ON THE AVENUES: Karma, karma, karma, karma, karma chameleon (The Big Bang Remix).

Pedestrians being hit by cars is a car problem. Car congestion is a car problem. Noise and air pollution from car exhaust is a car problem. The solution is less space devoted to cars and fewer cars.
-- Momifornia on Twitter

Nawbany was awash in cascading waves of irony the past week, and seeing as we’re not the sort of city that appreciates the variety of honesty that irony elicits, my brief return from internal (infernal?) exile is merited.

According to reliable reports on social media, it appears that Mayor Jeff Gahan was involved in an automobile accident on Monday afternoon at the contested intersection of Klerner Lane and Mt. Tabor Road.

First and foremost, we believe no one was hurt. Had there been an injury, and if any of it had been relayed by the picked-over carcass of deceased local media, I would not discuss the accident in this space. 

So, disclaimers aside, it was reported that on Monday the armored mayoral SUV (Nawbany lacks Saudi-sized oil reserves, but galdurn it, we have a sewer utility cash cow) t-boned a smaller car, with a photo clearly showing the mayor talking on his cell phone, probably with Rudy Giuliani (or the city attorney, whichever one picked up first), and absent the pandemic face covering timorously beseeched by his safely captive city council.

The witness who broke the story added that the mayor then left the scene before police arrived.

Wait -- you may be asking, “forget bad driving, Roger, but why is the intersection contested”?

Thanks for asking.

Originally the mayor sought to place a roundabout at this precise location, as part of a barely plausible multi-million dollar “improvement” project for Mt. Tabor Road, which local residents spent something like five years contesting, at their own expense, accurately characterizing it as an expensive boondoggle, constructed in such a way as to attract even more speeding cut-through traffic in a residential area, thus contradicting the claims of proponents in City Hall (and nowhere else) that traffic would be slowed and calmed for all time.

These neighborhood advocates, those fated to live adjacent to the “improvements,” felt strongly that with increased traffic there’d be even more instances of vehicular mayhem, a prediction scornfully rejected by the mayor, who blamed partisan politics, and in essence asked residents whether they believed the mayoral clique or their own two eyes.

As documented during the past two years, and now proven in 2020 by the automobile-supremacist mayor himself, their own two eyes proved plenty accurate. 

 

Naturally the residents were never once asked whether they wanted road “improvements.” The project was imposed from above, by the elites.

Welcome to Nawbany, pilgrim -- and if you don’t have a car, you’re not really welcome at all. 

---

In fact, as this baleful year of 2020 limps to the finish line, motor vehicles of all stripes are moving way too fast all over town.

In response, City Hall continues to insist with a straight face that we should believe the increasingly illusory, North Korean-style press releases, which breathlessly laud the unprecedented achievement of universal street grid calming and pervasive lawfulness, as achieved throughout the city by the shining wonder of perfect governance.

But I live on Spring Street, and can attest that these claims are utterly fictitious, or as my father might have put it, “bullshit.”

Apart from obvious examples like chronic speeding at all hours of the day, there’s the noisy and disruptive HyperCar auto polishing and sales lot located in my East Spring Street neighborhood, which in the beginning claimed it would be servicing cars only, and not selling cars, at least for a very long time, but forgot the promises almost immediately as city officials yawned, and currently has so many fancy souped-up race cars crammed into its lot that some of them must always be parked (illegally) on 13th Street, with HyperCars employees and customers getting their jollies by taking all these cars on cacophonous spins around the block, dozens of times each day, while shifting, revving, squealing tires, screeching and emitting bursts of metallic flatulence that I’m guessing combine to produce something akin to an orgasm.

As such, and in an instance of profound irony that comes close to matching the mayor’s Mt. Tabor mishap, on Thursday evening one of hyper-diaper’s cars parked illegally on 13th Street was creamed by a hit-and-run driver, who paused long enough for nearby residents to emerge from their homes and chase the fleeing driver to Market Street.

I considered risking bad karma by laughing my ass off, but didn't. A better response is crying in frustration at the perennial backwardness displayed by Nawbany.

Here we are in Midtown, supposedly a municipal showplace for genteel “blue” progressivism, and instead of urbanism we have hyperactive race cars on one side of Spring at 13th, and the failed candidate Oxendine’s clown-car discount funeral home on the other.

And our presumed neighborhood leaders? They’re AWOL, as always.

---

What makes the irony of the mayor’s recent driver’s ed fender bender even more delicious is that it transpired in the yard of a neighborhood resident who helped leaded the opposition to the Mt. Tabor “improvement” project.

She heard the crash and snapped a photo of the two damaged vehicles, with unmasked mayor (literally and figuratively) standing in her yard. Upon publishing the photo of a public event that occurred in front of her house, the ruling elites circled the wagons and commenced slagging, leading to the usual drooling defenses of the mayor as a wonderful human being on a par with Gandhi, or perhaps even the departing humanitarian Donald Trump.

Pfui. It’s all irrelevant.

Again and again I’ve pointed out that quite a lot of New Albany’s foot dragging pertaining to complete streets, walkability and all-purpose urban modernity -- the city’s abject refusal to so much as try leveling the playing field via mobility solutions not reliant on internal combustion engines -- stems from the abysmal and persistent ignorance of elected and appointed public officials who, in effect, have neither been anywhere nor seen anything, and who wouldn’t be caught dead reading a book if the pages slapped them in the face like the palm fronds adorning their hard seltzers.

City Hall has willfully botched these equations ever since Gahan began consolidating power, because power in little-pond Nawbany is about campaign finance funding from pay-to-play skimming, the proceeds from which simply cannot be generated by walking or biking projects. Rather, automobile supremacy equals cash. It’s unfortunate, but true.

At least the mayor now has direct experience of what it’s like to run afoul of city streets he’s done so much to curate in his own image, and I can only hope that some sweet day he’ll take the debacle a step further and attempt to use one of his favored push-button (un)controlled urban crosswalks, with their tiny flashing yellow lights ignored as hot rods roar and tow trucks cruise at 60 mph on “calmed” stretches of Gahanesque speedways, learning in accordance with those of us who walk, and despairing of making it to the other side alive.

Maybe then, at last, he’d grasp the profound disconnect he has imposed on those without cars. Yes, it means he’d have to go out for a walk, and admittedly that’s about as unlikely as a Democratic Party grandee being spotted on a bicycle. But a boy can dream, especially when dreams are all we have in the complete and unmitigated absence of principle.

The errant politician probably won't have to answer for it; his handlers will shelter him, and the super-duper-hyper-racecar place will deny that it creates daily mayhem on residential streets, but I'm just happy with any dent, real or metaphorical, placed in our local default of automobile supremacy.

Maybe we’ll get a clue, some day. After all, even a stopped pre-digital clock is right twice each day.

