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.

Ghost Town.

I played the "I have a joke" game on Twitter.

Kindly note that Speck, who once designed a street grid for New Albany, only to find most of it dropped into the garbage bin, "liked" my reply.

That's all I need to say about the topic, isn't it?

Particularly in Nawbany: "Why We Need to Dream Bigger Than Bike Lanes."

"We can’t let car companies again shape the vision for our future; if we don’t dream big now, we may never get the chance again. Let’s let’s elevate a different kind of transportation infrastructure that recognizes universal basic mobility as a human right and brings it to every man, woman, and child. If we don’t think of micromobility as the serious solution to a whole host of societal and environmental problems, then who will?"

I'll never forget, back when we were asking only that City Hall implement the entirety of Jeff Speck's street grid network proposals -- which in addition to calling for a reversion to two-way traffic prioritized a state-of-the-art downtown bicycle network -- these potentially transformative improvements were blithely characterized as outlandish by Greg Phipps (councilman) and Greg Roberts (ESNA). Modernity was cackled out of the room as going way too far for primeval New Gahanians, not just by these two, but by other "progressives" who seldom are.

By their unwillingness to do the homework, to try to understand exactly what Speck was aiming at, and to do battle ... with their abject eagerness to stroke Dear Leader's ego ... community "leaders" like these abetted Jeff Gahan's whopper of a bait 'n' switch on the street grid. Promises abandoned, Gahan commissioned HWC Engineering to gut a wonderful walkability and biking enhancement program, recasting it into yet another re-election omnibus paving project, retaining the basic two-way reversion but rendering it almost useless through timidity and incomprehension.

Then again, when's the last time you've seen Gahan or any of his sycophants walking or biking?

Yes, Dear Leader gifted us with two-way streets, and they've been mildly effective, albeit neutered by constraints into insensibility. Perhaps that's why the drivers are still treating downtown streets like race tracks.

But that's fine. Just push that button and the drivers from elsewhere will let you cross the street, just so long as it doesn't add seconds to their cross-town commute. 

Why We Need to Dream Bigger Than Bike Lanes, by Terenig Topjian (CityLab)

In the 1930s big auto dreamed up freeways and demanded massive car infrastructure. Micromobility needs its own Futurama—one where cars are marginalized.

There’s a quote that’s stuck with me for some time from Aaron Sorkin’s The Newsroom: “You know why people don't like liberals? Because they lose. If liberals are so f***ing smart, how come they lose so goddamn always?”

American urbanists and bike advocates are smart, or at least well informed. We know how important cycling is. We are educated about cycling cities in other parts of the world and how they are so much better for health, well-being, economics, traffic, pollution, climate, equity, personal freedom, and on and on.

But if we’re so smart how come we lose so goddamn always?

Why is the best we seem to be able to accomplish just a few miles of striped asphalt bike “lanes,” or if we’re lucky, a few blocks of plastic pylons—“protected” bike lanes?

Our current model is to beg for twigs
More often than not, bike infrastructure is created reactively. Typically in response to a collision or near collision with a car, an individual or advocacy group identifies a single route that needs better infrastructure. We gather community support and lobby local officials for the desired change, trying as hard as we can to ask for the cheapest, smallest changes so that our requests will be seen as realistic.

What’s the problem with this model?

It’s like imagining a bridge and asking for twigs—useless, unable to bear any meaningful weight, easily broken. And it’s treating bike infrastructure like a hopeless charity case.

This makes bike infrastructure seem like a small, special-interest demand that produces no real results in terms of shifting to sustainable transportation, and it makes those giving up road space and tax dollars feel as though they are supporting a hopeless charity.

But when roads, highways, and bridges are designed and built, they aren’t done one neighborhood at a time, one city-council approval at a time. We don’t build a few miles of track, or lay down some asphalt wherever there is “local support” and then leave 10-mile gaps in between.

And yet this is exactly how we “plan” bike infrastructure.

Bike lanes are intermittent at best in most North American cities, and since they are usually paint jobs that put cyclists between fast-moving traffic and parked cars with doors that capriciously swing open, only experienced riders brave them. The lanes are easily blocked anyway, by police, delivery trucks, and film crews, if not random cars banking on the low likelihood of being ticketed.

