Welcome to another fact Bob Caesar can't/won't grasp: "High-Traffic Arterial Roads Reduce Quality of Life, Even Blocks Away."

You know, like a futility flow chart.

At Tuesday evening's city council meeting, 2nd district internal combustion fetishist Bob Caesar spoke stridently in favor of the ruthless suppression of noise, but only insofar as noise pertains to certain taverns playing the wrong music.

Is there any more persistent hypocrite in the entire city?

Each day, heavy trucks thunder back and forth on New Albany's high-speed, one-way arterial streets, generating noise, shaking residential windows and inflicting mayhem, as joined by all manner of boom cars, redneck motorcyclists with high-decibel sound systems and drivers oblivious to their surroundings.

Through it all, Caesar's carefully cultivated privileged white guy propriety is unruffled. In his mind, forever and always, New Albany is so very degraded that no one would think of coming here unless they're able to do so under the same conditions as an interstate highway.

Caesar's the very same type of guy John Mahorney wrote about in LEO, eagerly rolling down his car window to verbally harass bicyclists as jobless deadbeats who are no better than dope-smoking, anti-establishment hippies.

I mean, if you didn't want to witness soul-crushing, neighborhood-sapping roadway behavior, why didn't you live in Silver Hills in the first place?

Has any single council representative in this city ever misunderstood so many facets of the modern urban world, all at once, without the faintest glimmer of a pulse?

Study: High-Traffic Arterial Roads Reduce Quality of Life, Even Blocks Away, by Angie Schmitt (Streetsblog)

... A new study from the University of Colorado Denver, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Transportation, builds on (previous) research — finding that high traffic on your street isn’t the only type of traffic affecting what you think of where you live. Researchers Wesley Marshall and Carolyn McAndrews found that living near, but not on, a wide, high-traffic arterial can also reduce residential satisfaction.

The research is a repudiation of the suburban style of traffic calming that dominated the U.S. for decades, where cul-de-sacs and lack of through streets limits traffic on residential streets by diverting cars to major arterials. It turns out, pouring traffic onto inhospitable arterial roads is negatively impacting nearby residential areas, too ...

Someone pry Bob's eyes open, will you? He's about to miss the best part -- again.

... Marshall and McAndrews recommend that neighborhoods try to improve quality of life by addressing shortcomings in arterial roads, focusing on reducing crime, adding more pedestrian-friendly infrastructure and supporting land uses that encourage street life.

The bottom line is that sometimes, a neighborhood is only as strong as its weakest arterial road. “Livable cities require a network-level approach,” the authors wrote, “that looks beyond accounting for the livability of individual streets.”

City officials giddy as New Albany finally makes Guinness Book of World Records (REPOST).

One of the most read posts of the past five years, originally published on November 21, 2014.

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NEW ALBANY -- In a triumphant press conference held back by the corner table at the Roadhouse, city officials and Democratic Party grandees gleefully clinked longnecks of Keystone Light while announcing the culmination of a project first proposed over 50 years ago.

It’s the world’s longest interstate entrance and exit ramps, as recently certified by the Guinness Book of World Records.

Guinness spokesman Tommy Barker presented commemorative scrolls, which read:

“From their starting and ending points on the Clark County line, these entrance and exit ramps to I-64 travel traverse almost three miles in each direction, enabling cars and trucks to pass through New Albany residential neighborhoods quickly and easily to reach points further afield, without ever being compelled to spend time in the city itself.”

Barker also commented, “I’ve never seen anything as daft in all me life – and your streets all arseways like this for 50 years straight? Begorrah, you people need your own chapter in the record book.”

Following a 45-minute presentation by Pubic Works Projects supervisor John Rosenbarger, who detailed past and future plans to eliminate remaining “archaic and non-contributing” traffic lights and destroy and reinstall all the bump-outs he has overseen since last year, economic development director David Duggins ducked Rosenbarger’s rapidly expanding nose and explained how 3-mile-long interstate entrance and exit ramps enhance the quality of life in his outlying industrial parks.

“Just imagine how slumlord property values increase with the interstate ramps only steps away from their front porches,” said Duggins. “If I wasn’t making so little working this lousy job, I’d buy a few quadplexes myself.”