---

November 7: On (or off) the Avenues, there's got to be a morning after. 

October 8: ON THE AVENUES: I'm voting for Biden. Otherwise it's Trump's burgeoning fascist GOP death cult. 

October 1: ON THE AVENUES: Welcome to the last will and testament of NA Confidential. 

September 24: ON THE AVENUES: Magic and loss. 

September 17: ON THE AVENUES: Stuck inside of Nawbany with the Flanders blues again.

Utrecht destroys street, restores canal as Pinocchio sings "I've Got No Strings."

Automobile supremacy has taken a hit in Utrecht, Netherlands, and while this is a victory, it reminds us that Americans by and large display no comprehension about such matters. This wouldn't be so bad if we didn't continue electing and appointing them.

I can already hear Pinocchio Rosenbarger's excuses. Is he retired yet, or still merrily suckling at the public teat?



A more detailed rendering of the Utrecht project is here.

Utrecht restores historic canal made into motorway in 1970s, by Daniel Boffey (The Guardian)

Swimmers and pleasure boats gather as Dutch city celebrates reopening of Catharijnesingel

It is being viewed as the correction of a historic mistake. More than 40 years after parts of the canal that encircled Utrecht’s old town were concreted over to accommodate a 12-lane motorway, the Dutch city is celebrating the restoration of its 900-year-old moat.

In an attempt to recast its residents’ relationship with the car, Utrecht’s inner city is again surrounded by water and greenery rather than asphalt and exhaust fumes.

I'm in Love with My Car.

A Twitter user encapsulates: "We need to take radical steps to build more resilient, equitable communities that reverse our climate- destroying, auto-centric land use."

Appointed and elected officials in New Albany insist that their half-measures of the past few years have magically calmed the city's streets.

I simply isn't true, period. Automobile supremacy continues to be the only writ they know, because pay-to-play doesn't work with walkers and cyclists.

If any of them ever make this claim of success to you, look them square in the eye and say, "You lie just like Trump."

Because that's exactly what they're doing -- and worse, as with Trump, they know it.

Slowing the Cars in Austin, by Gabe Colombo (Strong Towns)

... Drivers kill or seriously injure more than 70 people a year on Austin’s roads—nationwide, about 18 pedestrians die every day in traffic crashes—and the design of our roads plays a critical role in what is, by all accounts, a public health crisis. East Yager Lane, where Billy was killed, is about 30 feet wide, and the speed limit is 45 miles per hour. There are no sidewalks.

Traffic fatalities are also deeply inequitable. Black people are nearly twice as likely to be killed by cars while walking than white people, and the fatality rate for Native Americans is nearly five times higher. Lower-income metro areas also have a higher rate of pedestrian crash injuries and fatalities.

The reasons are many: Non-white and low-income Americans are less likely to have access to a private vehicle (which is more expensive to purchase, feed, and maintain) and more often have no choice but to walk for their daily needs. At the same time, streets in neighborhoods of color and low-income neighborhoods are more car-oriented—with more and wider lanes, fewer crosswalks, fewer trees and poorly maintained or nonexistent sidewalks—owing to a legacy of underinvestment. Plus, urban transit systems have historically excluded communities of color and low-income neighborhoods.

In light of this stark reality, Austin’s recent decision to reduce speed limits across the city could not have come at a more appropriate time ... while a reduction of five mph might not seem like much to a driver, it has a significant impact on pedestrian safety. A car is roughly seven times as likely to severely injure a pedestrian when traveling at 35 mph than when traveling at 25. Boston’s recent widespread reduction in speed limits from 30 to 25 mph resulted in a nearly 30-percent reduction in the likelihood that drivers exceeded 35 mph on the city’s streets ...

ON THE AVENUES: In My Merry Oldsmobile.

“C’mon you stupid motherfucker, keep going – fuck that pussy bicycle rider.”

The voice emanating from behind the wheel of the spluttering, battered and duct-taped SUV sounded like a toxic cocktail of bubbling midsummer’s tar, job site mud, finely aged horse manure and industrial solvent.

I’d been casually waved through the intersection at the 4-way stop by the attentive fellow piloting the pickup in front of the SUV, managing to pedal only a few feet before the abrasive vowel movement commenced, punctuated by blasts on the horn, and quite likely to have included murky rim shots off a spittoon had someone thought to install one in the middle of the street.

At any rate, the furious driver passed up the opportunity to turn right and chase me down Culbertson, preferring to continue honking and screaming about those “fucking cunt bicycles” for a long block, until the obscenities became muffled by the tall brick walls of the old Robinson-Nugent building.

True story.

Wait – did I mention that the driver screaming at me was female? Alas, I've always had this effect on the ladies.

---

Welcome back, cyclist!

Less than 20 miles into the recent revival of a very small sliver of my former two-wheeled habit, my aching derriere may have been in pre-season scrimmage mode, but already New Albany’s internally-combusted denizens of non-calmed, automobile-centric streets were in peak mid-season blind rage.

It’s been quite a while, but there were occasions during my previous life on a bike when objects were thrown in my direction, and drivers displayed a nonchalant eagerness to run me off the road. Far worse has happened to others, as in this horrible account of automotive entitlement in an article about the way potential safety improvements are routinely blocked and averted by auto manufacturers.

The Life-Saving Car Technology No One Wants, by David Zipper (CityLab)

“Early in the morning of August 10, 2019, a man in a Dodge Charger drove along Miami’s MacArthur Causeway. Encountering traffic, he swerved onto the shoulder and accelerated to 100 miles per hour — more than double the speed limit. That’s when he slammed into a man riding his bicycle. The force of the impact was so powerful that the rider was decapitated. The driver had been inebriated at the time of the crash, according to police who spent five months investigating the hit-and-run.

“The cyclist’s death that night was one of an estimated 38,800 that occurred on American streets last year. Pedestrians and cyclists accounted for 8,800 of those fatalities — 23% of the total, up from 6,300 in 2010, when they comprised just 17%. During that period, fatalities for automobile occupants fell.

“In other words, America’s roads are getting safer if you’re inside an automobile, and more deadly if you’re outside of one.

Can someone help me understand exactly what it is about access to an automobile that brings out the very worst in people?

Two months ago when the peaceful and powerful Black Lives Matter protests began nightly in Louisville, I lost count of the simply stunning number of times that an on-line diatribe along the lines of “kill them all and let God sort them out” included a snarky reference to Greg Fischer as “Mayor Bike Lane.”

Admittedly, Fischer was flailing, although for polar opposite reasons. Still, just think about it for a moment.

There at the confluence of novel pandemic and historical racism, with fear, loathing and various viciously sociopathic buttons being pushed, ones dating back to the arrival of the first colonists in North America, the perennially weak-minded among us were frantically googling their own points of reference in search of opprobrium to heap on Fischer, and they landed almost immediately on bike lanes, wild-eyed and foaming at the mouth about the way these libtard obstacles to automotive pre-eminence ostensibly add one, maybe even two minutes to a typical trip across town by their car – perhaps even worse, compelling them to occasionally glance away from their mobile devices and pay attention to what they’re doing.