This kind of bike “infrastructure” doesn’t actually do very much to protect existing cyclists, let alone encourage and inspire the general population to start cycling.

Why are we settling for easily broken twigs? The total number of people on bikes and other micromobility modes like scooters and skateboards is large and growing. An enormous force has been divided and conquered, splintered among thousands of neighborhoods ...

Divided is the way we're kept by the country's Gahans. It is purposeful. If you intend to insist on being characterized as a "progressive," maybe a good place to start is to progress past the insipid lies and self-aggrandizing campaign finance schemes of the local C-minus students, and start standing up for grassroots solutions calculated to improve the place where you live.

Copenhagen's bike lane success is about more than bike lanes.

"Public policies that ask car owners to take greater responsibility for the cost of roads and emissions, and the conscious decision to build housing at much higher densities, make cycling in Copenhagen more attractive and feasible than car travel for many trips."

All of which reinforces a point to be made about New Albany's shambolic and purposefully short-sighted "commitment" to bicycles and similar alternative means of transport.

A bike path or lane cannot be a success when it isn't connected to anything. As with Cortright's comments below, the objective should be creating systems.

In Nawbany, the Democratic ruling elite simply isn't bright enough for THAT.

Copenhagen: More Than Bike Lanes, by Joe Cortright (Strong Towns)

Strong Towns member Joe Cortright runs the think tank and blog City Observatory. This post is republished from City Observatory with permission.

 ... For those who have made the pilgrimage to Copenhagen, and come away with a romantic vision of re-making their auto-dominated city into a more bike-friendly place, there’s a lot than can be learned. While leadership and infrastructure are certainly keys to building a bike-friendly city, too many re-tellings of Copenhagen’s success leave out some of the most important ingredients.

Aside from a reference to parking violations costing as much as $80, the LA Times article spells out none of the details about how car travel is priced in Denmark. A close look at the specific policies for taxing and pricing of cars and fuel, and promoting dense urban development, are key to understanding why Copenhagen has been so successful.

And ...

There’s a lot we can learn from the design and operation of bike lanes in Copenhagen, and the lessons about leadership and the need to make investment are real. But that’s only part of the story. Public policies that ask car owners to take greater responsibility for the cost of roads and emissions, and the conscious decision to build housing at much higher densities, make cycling more attractive and feasible than car travel for many trips. As we always stress at City Observatory, the dysfunction in our transportation system stems fundamentally from charging the wrong price for roads. Stories, like this one from the LA Times, extolling the Copenhagen cycling success story shouldn’t leave out the essential role of correctly pricing cars and fuel and building dense housing.

Is it the world's shortest bike lane? Or stealth sharrows?

On Market Street between 10th and 11th.

Don't forget: this Tuesday, New Albany's emerging 2-pocalypse comes to Market Street.

Macon GA: "With eight miles of temporary bike lanes, the increase in bike traffic was astounding."

Ideally, all users would share the street, as streets were intended, but if there are to be bike lanes, they must lead somewhere and be connected just like streets are for cars. Driving your car, you expect to be able to get somewhere and return. The same is true of a bike ride. Bike lanes are an obvious improvement, though less so if their existence is political grandstanding without connectivity.

Macon, Georgia, Striped a Good Network of Temporary Bike Lanes and Cycling Soared, by By Angie Schmitt (Streetsblog)

What would it take to get people biking in midsized Macon, Georgia? Short, disconnected bike lanes haven’t done much, but a recent experiment demonstrated the power of a safe, connected network of bike infrastructure.

Helena Kotala at Bicycle Times Magazine reports on Macon Connects, a project of the local non-profit Newtown Macon ...

In the past, the city government had put up three non-contiguous blocks of bike lanes and then claimed no one rides. Macon Connects set out on a mission to change that perception. With eight miles of temporary bike lanes, the increase in bike traffic was astounding, proving that if you build it, they will ride.

Grid Control, Vol. 6: Jeff Speck tweets about NA's grid changes, and those missed bicycling opportunities.

The street grid proposal that Jeff Speck submitted to New Albany did more than change automotive directions.

It included a fresh and significant biking infrastructure component that if implemented, would have made New Albany the undisputed regional leader.

