#GahanSafe: All the push-button "walk" signals for crossing Spring at Pearl are defective, and have been for five months to a year.

Way back in March, I pointed out that one "beg button" (push-button crossing signal) on each post at each corner of the intersection of Spring and Pearl was not functional.

Why does Team Gahan always pee on pedestrians?

In New Albany, push button crosswalk signals are not placebos. Walkers actually must push the "beg button" to receive a safe (often a facetious term) signal to cross. If the button malfunctions, there'll be no signal -- ever.

Even in March, it had been this way for a while, with at least two of them broken as far back as September, 2015. Now we've gone through almost an entire summer-season Bicentennial Park concert series cycle with nothing done to correct the problem.

We cannot know if the push-button crosswalk buttons work when so many of them are broken.

It is almost always the cities with push-button crossings that need the most help ... push-buttons almost always mean that the automobile dominates, as they are typically installed in conjunction with a new signal timing in which crossing times are shorter and less frequent.

Specifically, the push-buttons for crossing Spring both north and south on both sides of Pearl Street do not work. This morning I took the time to test each one and to watch. It is physically impossible for a pedestrian to get a "walk" signal crossing Spring Street at this intersection. It has been impossible for at least five months, and probably far longer.

Pictured are the push-buttons that are defective.

To repeat what I wrote in March:

If Jeff Gahan isn't going to do anything substantive to make New Albany a walkable city, can't he just say so aloud, for attribution, and free us from the pain of watching him prevaricate?

Any suggestion he makes to the contrary is being disproved every single day on real city streets, where nothing is being done to indicate any serious intent to improve walkability, and plenty is being done to discourage it. There's only one honest way to conclude these thoughts:

Mr. Mayor, as it pertains to walkability, just shit or get off the pot.

You're embarrassing the city by making private promises constantly contradicted by public indifference -- by your bizarre insistence that you're making omelettes without breaking eggs. Even your own people know it's a shell game.

Join me for an actual walk some day, and I'll show you exactly how urban walking works in real life, as opposed to the fantasyland bunker you prefer inhabiting. The same offer goes for your minions.

Do any of you walk downtown, ever?

Why does Team Gahan always pee on pedestrians?

It began in September, 2015, with this observation: We cannot know if the push-button crosswalk buttons work when so many of them are broken.

Jeff Speck, who once authored a walkability study for New Albany -- a document now being depleted, one precious page at a time, as toilet paper in Jeff Gahan's executive washroom -- is quoted here on the topic of push-button crosswalk signals: How Push-to-Walk reduces the quality of walkable neighborhoods.

It is almost always the cities with push-button crossings that need the most help ... push-buttons almost always mean that the automobile dominates, as they are typically installed in conjunction with a new signal timing in which crossing times are shorter and less frequent. Far from empowering walkers, the push button turns them into second-class citizens; pedestrians should never have to ask for a light.

And boy, does the auto dominate in New Albany.

In New Albany, push button crosswalk signals are not placebos. Walkers actually must push the "beg button" to receive a safe (often a facetious term) signal to cross. If the button malfunctions, there'll be no signal -- ever.

Not only do push buttons turn pedestrians into second-class citizens; broken push buttons surely deter the notion of a pleasant walk just as effectively as sidewalk parking, and other defaults wherein the sidewalk always is blocked first, not a parking space or a street lane.

"I've devoted my life as a social worker to people with developmental disabilities, and can't even walk with them in NA if they are in a wheelchair or have gait issues."

Below are photos taken on Monday morning, March 28, at the intersection of one-way Pearl Street and one-way Spring Street. It's the epicenter of downtown, quite close to where Bob Caesar never imagined a person walking from the Elks Club to his jewelry store to buy a diamond.

There are a total of eight push button signals, two on each corner. The ones pictured below are broken. In fact, one is broken on each corner. At least two of these have been broken for months. They're not the only ones downtown which are disabled, but at no other corner equipped with push buttons is traffic so constantly hazardous owing to drivers increasing speed to run beat red lights.