Again, the dulcet tones: “C’mon you stupid motherfucker, keep going – fuck that pussy bicycle rider.”

This is merely one manifestation of automobile supremacy, which not only is a form of imperialism (defined as “the practice, or advocacy of extending power and dofarm-near-me/">minion”), but surely is the last remaining form of blatant imperialism almost entirely absent social stigma.

As a cyclist once noted, “We’ve gotta be perfect. If a negligent driver kills someone, people see it as a necessary evil. But if a cyclist runs a red light, or a scooter hops onto a sidewalk alongside a busy street, we are just jerks driving crazy little vehicles with no regard for the law.”

When Americans settle into their plush sofas on wheels -- all of us, including me -- our assumptions of acceptable behavior change every bit as radically as when we savage people on social media.

Imperialism? Very much so. When I drive, it must be recognized and wrestled to the floorboard every single mile. Such are the depths to which automobile supremacy has smothered us all, even those who know better.

Imperialism ... because after all, space must be seized to accommodate cars at the expense of non-car users. We demand to warehouse our cars on public ground at no cost to ourselves. We expect cheap fuel and will support seemingly limitless violence (foreign wars, domestic economic coercion) in order to get it.

We'll also go to any self-delusional length to characterize this addiction as freedom. The list of destructive behaviors is seemingly endless, and yet we've made automobile supremacy the basis of civilization at the present time.

---

To be sure, the first step toward improving conditions for non-drivers of any stripe (walking, biking, using wheelchairs, etc) would be an attitude adjustment on the part of drivers; with lobotomies too expensive, at least being subject to the sort of peer pressure that precludes most of us from urinating on the produce at the supermarket might be a nice start.

There are laws against the bladder hydration of cauliflower, and we could use more of those, too, as they pertain to driver behavior, but only if governmental officials accompany legislation (far-fetched, I know) with enforcement mechanisms … and yes, pie-in-the-sky hasn’t ever been quite this unlikely.

Come to think of it, there’s no way of knowing for certain that my verbal abuser on 8th Street wasn’t a government employee.

Am I right?

During my brief time returned to the saddle, there has been ample time to ponder the way so many Americans misunderstand the whole notion of a bicycle’s uses and utility. Take Nawbany, as the most convenient and representative example.

To survey the actions (and more importantly, non-actions) taken by municipal higher-ups for the past decade or more is to quickly see that as it pertains to their attitude toward bicycles, it's as if none of them have ever been to a place in America or abroad where people use bicycles to commute and fulfill actual daily tasks (like they'd use a car to achieve), as opposed to riding a bicycle strictly as a recreational conveyance - often, by loading a bicycle onto a bike rack on a vehicle and driving to a place to ride it.

Conversely, in our planet’s genuinely functional bicycle-friendly cities, the idea is to connect one's front door to a safe route to food, drink, shopping and a haircut in addition to accessing the recreational pathway.

Recall that almost all the pragmatic bicycle infrastructure suggested in Jeff Speck’s street grid plan was stripped from the final version. By equipping most of the historic downtown business district with east-west bike lanes, Speck aimed at helping residents living in the more densely populated districts inside the beltway to transport themselves to downtown amenities by bike instead of car.

It’s conceivable that our movers and shakers grasped this intent, although I doubt it. Simple non-comprehension fits Occam’s paradigm far more logically. Regardless, the conscious decision was made to not pursue genuinely multi-modal transport options, pushing bicycles to the recreational periphery of the city.

The most recent triumphant revelation is a plan to extend the Ohio River Greenway via the levee to the expensive little pocket park next to Silver Creek, where people can store their cars as they pretend to fish for toxic aquatic life while smoking cigarettes and drinking bad light beer.

It’d be a quarter-mile of path, maybe, as well as cute, albeit serving no real constructive purpose as it pertains to people who want to ride their bikes to connect from neighborhoods to the center, presumably because any allowance for the latter would inconvenience drivers. It makes no sense whatever, and I wish someone would explain it to me instead of refusing to discuss it.

However, I'm blackballed; dear reader, might you be acquainted with a journalist of the intrepid sort who might ask these questions of the powers that be?

If so, and if the questions actually are asked some sweet day, can you awaken me when the moment arrives?

I’ll be napping over by that 8th Street spittoon, bicycle chained dutifully to my ankle, waiting for that driver to come past again. She's really getting an earful this time.

---

Recent columns:

August 6: ON THE AVENUES: Surrender.

July 30: ON THE AVENUES: Guys.

July 23: ON THE AVENUES: These overdue mask mandates should help us separate the bad actors from the good.

July 16: ON THE AVENUES: Daniil Kharms, Marina Malich, and writing for the drawer about nothing ... pre-Seinfeld.

Pay attention, local theoretical Democrats: "Public Transportation Is a Human Right."

It's a review of James Wilt's book Do Androids Dream of Electric Cars?: Public Transit in the Age of Google, Uber, and Elon Musk.

Everyone in the upper echelons of municipal government should read it.

They won't, though -- will they?

Imagine how far ahead of the curve we'd be if Jeff Speck's street grid plan for downtown had been implemented in full instead of gutted.

Sad. So very sad.

Public Transportation Is a Human Right, by Paris Marx (Jacobin)

For a century our cities have been transformed by the car industry, making way for drivers at the expense of cyclists and pedestrians. A renewed movement for urban public transport is pushing back.

After decades of building new roads and expanding highways, commuters are still losing more time in traffic and their commutes keep getting longer. The evidence shows that adding more roads doesn’t relieve traffic; it simply encourages people to drive more.

That reality seems to finally be sinking in with a growing segment of the American public. There simply isn’t the room to fit more cars on congested roads, and that’s leading to renewed investments in other forms of mobility.

In recent years, ballot measures have been proposed around the United States to expand public transit and other non-auto transportation — and they’ve been very successful. Los Angeles’ Measure M passed with the support of 70 percent of voters in 2016 and will funnel $120 billion into transport projects over the next forty years. It’s not alone. In 2019, nearly 90 percent of transit ballot measures were successful, continuing a growing trend over the past few years of residents voting to raise their own taxes to fund better transit.

But not everyone’s excited about such a future of public transit projects. For the past decade, the tech industry has been adamantly pushing technological enhancements to cars that they promise will solve the congestion, the carbon emissions, and the deaths that, in the US alone, number in the tens of thousands every year and balloon to 1.35 million around the world. But the electric cars, ride-hailing services, and autonomous vehicles that are proposed as our mobility saviors aren’t the silver bullets they’ve been presented to be. In fact, the Kochs have even been financing opposition to transit ballot measures using the prospect of self-driving cars to position transit as outdated.