HWC Engineering then stripped most of Speck's ideas from the business-as-usual compromise plan, primarily because Jeff Gahan and his crony enablers never understood them, and moreover, because we're just too stupidly anchored in place as New Albany for such concepts to be grasped by the suburbanite time servers.

I suspect the two-way grid will be helpful, and conditions will improve. My councilman will declare victory in a process that by his own admission eluded his input and control.

Still, the junking of Speck's amazing vision will be remembered as a tremendous missed opportunity, ranking right up there with Bob Real's failure to tackle a ramshackle sewer system before the EPA's mega-expensive death sentence came down.

At this point, all we can do is hope the chance to optimize the downtown street grid for all users, and not just their cars, arises again at some point in the future.

Maybe next time we'll do it right.

---

Previously:

Grid Control, Vol. 5: Egg on HWC Engineering's well-compensated face as it botches Spring Street's westbound bike buffer cross hatching.

Grid Control, Vol. 4: But this actually isn't a bus lane, is it?

Grid Control, Vol. 3: TARC's taking your curbside church parking, says City Hall.

Grid Control, Vol. 2: Southsiders get six more parking inches, but you gotta love those 10-foot traffic lanes on Spring.

Grid Control, Vol. 1: You people drive so freaking horribly that someone's going to die at Spring and 10th.

Grid Control, Vol. 1: You people drive so freaking horribly that someone's going to die at Spring and 10th.

The crosswalk is just below camera range.

Today I stood for a while on the northwest corner of Spring and 10th, watching traffic navigate the bend.

In point of fact, perhaps only 10 out of 50 drivers managed to do so without intruding on all or part of the buffer and bike lane. I didn't have the radar gun, but an educated guess is that most were at or just above 35 mph. Later I had an errand that required me to drive, and I approached at 30 mph ... and found it hard to stay in my lane.

Yesterday I watched the driver of a semi rig roar through the bend at a guesstimated speed of 40 mph. He almost brushed the curb. Meanwhile, the police tell me they never ticket truck drivers -- like this rig parked on the sidewalk by Elm Street.

I understand it's early, and the engineers will cite various reasons why this admittedly small sampling at Spring and 10th shouldn't be a cause for concern.

However, I persist in thinking that a four-way stop is merited here for the sake of safety. Glib and condescending HWC Engineering excuses notwithstanding, there needs to be a way to achieve this.

Greg Phipps, are you reading?

Never mind. I didn't think so.

Our street grid + human rights + social justice = what needs to happen right now.

Photo credit: City of Muenster, Germany

Via the Board of Works, Mayor Jeff Gahan has surreptitiously signaled that up to 18 months will elapse before anything at all is done to implement the principles embodied in Jeff Speck's downtown street network proposals.

That's 18 more months for the neighborhood fabric to be mocked by the anti-social disruptions of one-way traffic patterns, and 18 more months for independent small business to suffer restricted growth from one-way chaos that favors pass-through trucks over people who live and work right here.

Passivity and secrecy -- the ethos of the fear-gripped down-low -- do not constitute genuine leadership, not in this or any other city.

Therefore, we must ask: As we await the cure by design, what is the city of New Albany going to do to stop the bleeding during the next 18 months?

 (Or, more accurately, for the remainder of the year 2015, seeing as there'll be a new mayor next year)

Two city council members, Greg Phipps and John Gonder, both Democrats, have consistently transcended City Hall's institutionalized timidity by advocating openly for the Speck proposals. True, both of them meekly returned to the Democratic Party standard prior to the primary, and yet the election now is over, and somewhere in the carefully shielded party platform planks therein, there is a vague call for two-way streets modernity. It's buried beneath the crypto-Disney palaver, but it's there.

Consequently, with the Democratic Party itself at least paying lip service to the idea, and with both Gonder and Phipps implying at various times that Gahan is the city's single greatest hope for street grid reform -- even if Speck remains the Gahan project that dares not speak its name -- isn't it time for a city council resolution to this effect, or an ordinance stipulating a bill of rights for non-automotive street users, detailing the human right and social justice imperatives of same?

Aren't these among the ways that Phipps and Gonder might actually propel a cause they both espouse? Aren't these paths the ideal answer to the despairing question, "But what can a mere city councilman do to help?"