Note that the issue of malfunctioning push buttons doesn't address the situation at intersections like W 1st and Main, or Bank and Main, where nothing -- zero, zilch, nada -- is in place to slow traffic such that walkers can cross the street safely.

You'll note that throughout the period since the release of the Speck walkability study, Team Gahan has been careful to couch its public pronouncements about the future of street grid reform, of which there have been almost none, as being entirely devoted to making traffic safer.

Reams of evidence from across America and the world point to the flaws of this mode of "thinking," and provide abundant proof that had walkability been pursued first, before the other expensive projects pursued by the current administration, it would have been like a dose of steroids, enhancing investment and not devaluing it.

As it stands, there's a toxic stew under preparation.

• An auto-centric street grid
• Rebirth of downtown small business
• Poor lighting
• Inconsistent sidewalk maintenance
• Refusal to enforce ordinances (should there be sidewalk parking, ever?)
• Antediluvian municipal gatekeepers

Quite literally, multiple accidents are waiting to happen, as we prioritize one bright shiny object after another.

If Jeff Gahan isn't going to do anything substantive to make New Albany a walkable city, can't he just say so aloud, for attribution, and free us from the pain of watching him prevaricate?

Any suggestion he makes to the contrary is being disproved every single day on real city streets, where nothing is being done to indicate any serious intent to improve walkability, and plenty is being done to discourage it. There's only one honest way to conclude these thoughts:

Mr. Mayor, as it pertains to walkability, just shit or get off the pot. 

You're embarrassing the city by making private promises constantly contradicted by public indifference -- by your bizarre insistence that you're making omelettes without breaking eggs. Even your own people know it's a shell game.

Join me for an actual walk some day, and I'll show you exactly how urban walking works in real life, as opposed to the fantasyland bunker you prefer inhabiting. The same offer goes for your minions.

Do any of you walk downtown, ever?

Team Gahan's walkability gap (4 of many): "We’re all apparently okay with dead pedestrians as collateral damage for ensuring cars can travel quickly."

Team Gahan's walkability gap (3 of 3): "A Playbook on the Politics of Better Streets." WE NEED IT.

Team Gahan's walkability gap (2 of 3): "Is your city pedestrian unfriendly"? YEP.

Team Gahan's walkability gap (1 of 3): "If you want to make a walkable city, you need to do the little things well." WE DON'T.

Two weekend posts about Team Gahan's arrogant auto-centrism.

In case you missed these to posts over the weekend ...

"I've devoted my life as a social worker to people with developmental disabilities, and can't even walk with them in NA if they are in a wheelchair or have gait issues."

In New Albany's case, I'd recommend that every elected official and appointed department chief be placed in a wheelchair, and required to spend a day attempting to navigate city streets. It might finally impel comprehension, though it's doubtful.

The inequality of sidewalks? It goes much further than this in New Albany.

Of course, at the Break Wind Lofts at Duggins Flats building site itself, wheelchair access has been disrupted on all sides for an entire city block, without any wayfinding signage, and without a protected pedestrian lane along Spring and Elm, although both streets are one-way, and generally unsafe for walkers to cross in the almost complete absence of crosswalks.

ADA compliance in New Albany? You can hear the guffaws at the Roadhouse.

"I've devoted my life as a social worker to people with developmental disabilities, and can't even walk with them in NA if they are in a wheelchair or have gait issues."

Yesterday ...

The inequality of sidewalks? It goes much further than this in New Albany.

Today ...

The article linked below concludes with this sentence: "A lot of the problems can be solved by doing something no computer can: just walking around."

In New Albany's case, I'd recommend that every elected official and appointed department chief be placed in a wheelchair, and required to spend a day attempting to navigate city streets. It might finally impel comprehension, though it's doubtful.

By the way, the quote on the meme above comes from a real social worker, who has been there and done that.

Here's the article, followed by views of New Albany's eternal and maddening inconsistencies.

You Can't Achieve Vision Zero If Pedestrians Don't Come First, by Eric Jaffe (City Lab)

From the article.