With transport volumes much lower than usual as a result of the pandemic and growing calls to open streets to cyclists and pedestrians, we face a rare opportunity to start making major changes to our transportation system. James Wilt’s new book Do Androids Dream of Electric Cars?: Public Transit in the Age of Google, Uber, and Elon Musk was published at the perfect time to give us the tools to challenge tech’s arguments for more cars and imagine a better, collective way of organizing our transportation system.

(Subheadings include: Car Tech Won’t Save Us ... Coronavirus Won’t Kill Transit ... Better Transportation for a Better Future)

During the pandemic, people around the world remarked at the clean air in their cities once most of the cars were off the road. Now, polls show people want new restrictions to keep it that way. Similarly, bike shops in the United States, Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom, have reported increased sales as cities around the world are planning to build new bike lanes and give more space to pedestrians — some temporary, but many permanent.

There is a serious shift taking place, and we must seize the opportunity to reclaim our cities from the automobile as much as possible. In 1973, André Gorz wrote that, “After killing the city, the car is killing the car.” It wasn’t dead yet, however, because it had successfully arranged “for the alternatives to disappear, thus making the car compulsory.”

The fight for better transportation should be driven not just by getting rid of the automobile, but, as Wilt writes, it must be “one for democratic control over communities” — of which transit is a key part — and “to build a much more beautiful world.” After the death and devastation wrought by the pandemic, especially in the United States, that’s exactly the kind of vision we need.

Stop it. Stop fluffing INDOT. In fact, f*ck INDOT. Sherman Minton repairs should be deferred for at least a year.

It wouldn't ever be easy, but with the tribulations of COVID-19 and the challenges that independent local businesses in New Albany already have faced, to disrupt access to New Albany in 2021 without us first having the chance to regain a foothold during an ongoing pandemic is sheer bureaucratic insanity.

Automobile supremacy might well be an American religion, but sorry, INDOT is not a God. We needn't worship it. In fact, it probably should be consigned to the dumpster fires: DEFUND INDOT sounds mighty fine to me.

Are the courts a possibility in delaying this vicious kick to the skull by our own presumed state government?

Sherman Minton closures will be limited during construction under plan, by Daniel Suddeath (Hanson's Beige Machine)

After almost two years of conducting public meetings and garnering input, planners of the Sherman Minton Renewal are ready to submit their traffic proposal for the $90 million improvement project.

The recommended plan released today limits full closure of the Sherman Minton Bridge to 54 days out of the estimated 834 days of construction on the bridge, which could begin as early as April.

The full closure days would be limited to nine consecutive days per direction a year and up to a trio of three-day weekends per direction each year of the project. The 54 days of closure will not occur consecutively.

The proposal is an alternative to a full closure of the bridge for the duration of construction— a move that business owners, elected officials and residents warned could have caused devastating effects on New Albany.

“We have taken the public’s input very seriously,” said Sherman Minton Renewal spokeswoman Andrea Brady.

During full closures, Indiana traffic will be detoured via Interstate 265 to Interstate 65 under the plan. Kentucky traffic on I-64 and Interstate 264 will be diverted to the I-65 bridges for Indiana access.

“Naturally during peak traffic periods there’s going to be more traffic congestion but there will be signage in place so people can plan accordingly,” said Brady, as she added there will be “significant communication” during construction to alert the public about any closures or other traffic issues.

The plan will allow for two eastbound and two westbound lanes to remain open for the majority of the project and will keep access ramps open for the bulk of construction. One lane in both directions will be closed throughout construction.

The contractor will be allowed to work 24 hours a day, seven days a week and some of the lanes may be closed nightly during construction for up to 180 nights per calendar year.

Though it’s better than a complete closure of the bridge, Joe Phillips, owner of Pints & Union in downtown New Albany, fears the project will create another burden for businesses that are currently dealing with losses due to the coronavirus ...

"12 Hacks to Turn Your Unfinished Attic Into an Organized Haven."

At Good Housekeeping: Transform your go-to dumping ground into a clutter-free zone.


Is anyone looking?


Good.

PLEASE READ NO FURTHER UNLESS YOU WISH TO CONSIDER A REASONABLE, DISPASSIONATE DISCUSSION ABOUT MULTI-MODAL TRANSIT, ESPECIALLY BICYCLES. THANK YOU.

Now let's talk about the latest greenway extension press release from the municipals, as forwarded by the local chain newspaper: design/article_58768636-b59b-11ea-ac27-fbf8f2c391e9.html" style="font-weight: bold;">New Albany proceeds with next stage of greenway design.

Before you read the pull, know that to have surveyed the goings-on by the municipal higher-ups for the past decade or more is to see that when it comes to their attitude toward bicycles, it's as if none of them have ever been to a place in America or abroad where people use bicycles to commute and achieve actual useful tasks (as they would driving a car), as opposed to using bicycles strictly as recreational conveyances -- often, loading a bike onto a car and TAKING it somewhere else to ride.

In functional bicycle-friendly cities, the idea is to connect one's front door to a safe path to food, drink and a haircut as well as the recreational pathway.

Why do you think almost all the useful bicycle infrastructure was stripped from the Speck plan? The movers and shakers either don't understand, or they do understand and have made the conscious decision not to pursue genuinely multi-modal transport options. I tend to think they simply don't comprehend, because if they did, don't you think reality would reflect just a wee bit of it by now?

Let's read about the Democratic Party's plans for partial modernity.

Basically, the idea is to extend the Greenway to the little pocket park where people can park their cars next to Silver Creek. A quarter-mile, maybe?

It won't serve any constructive purpose as it pertains to people using bikes to connect from neighborhoods to the center, presumably because this would inconvenience drivers.

If there's another reason why they do these things, I wish someone would explain it to me instead of refusing to discuss it.

Note the quote from Adam Dickey about connecting bicycles to Clarksville via projected sidewalks. You know, where bicycles are NOT SUPPOSED TO BE in the first place. They're supposed to be on the street ... where we won't make it safe for people outside their cars. And yet Dickey adds that future plans should include provisions for walkers, not bicycles.

Automobile supremacy has us by the gonads, doesn't it?

 ... “This part called Silver Creek Landing not only expands northward up Silver Creek, but it also opens Silver Creek up to recreational use,” (redevelopment's Josh) Staten said.

Commission member Adam Dickey said the Clarksville Town Council has expressed interest in improving sidewalks along Providence Way, which could further improve safety and accessibility to the greenway.

He added that New Albany’s prior work on the greenway allows the city to explore additional connectivity to the pathway in the corridor.

“This is going to put us in a great position because no one else has moved up to Silver Creek, and I think this puts us in a leadership position,” Dickey said.