Isn't this the way we've moved other balls forward, including the human rights commission and various statements of non-binding principle for Scott Blair to ignore unless they pertain to prayer? After all, most recently on Monday, it was illustrated that the votes are there to do whatever Jeff Gahan and the Party wish. Both these entities are said to agree with the title of this posting.

Let's hope (gasp) that Gahan and the Party are not sending mixed signals.

That would be positively scandalous, wouldn't it?

Protected bike lanes and the social justice of urban space (Broken Sidewalk, via Street Roots and People for Bikes)

It’s one of the most famous images in modern urban planning: three simple photos showing how much city space 80 people take up when they get around by bike, by bus, and by car.

The poster was made in Muenster, Germany, in 1991. Here in Portland and around the world, it’s been used to show how you can reduce congestion by getting more people to ride bikes or mass transit. In cities, where no resource is more precious than space, that’s a powerful gift.

But keep looking at the photos and you might see another idea embedded in them, too: one about human rights.

It’s an idea that may have been best phrased by Enrique Peñalosa, who served as mayor of Bogotá, Colombia, in the early 2000s. “The first article in every constitution states that all citizens are equal before the law,” Peñalosa said. “If this is true, a bus with 80 passengers has a right to 80 times more road space than a car with one.”

"Controversial new bike lanes" in Louisville prompt bold new displays of automotive dumbassery.

I'd argue it, too.

Opinion: Controversial new bike lanes a sign of transit progress in Louisville, by Joe Dunman (Insider Louisville)

 ... It is unfortunately true that some cyclists ignore the rules of the road by disregarding stop signs, passing cars on the right, and riding against traffic. Drivers, on the other hand, are not innocent. How often do motorists exceed the speed limit, drive while distracted by cell phones, make turns without signals, or worse? More or less constantly, I’d argue.

Jeff Speck on John Rosenbarger's 12-ft wide Spring Street traffic lanes: “A 12-foot lane is a 70 mph lane."

When we took up residence on Spring Street in 2003, it was one-way arterial, three lanes wide, and with parallel parking on both sides by the curbs.

Doug England's self-congratulatory Spring Street restriping in 2009, for which John Rosenbarger now claims glorious triumph whenever he finds himself speaking to people who don't know any better, actually involved increasing the number of total one-way lanes to four, albeit by reducing the number of automotive lanes to two, and adding two bicycle lanes, one on each side of the cars.

(Why anyone would think that two bike lanes starting nowhere, leading nowhere, and running in the same direction was a good idea, in any imaginable universe, is impossible to fathom. After all, these are locally educated functionaries.)

For a brief period, the change seemed to have a calming effect, but ultimately, traffic got fast and wild again. Recently, many more heavy trucks than before have been using Spring Street and adding to the problem, even as Rosenbarger habitually denies that these vehicles are being diverted from the Main Street Deforestation Project.

More on that utter fabrication, tomorrow.

Well ... who are you going to believe, Rosenbarger or your own eyes and ears? If his nose gets any longer, the Greenway can use it to bridge Silver Creek. So, why did Diamond John's 2011 Spring Street restripings not help at all?

Primarily, because nothing whatever changed.

The street is 50 feet wide from curb to curb. Before, there were three traffic lanes and two parking-only lanes by the curbs, but the parking lanes were not delineated. On the north side of the street, one's driver-side door just opened into speeding traffic.

Therefore, in essence, there were three 12-ft wide lanes for automotive traffic (36 feet in all) and two for parking (approximately 14 feet). One traffic lane of the three was removed. 10 of its 12 feet became bike lanes at 5-ft each. The parking areas were delineated at 8 feet. The two remaining traffic lanes remained 12 feet wide.

As for what it means to have 12-ft wide traffic lanes running through the middle of a neighborhood that politicians wish to be seen promoting as "revitalizing," let's turn to Jeff Speck and an article from Butte, Montana explaining Speck's street reform recommendations there.

... “A fight I’m fighting in state after state is the 12-foot lane width standard that most states apply,” he said.

The federal government in the past few months set new standards that differ from the states however, setting the travel lanes at 10 feet in width and parking lanes at 8 feet, he said.

