We spoke too soon, 'cuz Deaf Gahan's big-ass city suck truck effectively slowed traffic at this dangerous intersection on Spring.

This truck managed the impossible; its presence parked in the middle of Spring Street on Monday morning objectively slowed traffic.

It was fun watching cars pass on all sides.

The suck truck's success in slowing traffic at Spring and 10th has so impressed Dear Leader that he's commissioned a permanent fix -- without the suck truck, but with a nice homage to his shimmering reign.

It's the Jeff M. Gahan Presents the Spring Street Roundabout.

Although maybe he should be facing east to discourage visitors.

GREEN MOUSE SAYS: They're still illegally parked, but finally those Williams Plumbing safety hazards have been removed from Spring Street.

I've been outspoken about this situation for quite some time, and summarized the case in this post from February 9, 2019.

And like a blight neighbor, Williams Plumbing is there ... for years, and years, and years.

You'll never be able to convince me otherwise: Blocked sight lines caused by an illegally parked Williams Plumbing commercial vehicle were a contributing factor in Matt Brewer's death-by-driver last August.

Recently I noticed the trucks no longer were being parked on the street in front of the business. They're now usually lined up on 9th, north of Spring. This remains illegal according to the city's ordinances, which plainly are written to require commercial vehicles to have off-street parking.

However, at least these vehicles no longer block sight lines at the intersection. The Green Mouse inquired and was told that it wasn't police, ordinance enforcement or somnolent councilman Greg Phipps to credit for taking the lead in removing the safety hazard posed by these illegally parked trucks, but rather Mickey Thompson, New Albany's street department commissioner.

Fairness dictates a round of applause and a "thank you" to Mickey for addressing this.

And like a blight neighbor, Williams Plumbing is there ... for years, and years, and years.

Same shit, different year.

The point is simple. Shouldn't a business like this one located in a primarily residential area be compelled to adhere to minimum standards of appearance and (more importantly) street safety?

Moreover, shouldn't it be WILLING to embrace such minimums before being forced to do so?

Just two blocks east, HyperCars was given a punch list for compliance before being given variances -- and did exactly as requested. I'll never be a supporter of automotive businesses in such a setting, BUT it cannot be denied that HyperCars went the extra mile to be a good neighbor.

Why not Williams Plumbing?

Let's begin the back story on May 19, 2011.

"Municipal dysfunction sweeping prohibited."

I’m continually amazed by prominent examples of neglect that go completely unaddressed.

Almost every day, I walk or bike past Williams Plumbing on the northeast corner of E. Spring and 9th. If I’m not mistaken, long ago it was Cora Shrader’s Shoppe, a nicely maintained corner property.

Now it is a scantily maintained, increasingly dilapidated eyesore used exclusively for what amounts to industrial storage. Extreme weather over a period of years has torn hunks of siding away from both sides of the house, exposing the wood. Worse, the company’s big trucks tend to be parked right on Spring Street, consistently impeding the view of motorists approaching southbound on 9th.

Do these trucks get ticketed when they block the street sweeper, or does the invisible, undefined, non-enforcement Green Line come into play?

Is it downtown or midtown?

Lowdown, or down low?

If there is ticketing, does Williams Plumbing pay the tickets?

Eventually the exterior deterioration was minimally addressed, but illegally parked commercial trucks continued to be an impediment to sight lines. On September 7, 2018 we offered a clear illustration of the issue.

How the Williams Plumbing trucks block vision at 9th & Spring -- a pictorial.

You'll never be able to convince me otherwise: Blocked sight lines caused by an illegally parked Williams Plumbing commercial vehicle were a contributing factor in Matt Brewer's death-by-driver last August.

Still, neither the city nor Keith Henderson did anything to address the situation. From August 20, 2018:

If you want to know how Deaf Gahan purposefully botched the Speck plan for walkable streets, read this article. Hint: HWC dunnit.

NA Confidential: Brief question: has the accident report about Matt Brewer been released? I’m particularly interested in the role of those Williams Plumbing trucks forever parked illegally on the street, blocking the view. Thank you.