New Albany City Councilman Jason Applegate, who is also a member of the commission, emphasized the importance of opening up the greenway to other neighborhoods. He said safety is also a vital component of accessibility, and Dickey added the city should ensure that future roadway design centers around complete streets that allow for pedestrian use.

“We see the greenways being used so I think connectivity is so important,” Applegate said.

Nawbany's ubiquitous used cars? They're "a symptom of having such a high concentration of poverty."

Earlier this week:

Traffic Cluster, Part One: Mt Tabor Road? It's the design. You know, the design we just paid millions ... to design.

Traffic Cluster, Part Two: We'll never resolve traffic issues until "leadership" is willing to lead, not pander.

But just before them, I wrote in reference to statue rectification: "Give 'em time, and we'll have statues of automobiles. I volunteer to be first in line when it comes to bringing those symbols down."

Taken together, these thoughts of pervasive and unaddressed automobile supremacy in Nawbany prompted reader John Q. Curmudgeon (no relation to T. Potable) to write this letter to the editor.

Don't worry. He's real.

Are you?

---

We already have monuments to automobiles in New Albany. Plenty of them. It's doubtful anyone can find another 14.94 square miles in the U.S. that has more ratty little "car lots", car parts stores and other auto related businesses than New Albany, Indiana.

Cheap used cars are for sale, parked on every corner in the town - used “luxury”, “high-end cars” are offered across from a funeral home, on a highway masquerading as a residential street. Another “luxury” car lot is across the street from the YMCA.*

Not a single new car dealership in New Albany - just used cars.

It’s a symptom of having such a high concentration of poverty. Banks make good money on auto loans and lend for them freely (because the car is the loan’s collateral), but not a single new car dealership in New Albany. Not enough money in circulation, not enough people to justify the investment. Sellersburg has new car dealerships, with one-tenth of the number of households in New Albany.

Apparently, most automobiles in New Albany are used and apparently falling apart, barely kept running judging from the number of parts stores and garages.

Auto parts stores are everywhere within New Albany’s small 14 square miles - two auto glass and paint locations, two NAPA parts stores, two O’Reilly Autoparts stores, a hub cap and wheel store, AutoZone Auto Parts, Advance Auto Parts, Bennett's Auto Parts, New Albany Auto Parts & Machine Shop, Bumper to Bumper, Auto Warehouse Inc., Walmart Auto Care Center, Tire Discounters, Big O Tires - and more corner, shade tree mechanic shops.

We don’t notice New Albany’s many monuments to the automobile - because we’ve grown numb to them.

When parking four old cars with “$300 down” written in white shoe polish on their windshields is the “highest and best use” of a high-traffic downtown corner lot, it’s a glaring example that no one values retail and business opportunities in New Albany. Another symptom of having such a high concentration of poverty.

Every article I read regarding the growing restaurant business in New Albany usually includes the phrase “get people across the bridge from Louisville.” There’s a reason. When the little corner car lots go, maybe we’ll see more opportunity for everyone.

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* As to the lot across from the YMCA, reader NC writes: "I closed the lot about 3 years ago when my mom had a stroke. It sat empty for a couple years, the cars that were for sale on it were other lots parking them there or people we didn’t even know parking them there (every once in awhile the guys from the Firestone would sell a car off of it with permission ... it’s a mechanic shop for about the last year. So might want to edit that part, but yea Todd (Coleman) still owns it and rents it to the the owners of the shop. I’ve heard a couple rumors it could be for sale, but I’m not 100%. Could be just rumors."

Traffic Cluster, Part One: Mt Tabor Road? It's the design. You know, the design we just paid millions ... to design.

We might blame it on the pandemic, but COVID-19 did not cause ongoing issues with New Albany's streets. It merely exposed the design flaws.

When there hasn't been congestion -- as on Mt. Tabor during construction-related diversions -- there has been mayhem, both there and amid the downtown street grid, with much speeding and bad driving behavior.

You see, it's the design. You know, the design we just paid millions ... to design, whether Mt. Tabor or the thoroughly botched two-way reversion: City Hall's "20% Of Two-Way Usefulness Solution."

But you see, anyone with a grounding in modernity always knew that speeding primarily owes to design. That's why the Mt. Tabor neighborhood protested from the start that modernizing the road would make things worse, because they reasoned correctly that the redesign would, in fact, lead to conditions making excessive speed more likely, and attracting more users.

The city pushed it through because it had the matching funds, because the pay-for-play already was transacted, and -- well -- because of sheer ego. Because it COULD. And now even the chief of police says that design is responsible for speeding.

The design.

You know, the design we just paid millions ... to design.

Engineer Summers speaks for City Hall; why, our powers that be are powerless to do anything about these annual traffic increases (which were invited by the speeding-friendly "new" design), and so they must continue forever adding even more lanes, roundabouts, and whatever else is deemed necessary -- by some of the mayor's principal campaign donors -- to make more work room for added traffic ... and by doing so, assuring there'll be even more traffic (induced demand, folks).

Don't look at me. YOU'RE the ones who keep voting for these people.

Mount Tabor Road traffic again a topic of discussion, by Daniel Suddeath (Tom May Insta-Pulpit)

 ... That project has been a contentious issue between the city and residents of the neighborhood. The roundabout idea was scrapped before the first phase of improvements were launched in 2019 by the city after a public meeting when several residents spoke out against the proposal.


Summers countered that the traffic congestion is a preview of what the road will look like in 10 years if nothing is done.

“This will present a problem for the intersection of Mount Tabor and Klerner as traffic continues to grow,” Summers said, citing a Kentucky Regional Planning and Development Agency study that suggests traffic will increase in the region by about 1 percent annually.

Politicians paint murals, but protesters make genuine change and real history.

Give 'em time, and we'll have statues of automobiles. I volunteer to be first in line when it comes to bringing those symbols down.

Go Ahead and Destroy That Racist Statue (and Then the System Too), by Jillian Steinhauer (The Nation)

While politicians are painting murals in lieu of undertaking real change, protesters are making history by pulling down symbols of white supremacy.

On June 9, after a week and a half of large, daily Black Lives Matter protests in New York City that began as part of a national uprising in response to the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that he was taking action: He would name a street in each of the five boroughs after Black Lives Matter and paint the name of the movement on those roads. The decision came days after Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser received widespread attention for turning a section of 16th Street NW across from the White House into Black Lives Matter Plaza, with the phrase painted in 50-foot yellow letters on the pavement. Meanwhile, a short way down the National Mall, Democratic members of Congress, most of them white, showed up at the Capitol on June 8 wearing kente stoles. They knelt for eight minutes and 46 seconds—the same amount of time that Officer Derek Chauvin knelt on Floyd’s neck—before entering their chambers to introduce the Justice in Policing Act of 2020.