“A 12-foot lane is a 70 mph lane,” Speck said. “Twelve foot lanes versus 10 foot lanes are the DOT versus us. There is no measureable decrease on urban street (traffic) capacity with 10-foot lanes. The burden is on DOT to prove why they need 12-foot streets.”

Speck argues that 10-foot lanes are safer for everyone, too, by slowing traffic.

“A person hit by a car going 30 mph is 10 times more likely to die than a person hit by a car traveling 25 mph,” he said.

That's right.

England and Rosenbarger claimed victory, by changing absolutely nothing. They built two unbuffered bike lanes next to 70 mph traffic lanes. They did nothing else, and they want you to believe that what they did was heroic and innovative, primarily so one of them can run for office again while the other keeps his job -- again.

Unfortunately, the Gahan administration has spent three years endorsing the status quo, and the status quo was, and is, a mistake, which puts the lie to all other efforts aimed at "revitalizing" the neighborhood.

Presumably, Speck will advise them to correct the idiocy, and perhaps they will. I'm guessing a Spring Street fix involves two-way traffic lanes at 10 feet, with a slightly wider turn lane in the middle, and the removal of biking lanes, which are largely useless. Should there be lanes for bicycles? Yes, somewhere. Just imagine if we had an actual plan for them, in the sense of actually leading from and to a destination ... but then a traffic lane might have to be changed, and we know how THAT inconveniences Democratic Party grandees.

Of course, in all likelihood, Rosenbarger will take credit for the correction to the problem he created. Almost surely, England will run for mayor, or council, or maybe dogcatcher. He'll claim credit for the results obtained by doing nothing. New Albany will languish because we've never met a box we didn't prefer to be constrained within.

And nothing will get done.

Rosenbarger giveth and He taketh away; thus shall autos be glorified at the Beechwood intersection with Charlestown Road.

Earlier this morning, we urged someone to tell John Rosenbarger that "Modern bike lanes call for modern reference guides."

Now, let's see how the Rasputin of Redevelopment applies such advice in daily practice. We begin with this newspaper story:

Busy New Albany intersection will soon be upgraded, by Chris Morris (The Moultrie Observer)

One of New Albany’s busiest intersections will soon receive a much needed upgrade, and most of the work will be paid for by the federal government.

The Indiana Department of Transportation met with New Albany city officials, engineering consultants, utility company representatives and contractors this week to coordinate implementation of a $214,792 Beechwood Avenue-Charlestown Road intersection improvement project. The work will include adding a left-hand turning lane on Charlestown Road to Beechwood and a new LED crosswalk and stop light.

Let's take a look at the aerial view.

If you look closely in the bottom left quadrant, you'll see bike lanes on both side of Charlestown Road between the Beechwood intersection. These lanes were triumphantly installed during the most recent England administration, after which the King drank a few bottles of wine. They extend roughly three blocks southwesterly, to terminate quite abruptly at Vincennes Street.

Now, look at this photo, top right-hand quadrant.

The bike lanes stopping short of the intersection on the southwest side do not begin anew until Lincoln Avenue on the northeast side; they run a few hundred yards further to the Silver Street intersection, where they end yet again.

Clearly, while there are two pedestrian crosswalks built into the current Beechwood intersection, there are no delineated bike lanes drawn through it.

Recalling that John Rosenbarger regularly has hailed this situation as proof of his urban design prowess, read on as Chris Morris gives us the LOL punch line.

The city did not have to buy right-of-way to expand the intersection. Rosenbarger said the bike lanes through the intersection will be absorbed for the road expansion.

But as the photos show, there are no bike lanes through the intersection. Three miniature/a> bike lanes have dangled unconnected along Charlestown Road since being installed. In short, more (utter) bullshit, from the city's premier bullshit artist, who'll now point to the elimination of the non-existent as further evidence of his indispensable ability, even as he variously blames politicians, newspaper reporters, drivers, bicyclists, walkers, stupid commoners and the abominable snowmen for the nonsense -- just not that guy in the mirror.

Let's recap.

Useless bicycle lanes originally marked just a few years ago, which start and end nowhere, and that never were calibrated to guide a cyclist through an auto-centric intersection, now will be rendered even less useful than garden-variety useless ... with the compounded uselessness occurring just a few blocks from Monon Street, where there'll be a brand new park not connected in any way, shape or form to any non-automotive form of transport.