Chief Todd Bailey: All crash investigations handled by the Combined Accident Reconstruction Team are maintained by the Floyd County Prosecutor’s Office. I can tell you the case is still under investigation but if you’re looking for specific information you’ll need to inquire with the Prosecutor.

It didn't start yesterday.

Dec 20, 2016
This outrage against innovative public art must be avenged -- or, what happened to the Williams Junk Water Heater Park?

What is it about ordinance non-enforcement in this burg, anyway?

How the Williams Plumbing trucks block vision at 9th & Spring -- a pictorial.

These three photos were taken sequentially at around 9:25 p.m. on Thursday, September 6. In the first photo, from a vantage point on the north side of Spring, a driver approaches the intersection of 9th and Spring, traveling eastbound.

But where'd he go?

There he is again, whizzing past at a speed I'd estimate as a minimum of 35 mph, maybe a bit more ... in a 25 mph zone, coming off a hazardous curve at 10th.

Here's the relevant speed table.

Here's the ordinance which plainly forbids the Williams Plumbing truck ("any other commercial vehicle") from being parked where it is.

And here is the memorial to Matt on the utility pole.

I'm not sure if I can illustrate these problems any more clearly than this, although as in the past, I honestly believe it would be helpful for those city officials in charge of such matters to come outside for once and view the scene from the ground, as so many of us do every day.

Perhaps only then will this combination of danger and neglect make the necessary impression.

Dead Man's Curve has killed, and it will kill again unless our cowardly ruling clique does its job.

Sorry, but we need to be blunt.

We can't possibly be progressive unless the truth about street safety for all users is told aloud, and make no mistake: if the speed-through status quo works for you, that's not progressive at all.

In fact, it's embarrassingly regressive.

Of course, rule of law would be helpful on widely scattered occasions.

Here, there and everywhere, "In crashes that kill pedestrians, the majority of drivers don't face charges."

By the way, Gahanesque and Hendersonian bi-partisan political cowardice isn't the only phenomenon causing us to be killed.

America’s Car Culture is Literally Shortening Your Life: Study, by Angie Schmitt (Streetsblog)

The U.S. has been falling behind its peer nations on traffic safety and now life expectancy as well. There's a connection.

Driving is driving us to the grave.

Life expectancy at birth declined steeply in the U.S. in 2015 and 2016, a new British Journal of Medicine study reports — a finding that was attributed partly to the opioid crisis, but also to America’s ongoing traffic violence problem.

In 16 peer nations studied, life expectancy at birth was fairly steady over the same period, but dropped by .2 years in the United States — a decline that is two-and-a-half times worse than the dip in 2012.

The researchers said that about 42 percent of the shortfall is due to the opioid crisis. But the leading cause for declining longevity remains “external factors” such as traffic fatalities, which is blamed for 44 percent of the decline, the study said.

Study author Jessica Ho, a gerontology professor at the University of Southern California, didn’t address the role of traffic accidents in this study, but told Streetsblog that an earlier study found that traffic fatalities accounted for 18 percent of the “life expectancy shortfall” for men under 50, and 16 percent for women in the same age range between 2006 and 2008 compared to similar nations.

So while the opioid addiction grabs headlines, cars have quietly remained a leading killer. In 2015, for example, the U.S. traffic fatality rate jumped 9 percent. And in 2016, it jumped again 5.6 percent, wiping out nearly a decade of improvements. It was the biggest two-year jump in 50 years.

Traffic fatalities have long been a leading cause of death of Americans, and in 2015, they were the 13th leading cause of death in the U.S. overall. But because cars kill a disproportionately high number of younger people, they rank seventh in total years of life lost.

Other Western nations have been making far faster progress on reducing traffic fatalities than the U.S. The Centers for Disease Control sounded the alarm last year, reporting that between 2000 and 2013, traffic deaths per capita in the U.S. dropped at just under half the rate of 19 peer nations. Our death rate per capital is roughly double that of Canada and France ...