Politicians around the country are performing. They’re trying to show their constituents that they’re working on the problem of white supremacy in ways big and small. They’re using gestures to attempt to broadcast a message—but one that is ultimately hollow. As Shannon Keating put it recently in BuzzFeed News, it amounts to “performative absurdity from powerful people who’ve long avoided real accountability for causing or excusing Black suffering” ...

Except Nawbany: "After devoting more than a century of planning and engineering effort to the movement and storage of cars above all other considerations, U.S. cities have suddenly, temporarily shifted priorities."

"While it's so far only a temporary change, the sudden popularity of al fresco streets—a term we are using until a more universally accepted term comes along—presents undeniable evidence that some things in the United States are, for now at least, more important than allowing for the automobile's every possible convenience."

Where's our new redevelopment director in all this? Shouldn't we be talking about al fresco streets in New Albany, too?

Josh Staten came to us well recommended. He knows his urbanism. But here's the thing. Jeff Gahan's campaign finance pay-for-play patronage scheme depends in large measure on contractors who do roads, and paving ... and automobile supremacy.

I'm still hoping Josh can turn that around. But how much can he do when the boss man (a) is clueless, and (b) depends on cars for political succor?

Maybe when Gahan's gone. Maybe then, we can be a real city.

Cities Are Suddenly a Little Less Car-Centric, by James Brasuell (Planetizen)

After devoting more than a century of planning and engineering effort to the movement and storage of cars above all other considerations, U.S. cities have suddenly, temporarily shifted priorities.

... The sudden proliferation of al fresco streets marks a substantial advancement of the cause represented by those scattered few examples of anti-car political success. We shouldn't discount the political achievement, however fleeting, of this unprecedented shift in the balance of political power. The automobile could still end up being the long-term victor in the post-pandemic reality to come. But for now, we are witnessing history.

To create an al fresco street, politicians must legislatively approve the removal of regulations and other obstacles for outdoor operation—of which, there are many (again, the car has been king for over a century). Preceding interventions—complete streets, open streets, shared streets, tactical urbanism, play streets, slow streets, parklets, Park(ing) Day, and Better Block—have tested some of the concepts of a post-car retrofit. Variations on those previous experiments are visible in some of the examples of al fresco streets that have emerged so far.

Seattle's "Stay Healthy Streets": You can't even IMAGINE any of this ever occurring to Jeff Gahan, can you?

No, it can't even be imagined.

Consider this: Gahan's belated embrace of public art for the parking garage has resulted in a three-story-high Freudian anchor seal and gigantic paintings of automobiles. 

There are, and always have been, people near Gahan who actually do "get it." But in Nawbany, you can't keep it (your job) without ditching any practical urban aptitude that runs contrary to campaign finance's pay-to-play circle of remuneration.

Too bad. Some of them might have amounted to something. All they have to look forward to now is a lifetime of employment as bootlicking functionaries, maintaining Dear Leader's automobile supremacy until retirement.

Seattle to bar traffic from 20 miles of streets so residents can exercise, bike, by Kaelan Deese (The Hill)

Seattle to bar traffic from 20 miles of streets so residents can exercise, bike

Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan (D) announced Thursday that the city plans to permanently bar 20 miles of roads from car traffic to leave room for people to use bikes and walk.

According to a city spokesperson, the streets would be closed for thru-traffic only, allowing residents to still access their homes using vehicles and delivery companies to continue services.

The measure is part of a larger initiative that began in April called Stay Healthy Streets, a temporary relief program providing more space for residents to leave their houses while practicing social distancing guidelines amid the coronavirus pandemic, according to a press release.

"Safe and Healthy Streets are an important tool for families in our neighborhoods to get outside, get some exercise and enjoy the nice weather," Durkan said.

The Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) said that areas chosen to be closed from car traffic include places with routes that connect foot traffic with essential services and food stops, as well as streets with low car ownership, according to a release.

"We've witnessed a 57% drop in vehicle traffic volumes accessing downtown Seattle during Governor Inslee's Stay Healthy, Stay Home order," SDOT said. "Finding new and creative ways, like Stay Healthy Streets, to maintain some of these traffic reductions as we return to our new normal is good for the planet, but is also good for our long-term fight against COVID-19."

Part of the initiative includes building better bike infrastructure such as bike lanes to improve mobility around the city and help reduce pollution in the process.

The Seattle Bicycle Advisory Board strongly supported the measures Durkan announced Thursday.

"All these actions together will help Seattle come back as a safer, healthier, and more climate friendly city," the board said in the release.

"The coronavirus shutdowns are making more obvious a pre-existing epidemic of reckless street design."

A related story yesterday:

The future of work, and of commuting to work, surely will be different.

It should surprise no one that in New Albany, a political process currently being held hostage by mayor and city council president has no room for responsiveness on ANY matter of importance, much less the perennially abused street grid.

I doubt their automobile centrism has abated with quarantine. We'll see. My own period of detachment from involvement with public affairs originally was slated to expire on June 30.

We'll see about THAT, too. Let's have a look at genuine leadership out in Oakland.

Drivers Not Wanted on Oakland’s ‘Slow Streets’, by Laura Bliss (CityLab)

The California city isn’t the first to experiment with car restrictions in the coronavirus pandemic, but its plan to discourage drivers is the most extensive.

Last week, Oakland, California, announced a bold answer to shelter-in-place coronavirus claustrophobia: To create more outdoor space and safer corridors for essential travel by foot or bike, the city would restrict access to vehicles on nearly 74 miles of city street — about 10% of the city’s street network.

“In this unprecedented moment we must do everything we can to ensure the safety and well-being of all families across our city,” stated Mayor Libby Schaaf. “Closing roads means opening up our city.”

The “slow streets” initiative, which began on Saturday and will roll out in four segments through the duration of the coronavirus emergency, comes in response to citizen concerns about overcrowded conditions in parks and on sidewalks during the coronavirus lockdown. It’s not really a “closure,” despite the mayor’s phrasing: Emergency vehicles like police cars, fire trucks and ambulances are still permitted to enter these new pedestrian corridors, as are delivery vehicles and residential traffic. In fact, no drivers will be ticketed if they do drive on these streets.

The change is mostly a firm psychological nudge, said Warren Logan, the director of mobility policy and interagency relations in the Oakland mayor’s office. Confronted by a pair of traffic signs and a barricade blocking one lane, drivers now have to think twice about entering these streets. Many will consider taking a different route. And all will hopefully drive more mindfully when they enter a slow-streets zone — an increasingly important concern in cities where the relative absence of traffic has inspired a wave of speeding violations. “When they do turn into the street, they do it carefully,” Logan said.

After a week in action, Oakland officials say the streets are working as planned — no collisions, no reported instances of unsafe gathering, and more families able to move (and dance) at spacious distances. As if out of an earlier era, small children are riding bikes in the middle of the street without their parents needing to worry. “This is an opportunity to remember that these are our streets, not just streets for cars,” Logan said.