And, lest we forget, we're paying Jeff Speck $75,000 to explain just how useless this uselessness really is. Is it any wonder that few of us believe Speck's advice will be heeded?

It makes you wonder: Which Democratic central committee grandee lobbied for the automotive intersection to be made even more auto-centric?

Answer: Probably all of them.

Someone tell John Rosenbarger that "Modern bike lanes call for modern reference guides."

At the FAN Fair earlier this year, New Albany public works projects supervisor John Rosenbarger crowed unctuously about his shining record of installing bike lanes.

Typically, he did not add that most of them begin and end nowhere, rendering them largely meaningless; he also failed to mention that the most logical place for meaningful bike lanes would be as part of his pet Main Street Deforestation Project -- where none are included. It is to be surmised that Rosenbarger assumed the folks in attendance wouldn't know the difference. Unfortunately, I was there, and in fact, "fail" is the single best word to use in this instance.

The following infographic provides photos. These clearly illustrate that we've done next to nothing when it comes to bike lanes, apart from drawing lines, and failing even then (see: striped buffer). Photo credit is the story link.

14 WAYS TO MAKE BIKE LANES BETTER (THE INFOGRAPHIC), by Michael Andersen (People for Bikes)

Modern bike lanes call for modern reference guides.

With so many different methods being used to physically separate bike and auto traffic, the tradeoffs can seem countless. That's where this infographic comes in. One part inspiration and two parts catalog, it's intended for anyone who wants to quickly get up to speed on the most popular tricks being used by cities around the world to improve bike lanes.

"There is enough real estate in our core city. The infrastructure’s already there. Why further tax yourself by trying to extend infrastructure?"

Bottom-line thinking about civic resources from Mayor AC Wharton of Memphis, Tennessee, who was asked "why he’s been such a supporter of protected bike infrastructure in a city that, before he came to office, didn’t have a single bike lane."

Real Talk: Why the Mayor of Memphis Is Building Protected Bike Lanes, by Michael Andersen (Streetsblog USA)

 ... Our favorite moment from this conversation is in the short video clip above, when Wharton took a moment for some Real Talk about the tradeoffs he faces as an allocator of civic resources.

There is enough real estate in our core city. The infrastructure’s already there. Why further tax yourself by trying to extend infrastructure, sewers, schools, whatever, into areas rather than just take advantage of the beautiful facilities and the beautiful land that you have already? … It is much more cost-feasible for me to fix up Broad Avenue, Madison, with some stripes on the pavement, protected bike lanes, than it is for me to go way out somewhere, put in sewers, street lights, have garbage pickup, all this stuff. So it bodes well for our citizens and their health — both physical and emotional — but it also bodes well for the finances of the city.

The tax rolls show that Wharton’s theory has paid off. Modest public investments in bike infrastructure on Broad have not only unlocked generous philanthropic support, they’ve stimulated private investment in a neighborhood that’s been suffering disinvestment ever since highways cut it off from its surroundings.

Just your basic everyday "planned" occurrence on Spring Street -- right, John?

As the East Main Street Deforestation Project progresses, we're seeing more and more of these.

The truck was moving so quickly that even after spotting it a block away, I almost was unable to squeeze off an iPhone image before it passed. Contrast the hurtling steel overkill on a residential streets with the quaint poignancy of that bike lane in the foreground, of which John "My Way IS the Highway, So Long As It Is Your Street and Not Mine" Rosenbarger was so inordinately proud when recounting his many lifetime planning achievements at the FAN Fair earlier this year.

Of course, it's the second of two bike lanes, both pointed in exactly the same direction on opposite sides of a one-way arterial street intended to enable this truck's excessive speed, and to utterly defeat livability in a neighborhood in desperate need of federal stabilization funding -- bike lanes leading from nothing, to nothing, as enabled by the nothingness of the third England Doug regime.

Think of this truck at 50 mph on an unenforced street as the cascading storm water eroding one's nice garden plot, and thus washing away any megabuck efforts at stabilization, and then ask yourself this question: Is it really the sort of photo you'd point to as evidence of your career achievement?

Ah, the blessings of one-party rule.

By the way, are there any?

Bike lanes and a perceived loss of retail access.

