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.

Ford: "The mobility model we have today will not work tomorrow."

Bill Ford, great-grandson of Henry and executive chairman of Ford Motor Company, spends about 17 minutes in this TED Talk explaining that, in terms of future mobility, "the solution [to gridlock] will not be more cars, more roads", i.e., misguided, auto-centric anachronisms like the Ohio River Bridges Project. As TED says, "when he worries about cars' impact on the environment, and about our growing global gridlock problem, it's worth a listen. His vision for the future of mobility includes 'smart roads,' even smarter public transport and going green like never before."