring Street is pegged at August 29.

Thirteen years later, it's the end of the beginning.

Speaking personally, I think the Spring Street conversion announcement should have been made at roughly 2:30 p.m. on Monday, when the combination of a solar eclipse and impending two-way-street rationality (finally) would have sent the Luddites streaming panic-stricken toward Birdseye.

Spring Street in New Albany to be converted to two-way traffic Aug. 29, by Chris Morris (Hanson's Motorcycle Christianity)

NEW ALBANY — After years of talk and months of work, Spring Street is ready to be converted to two-way traffic.

Paul Lincks, project manager with HWC Engineering, informed the New Albany Board of Public Works & Safety Tuesday that Spring Street will be switched to two-way traffic some time on Aug. 29. The exact time has not yet been determined, but Lincks said it would likely be after morning rush hour.

HWC is installing message boards throughout the downtown area to inform drivers of the conversion. Bank and Pearl streets will be converted to two-way traffic on Aug. 30. Those streets are currently being striped ...

I'm both pleased and depressed.

Yes, we'll enjoy many of the benefits of two-way traffic, albeit severely neutered by an institutionalized absence of imagination.

With the long overdue modernization of the street grid, Jeff Gahan had the chance to be what he earnestly believes himself to be, but isn't and won't ever come close to being: a progressive and transformational mayor.

Jeff Speck handed Gahan top sirloin, and unfortunately the mayor rendered it into Sloppy Joes drowning in auto-centric sauce. The sandwiches will be borderline edible, but my oh my, what might have been in the hands of a knowledgeable kitchen pro.

It never was about two-way traffic in and of itself. It was about recognizing the numerous good outcomes of two-way traffic and maximizing them by design, as with Speck's discarded bicycle infrastructure.

Alas, Gahan wasn't the only bad student. Far too many of the two-way street grid reform package's backers also never understood the ancillaries; as a result, they were far too quick to abandon them to the usual engineering suspects, imagining that if they uttered a peep, Dear Leader would ignore preferred pet projects.

Now that Gahan has half-assed the grid, getting it right is an opportunity lost, one that won't come around again until downtown streets are ready to be milled and repaved according to the usual maintenance cycle.

Maybe by then there'll be someone in City Hall capable of grasping the squandered possibilities and acting according to genuinely felt principle, not the perpetual campaign monetization of Gahanism.

Perhaps the best we can do at this point is hope that the perennial low bidder MAC's 2017 paving job within the grid project's boundaries is as wretched as what the company managed during the Main Street beautification effort less than four years ago -- because then, we'll be repaving sooner rather than later, and can rectify Gahan's faulty vision.    

---

Previously:


Grid Control, Vol. 22: City engineer Larry Summers answers our questions about intersection striping errors and the "No Trucks" sign removal.

Grid Control, Vol. 21: Murderous intersection at Spring & 10th to be repaved and restriped -- and, the hocus-pocus with a disappearing "No Trucks" sign at Spring & Vincennes.

Grid Control, Vol. 20: As Team Gahan dawdles, another bicyclist is crushed into mincemeat at 10th & Spring's dangerous dogleg.

Grid Control, Vol. 19: In a positive move, HWC begins righting the wrong cross hatching on Spring Street.

Grid Control, Vol. 18: Finally a few BoW street grid project answers, almost all of them citing "contractor error."

Grid Control, Vol. 17: Judging by the misdirection of this "CROSS TRAFFIC DOES NOT STOP" sign, we now reside in the British Empire.

Grid Control, Vol. 16: What about HWC's cross hatching correction? Will this be finished before or after Team Gahan declares victory?

Grid Control, Vol. 15: Dooring enhancement perfectly epitomizes Deaf Gahan's "biking last" approach to grid modernization.

Grid Control, Vol. 14: Yes, you can still park on the south side of Spring Street during the stalled two-way grid project.

Grid Control, Vol. 13: "Dear Deaf Gahan and minions: FOR THE LOVE OF PETE, STOP TRYING TO BE COOL AND DESIGNER-ISH. YOU'RE NOT, AND IT'S EMBARRASSING ALL OF US."

Grid Control, Vol. 12: Meet the artistic crosswalk design equivalent of dogs playing poker.

Grid Control, Vol. 11: HWC Engineering meets with St. Marks, city officials nowhere to be found.

Grid Control, Vol. 10: City officials predictably AWOL as HWC Engineering falls on its sword over striping errors.

Grid Control, Vol. 9: "This was supposed to be discussed with us," but Dear Leader doesn't ever discuss, does he?

Grid Control, Vol. 8: City Hall characteristically mum as HWC Engineering at least tries to answer the cross-hatching question.

Grid Control, Vol. 7: What will the Board of Works do to rectify HWC's striping errors on the north side of Spring Street, apart from microwaving another round of sausage biscuits?

Grid Control, Vol. 6: Jeff Speck tweets about NA's grid changes, and those missed bicycling opportunities.

Grid Control, Vol. 5: Egg on HWC Engineering's well-compensated face as it botches Spring Street's westbound bike buffer cross hatching.

Grid Control, Vol. 4: But this actually isn't a bus lane, is it?

Grid Control, Vol. 3: TARC's taking your curbside church parking, says City Hall.

Grid Control, Vol. 2: Southsiders get six more parking inches, but you gotta love those 10-foot traffic lanes on Spring.

Grid Control, Vol. 1: You people drive so freaking horribly that someone's going to die at Spring and 10th.