 ... The sign asks pedestrians to use the sidewalk across the street. That seems innocuous enough at a glance, but in practice what it’s doing is either pushing people into the middle of the street, where they’ll be in closer contact with moving traffic, or generally disrupting their route and making it less pleasant to walk. It chooses this approach rather than establishing a temporary walkway on the same side of the street—even if that means inconveniencing cars by reducing lane width or (gasp!) removing curb parking on the opposite side.

A policy that truly prioritized vulnerable street users would do something along the lines of what Seattle recently did—making sidewalk closures an absolute “last resort.”

Our sidewalk work: Why a warning sign here, on 5th Street ...

 ... but not here ...

 ... or here?

Finally, as we've pointed out more than once, handicapped sidewalk travelers have been bumped entirely from the Break Wind block. Their alternative? Cross the street without a crosswalk, and with nothing to slow the one-way traffic, or go out into the parking lanes.

Jeff Gahan's crack team of suburbanites just plain doesn't get it, eh?

"Better access": City boldly affirms street grid reform with 2-way conversion of E. 5th, then heads to the Roadhouse for some ice cold longnecks.

On the very same day that David Duggins, the city's presumed economic development director, informed a room filled with downtown merchants that they needn't be interested in piddling infrastructure concerns when the customarily disjointed, uncoordinated "special event this weekend" marketing efforts aided scantily (if at all) by his crack team of One Southern Indiana oligarchy-fluffing veterans seem to be going so very swimmingly, there was a Board of Public Works meeting.

Downtown business owner: "Without the city itself doing more, we can kiss (revitalization) goodbye."

After reciting the pledge of allegiance to what remains of the local Democratic Party while facing a portrait of Walt Disney, a lapdog board displaying no visible signs of fatigue following a physically demanding weekend of prayer breakfasts approved an earthshaking street reform that caused puzzled observers to wonder: "Why pay Jeff Speck when they can retrofit East 5th Street with some spray paint and leftover stop signs?"

Nov 18 New Albany approves two-way conversion for East Fifth Street, by Daniel Suddeath (N and T)

NEW ALBANY — One way versus two-way streets has been a hot topic of discussion in New Albany over the past year.

Though not on as large of a scale as what some have called for, the city moved Tuesday to convert one street to two-way traffic.

To coincide with improvements made to East Main Street, the New Albany Board of Public Works and Safety agreed to switch East Fifth Street to two-way traffic from Culbertson Avenue to Main Street.

City Engineer Larry Summers suggested the conversion in order to “better provide access to the businesses, clubs and residences along E. Fifth Street.”

The three-member board of works — which is appointed by the mayor — approved the request without much discussion.

Larry surely did not intend to do so, but he has nonetheless contributed yet another mysterious phrase for examination by those of us who genuinely care about words, their meaning, and the primacy of ideas: "Better access" now takes its place alongside "quality of life" and "public safety" as concepts the Gaha administration is utterly incapable of defining coherently amid their all too frequent use.

But the entertainment doesn't stop there.

Main Street is already a two-way route, and the bulk of improvements to the road including the addition of grassy medians were recently completed ...

The board took under advisement a $289,141 change order for the work Tuesday.

Wes Christmas, an engineer with the city-hired firm Clark-Dietz, said the additional costs were for the removal of an abandoned railroad track discovered during construction, added paving expenses and the complete reconstruction of Main Street between Vincennes Street and 16th Street.

What the hell. A few hundred thousand here, a few more there ... and then there is Mr. Christmas, who contributes a wonderful aside.

Christmas said he reviewed the change order with city legal staff “ad nauseam”, but added he had no issue with the board of works taking extra time to review the proposal.

Really, Wes?

Ad nauseam? I'll give you a better usage than that:

"City officials and Clark-Dietz have insisted ad nauseam that the Main Street Project would achieve its desired ends, but they lied through their collective sets of teeth."

Take it away, JeffG.

You gotta love the Main Street Project. City officials promised commercial trucks would not be diverted to other streets and that traffic would slow down. A couple million dollars later, trucks have been diverted and the remaining traffic is speeding along as usual. In New Albany, that's batting a thousand.

Maybe it's time we all checked into those U-Haul prices -- or a treatment facility.