The same flawed HWC Engineering campaign donations-meet-street grid bait 'n' switch that wasn't working prior to the pandemic hasn't grown any more sensible with sheltering at home. It was crap then, and so it remains. 

Have Coronavirus Shutdowns Prompted an Epidemic of Reckless Driving? by Daniel Herriges (Strong Towns)

Reports from many cities indicate a surge in aggressive speeding, and with it, automobile crashes. The statistics are remarkable and alarming in light of how much traffic itself has declined, with many businesses closed and residents sheltering at home ...

... The most common tendency I've seen in reporting of this phenomenon is to blame "reckless driving." In other words, it's just that people who have sociopathic and destructive urges are out there on the empty roads playing Ricky Bobby and indulging them, to tragic effect. Is that the whole story?

This pat answer is consistent with our societal bias toward always talking about traffic violence in terms of individual behavior: either it was just a tragic accident, or the people involved should have been paying more attention. Mainstream media rarely interrogate how street design induces drivers to behave in certain ways. Yet we've written about this again and again on Strong Towns, because the evidence is clear: when you design streets to make high speeds comfortable, you make tragedy statistically inevitable.

Over 40,000 Americans die in traffic in a normal year. The number of pedestrians alone killed by U.S. drivers from 2008 to 2017 averages out to one every 1 hour and 46 minutes. If we're appalled by the level of carnage on our roads while most of us are sheltering in place, we should certainly be appalled by the level of carnage the rest of the time. If we think there's an epidemic of reckless driving right now, it's just a continuation of the epidemics of reckless driving that we witnessed in America in 2019, and 2018, and 2017, et cetera. The status quo isn't anything to want to return to here.

The coronavirus shutdowns are making more obvious a pre-existing epidemic of reckless street design.

Democrat John Gilkey reveals himself to be a drooling automobile-centric Luddite. That's just too bad, isn't it?

Stay strong, Clarksville. Redesign Brown's Station Way for safety and modernity, and implement this street grid reform plan.

See, here's a positive comment to add to John Gilkey's purportedly universal negative reactions. But don't expect me to help you grease your knob, John. Can't say I like your stick shift quite that much.

The onetime journalist Gilkey well knows how to work a crowd of mouth-breathing car fetishists. Heroically making love to both your vehicles and his, John has opted for the high-speed populism of the eight-cylinder gas-guzzler, while still ridiculously posturing as a "liberal" in matters of state and national importance.

Don't we deserve the same consistency locally, John, not easy potshots at roundabouts, which you know will sell like Mountain Dew to the motorists whose sole consideration is to pass through your town quickly?



Gilkey displays not only ignorance as it pertains to street grid modernity, but political hypocrisy; then again, we already knew hypocrisy isn't restricted to Republicans.

A Biden guy, eh? Or maybe Bloomberg.

Let's just hope those in Clarksville who get it will do it.

GILKEY OP-ED: Road project takes wrong turn in the News&Bune

Clarksville has taken a wrong turn with its Brown’s Station Way road project. Spending just under $17 million to solve problems that don’t exist is the wrong course of action in my opinion.

I represent Clarksville’s 2nd District on the Town Council and serve on the town’s Redevelopment Commission in addition to the Plan Commission and the town’s Technical Review Committee, so I have a reasonably good idea of what is happening in town. Since the proposed road project was first unveiled last year, I have heard nothing but negative comments about the venture. To paraphrase a colloquialism, I could count the number of positive comments I have received on one hand and have enough fingers left to open a greased doorknob.

The project proposes turning a major traffic artery through town into a residential 2-lane street with a 35 mile-an-hour speed limit, interjecting two roundabouts, removing the overpass at Brown’s Station Way and Lewis and Clark Parkway and replacing it with an at-grade traffic light-controlled intersection, and replacing the pedestrian overpass near Randolph Avenue with a profoundly upscaled crossing.

In my mind, the project is an absurd expenditure of money to solve problems that mostly do not exist ...

A hilarious day of automobile supremacist anguish as Clarksville vows to put Brown's Station Way on a road diet.

Making the yokels SCREAM.

Better late than never.

This Brown's Station Way lane reduction project is going to have an excellent supporting effect on our ongoing efforts to keep pass-through drivers on the interstates where they belong, and off our city streets in New Albany.

Fine work, Clarksville. I don't recall meeting Mike Mustain, but in this first sentence he states the fact of the matter with uncommon clarity. This project can't begin soon enough for me, and the more roundabouts, the better.

"Ultimately, Brown Station Way is a town street, not an interstate, and as such should not be a dividing roadway which separates Clarksville."

Yep. As Bluegill noted elsewhere, it's a step in the right direction. Drivers needn't worry; they'll still be coddled like little babies, just a little bit less often than before.

Officials approve plan to redesign Brown's Station Way in Clarksville (WDRB)

Clarksville's Redevelopment Commission voted 3-2 in favor of the planned redesign Thursday, according to a news release. The revamp calls for narrowing the cut through between New Albany and Clarksville down from four lanes to two, according to previous reporting. It also calls for dropping the the speed limit from 45 mph to 35 mph and would also eliminate or change intersections at Emery Crossing, Leuthart Drive and Clark Boulevard.

"We see a growing movement in cities throughout the world to stem the usage of cars and close streets to unmitigated traffic."

At the Modacity page at Facebook.

"My country is too big and spread out for bikes.”

A THIRD of all trips in America are one mile or less. HALF are three miles or less. The large majority are driven.

The potential for transformation is huge. But only if we stop making excuses and start making space for cycling.

We could be doing so much more in New Albany. But we're far too stupid and cowardly for that.

Why Car-Free Streets Will Soon Be the Norm, by Brooks Rainwater (CityLab)

In cities like New York, Paris, Rotterdam, and soon San Francisco, car-free streets are emerging amid a growing movement.

When asked what they like most about a city they have visited, almost no one answers: “The cars whizzing by on the streets.” Cultural attractions, the people we meet, walking through the city and gazing at plazas, buildings, and places—these are the things that make a city unique.

What if there was a way to get more of what we all like and less of the noise and congestion we don’t? Many cities are working towards that goal, by closing major streets to traffic and opening them up to people.

Cities have limited space, and how it is allocated is tremendously important for people. The denser a place, the dearer each square foot is. Yet all over the world, cities were retrofitted to accommodate cars, giving them an outsized portion of urban space and limiting the area in which people could walk, sit at cafes, or play games with friends.

Many cities in America are newer than those in other parts of the world; most were born before cars but expanded tremendously afterwards. This wasn’t the case in Europe, where centuries of settlement made it difficult for the continent to fully succumb to the automobile. In the postwar era, European cities could have followed America’s lead in designing around cars. Most, however, made very different choices.