Unfortunately, the hologram of Mayor Jeff Gahan usually seen at public meetings was low on batteries, and so Democratic Party chairman Adam Dickey tearfully led officials and grandees in a closing number.

When you wish upon a star
Makes no difference who you are
Anything your heart desires
Will come to you

"Without our signature arterials," sobbed Dickey, "how can we ever expect to get out the vote?"

Actually, 8.5 feet wide is the federal standard for commercial vehicles.

(thanks W)

As we inch toward the Speck plan's public meeting finale on Wednesday at the Pepin Mansion ((March 18, 6:00 p.m., 1003 E. Main Street), perennial civic value extractors in the trucking and heavy equipment business, and their convenient politically motivated apologists like Irv Stumler and Dan Coffey, continue to press the point that their narrow interests must trump all other considerations.

James Padgett's infamous newspaper missive remains an instructive example of a random argument generator, into which is fed various fears and innuendo, and even the stray good point, in the creation of a grandiose mash-up with the superficial appearance of credibility.

However, just because intellectually lazy newspaper editors adoringly fall for it doesn't mean the rest of us should. As a friend points out ...

The Padgett comments were classic misdirection - meant to confuse the folks who don't pay attention to facts. When people use wrong "facts" as a way to claim they aren't lying in a dishonest debate - it's just wrong.

So true, as in the case of lane widths. We already know that a 12' - 13' wide lane width isn't necessary to accommodate a Honda Accord -- one of the best selling cars in America at 6' 7" wide.

You don't need 'em for trucks, either.

WIDTH REQUIREMENTS

U.S. Department of Transportation - Federal Highway Administration

The maximum width limit for CMVs on the NN and reasonable access routes was originally established at 102 inches, except for Hawaii where it is 2.74 m (108 inches). (See discussion of Reasonable Access on page 12.) To standardize vehicle width on an international basis, the 102-inch width limit was interpreted to mean the same as its approximate metric equivalent, 2.6 meters (102.36 inches) (Figure 1 above).

Here is Spring Street as Rosenbargered today.

And here is a quick capture of Speck's planned refit for the same stretch of street.

See a median anywhere in there?

That's what I thought. When it comes to reading comprehension, New Albany remains the land that time forgot.

City officials giddy as New Albany finally makes Guinness Book of World Records.

NEW ALBANY -- In a triumphant press conference held back by the corner table at the Roadhouse, city officials and Democratic Party grandees gleefully clinked longnecks of Keystone Light while announcing the culmination of a project first proposed over 50 years ago.

It’s the world’s longest interstate entrance and exit ramps, as recently certified by the Guinness Book of World Records.

Guinness spokesman Tommy Barker presented commemorative scrolls, which read:

“From their starting and ending points on the Clark County line, these entrance and exit ramps to I-64 travel traverse almost three miles in each direction, enabling cars and trucks to pass through New Albany residential neighborhoods quickly and easily to reach points further afield, without ever being compelled to spend time in the city itself.”

Barker also commented, “I’ve never seen anything as daft in all me life – and your streets all arseways like this for 50 years straight? Begorrah, you people need your own chapter in the record book.”

Following a 45-minute presentation by Pubic Works Projects supervisor John Rosenbarger, who detailed past and future plans to eliminate remaining “archaic and non-contributing” traffic lights and destroy and reinstall all the bump-outs he has overseen since last year, economic development director David Duggins ducked Rosenbarger’s rapidly expanding nose and explained how 3-mile-long interstate entrance and exit ramps enhance the quality of life in his outlying industrial parks.

“Just imagine how slumlord property values increase with the interstate ramps only steps away from their front porches,” said Duggins. “If I wasn’t making so little working this lousy job, I’d buy a few quadplexes myself.”

Unfortunately, the hologram of Mayor Jeff Gahan usually seen at public meetings was low on batteries, and so Democratic Party chairman Adam Dickey tearfully led officials and grandees in a closing number.

When you wish upon a star
Makes no difference who you are
Anything your heart desires
Will come to you

"Without our signature arterials," sobbed Dickey, "how can we ever expect to get out the vote?"

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Drinking Progressively: Let's make it Tuesday evenings, beginning on November 25.