The geometry of space shouldn’t favor one very large mode of transportation over others that need room to grow and flourish ...

NAC's New Albany "Person of the Year" for 2019 is Dear Leader's pervasive, relentless Automobile Supremacy.

It’s time once again for NA Confidential to select New Albany’s "Person of the Year." As in 2018, there'll be no run-ups and time-wasting teasers, although our basic definition remains intact, as gleaned so long ago from Time.

Person of the Year (formerly Man of the Year) is an annual issue of the United States news magazine Time that features and profiles a person, couple, group, idea, place, or machine that "for better or for worse ... has done the most to influence the events of the year."

Given the outcome of the 2019 municipal election, with the incumbent mayor Jeff Gahan winning a third consecutive term for the first time since C. Pralle Erni in the 1950s, the conventional wisdom suggests that Gahan -- currently an unchallenged, dominant figure in terms of accumulated power and authority -- would easily win the title of "Person of the Year."

Maybe in a milquetoast milieu awash in donor dollars, but all I can say to this is "Fuck a bunch o'that."

Rather, let's look at the prime beneficiary of the past eight years of pay-to-stewardship, Gahan-style. What do the following signature Gahan projects all have in common?

• River Run splash pad
• Silver Street pleasure dome
• Cannon Acres luxury doggie park
• Roadway corridor expenditures (Grant Line, Mt. Tabor, McDonald Lane, State Street)
• Summit Springs hilltop chain orgy
• Reisz Mahal opulent HQ
• Downtown grid "improvement" project

Answer: They all promote automobile centrism/supremacy at the expense of other users, whether those on foot, riding bicycles or preferring mobility options like public transportation.

They all came from Gahan with illusory promises to the contrary, which were little more than bait 'n' switch window dressing for the driver-fluffing floor show.

As traffic speeds increase, errant drivers go unpunished and sharrow symbols somehow fail to protect, Gahan has seen to it that the car stays king in Nawbany, and all other street and roadway users remain second-class citizens -- and he'll continue lying about it until the day comes when he finally goes away.

However, there is a certain irony to Gahan's love for our cars. The extended period of the Sherman Minton bridge's repairs and ensuing traffic disruptions will constitute the first serious challenges to the mayor's "Wizard of Bling" stewardship during eight years of cruise control, for which he'll be woefully unprepared and forced to cooperate with Republicans for any semblance of relief.

It will and it won't be hilarious, simultaneously.

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Previous winners:

• 2018 ... Jeff Gahan's Money Machine
• 2017 ... #MeToo -- the NA silence breakers
• 2016 ... Chloe Allen
• 2015 ... New Albany property tax payers
• 2014 ... Heroic Non-Incentivized Downtown Developers
• 2013 ... (tie) Houndmouth and "Quality of Life"
• 2012 ... Bill "Slumlord" Allen
• 2011 ... The Sherman Minton Bridge

"As a rule of thumb, places create wealth. Non-places consume wealth."

The very concept of sprawl is pre-determined by available space. No space, no sprawl. It leads to a larger point, about place versus non-place.

My, how I detest auto-erotic automobile supremacy.

Visualizing Place vs. Non-Place, by Daniel Herriges (Strong Towns)

It started with an actual, attention-grabbing point. Then, as is the way of all things Internet, it became a snarky meme. As is also the way of all things Internet, the meme has more to it than meets the eye.

A few years ago, our good friend Steve Mouzon (author of The Original Green) shared this graphic on his blog: a juxtaposition of the Renaissance-era core of Florence, Italy with a single freeway interchange in Atlanta, Georgia. It has made the rounds repeatedly in various urbanist and transportation circles ever since.

Mouzon’s graphic (above) is intended to make a point about the gargantuan amount of land consumed by automobile infrastructure, particularly when it’s intended for high-speed driving. Speed requires wider turn radii, wider lanes, wider medians and shoulders, and buffer space to separate people and buildings from that fast, deadly traffic. The result: the same land area that could accommodate a bustling urban district of tens of thousands (Florence in 1425 had an estimated population of 60,000) is easily consumed by a single interchange.

Supersize that to the scale of a metro area like Atlanta’s, with all of its similar freeways and subsidiary feeder stroads, and you have a place where the actual destinations people want to get to are pushed so far apart by all this road space that it becomes inconceivable to travel between them without a car—necessitating even more land-hogging car infrastructure, in a vicious cycle.

Whatever “human scale” is—one imagines medieval Florence qualifies—it sure ain’t our modern highways ...

Simply stated, "Cars Are Death Machines."

To repeat: Car-centrism, or if you will "automobile supremacy," not only is a form of imperialism. It is perhaps the last remaining form of imperialism almost entirely absent social stigma.

When we get behind a steering wheel -- all of us, including me -- our assumptions of acceptable behavior change every bit as radically as when we savage people on social media.

Imperialism? Very much so.

Space must be seized to accommodate cars to the expense of non-car users. We expect to warehouse cars on public ground at no cost to ourselves. We demand cheap fuel and will support limitless violence (foreign wars, domestic economic coercion) in order to get it. We'll go to any length to characterize this addiction as freedom. The list of destructive behavior is seemingly endless, and yet we've made automobile supremacy the basis of civilization at the present time.

And then there's that other factor, because cars are death machines, and we seem to like it that way. How "freedom" fits into this dichotomy remains a complete mystery to me.

Cars Are Death Machines. Self-Driving Tech Won’t Change That.

By Allison Arieff (New York Times)

Cars are death machines. Pedestrian fatalities in the United States have increased 41 percent since 2008; more than 6,000 pedestrians were killed in 2018 alone. More than 4,000 American kids are killed in car crashes every year – I am thankful every day my niece wasn’t one of them.

Straight to the conclusion.

I’m not so naïve to think we can get rid of cars altogether, but we have so many tools to eliminate traffic-related injuries and fatalities right now. Banning all passenger auto-driving vehicles above a certain weight and front grill height would be a great start. Other solutions run the gamut from the quick and easy fixes — like reducing speed limits, eliminating right turns on red, building protected bike lanes and instituting congestion pricing — to major and necessary commitments like funding new transit projects (upgrading, maintaining and expanding existing transit systems) and rethinking land use to encourage walkable development rather than sprawl.

We can all commit to driving less, which reduces both CO2 emissions and the potential for crashes. We need to be as defensive about crosswalks and bike lanes as drivers are about their cars (and where we believe we are entitled to park them).

Until then, the streets will belong to the death machines.

Here in "walkable" Nawbany, our grandiose Reisz Mahal won't even have a Main Street entry portal, so make sure and bring your car.

That's right, we're spending millions to remodel a building that won't have a Main Street entrance. Be sure and enter with your car, to the rear.

But please don't mention "public art," because it could get far worse.

ON THE AVENUES: Socialists for Seabrook, because we desperately need a new beginning in New Albany.