It isn't so much that this essay applies to the exact situation in New Albany. After all, we've been careful to place our bike lanes where they barely matter. Still, if for no other insight than the first paragraph, it's worth a read.

No, Bike Lanes Don't Hurt Retail Business, by Eric Jaffe (Atlantic Cities)

City retailers tend to overestimate the importance of parking to their business. They fail to see the many downsides of free parking (congestion and low shopper turnover, among them). They believe more people arrive at the store by car than actually do. They may not even realize that while driving customers spend more per visit, non-drivers spend as much or more in the long term.

And yet whenever a city considers installing a bike lane, rest assured some retailers will protest the perceived loss of automobile access.

"NYC Study Finds Protected Bicycle Lanes Boost Local Business."

Given New Albany's fairly compact layout inside the beltway, the utility of this approach embraces more than just business growth, although one imagines that economics should matter, even to folks living on Corydon Pike.

It also provides a convenient way to link neighborhoods with downtown and with each other.

Whether or not protected bike lanes are the right objective here can be debated, but the overall veracity of reconsidering our city's street grid for the contemporary world is far clearer. These streets were changed 40 years ago to reflect an emptying downtown and fear accompanying it. Now that downtown is filling back up, streets must be rationalized to reflect it. Otherwise, the goal of revitalization is being contradicted on a daily basis by infrastructural stasis.

NYC Study Finds Protected Bicycle Lanes Boost Local Business, by Mary Lauran Hall (America Bikes)

The road to recovery is in sight, and it has a bike lane.

The typical city street is a busy place. People riding bikes, walking, driving cars, and operating buses all have somewhere to to go and want to get there safely — and quickly.

But while we normally think of streets as pipelines for people and goods, public streets are about more than just moving from point A to point B. They're also corridors for public life. Streets are places where locals discover new hole-in-the-wall stores and restaurants, where window shoppers duck into shops to peruse, and where children convince their parents to stop — just for ONE second — to buy a cup of hot chocolate.

In other words, streets can also grow local economies.

A new study from the New York Department of Transportation shows that streets that safely accommodate bicycle and pedestrian travel are especially good at boosting small businesses, even in a recession.

Perhaps leading to the Taxpayer's Memorial Patio?

I hope the Telegraph doesn't mind my borrowing this photo.


Shouldn't the city of New Albany put one of these at the corner of Shelby and McDonald?

I'd take it at the 1117 E. Spring Street Neighborhood Association, except that (a) I've already paid for a personal bike lane, and (b) it might interfere with access to the condom machine.

Meanwhile, as my vicious personal attacks continue, here's the rest of the story (thanks, TH): Council condemned over 'Britain's shortest cycle lane'

Right, Nancy: None of us wish to be hurt by bad drivers, so shall we do away with laws regulating driving?

That's funny. As a commuting cyclist, I find that cars with drivers who flagrantly disobey traffic laws are a hazard to me. Digging deeper, this letter encapsulates the classic passive-aggressive New Albanian attitude toward ordinance enforcement, doesn't it?

LETTER: Bike lanes are for bikes

In regard to your article involving Spring Street lane markings, twice I have had a near collision there with cars using the bike lanes to get around cars driving in the car lanes. [The lanes] are a hazard to cars that drive there daily.

I don’t see many bike riders using the lanes. I don’t want to be killed in this situation. I hope this bike lane is done away with.

— Nancy Rein, New Albany

Tribune editorials address downtown development and the new Spring Street bike lane.

Two Sunday Tribune editorials for the price of one:

• TRIBUNE EDITORIAL: Keep downtown menu diverse; many businesses but one message

• TRIBUNE EDITORIAL: The beginning of a beautiful bike ride

Not exactly groundbreaking stuff, but there are useful points in both pieces.

As for the first, a unified promotional effort definitely is needed downtown, as is some way to gently push some of the longtimers into grasping the utility of traveling to the next level in the sense of uncovered windows, upstairs living and (perhaps not so gently) the use of their buildings according to code.

With regard to bike lanes, the editorial team asks some very good questions. It still isn't clear how the southern-side Spring Street lane is meant to be used, and given that lately my primary issues as an everyday cyclist have had to do with other cyclists, it is the city's obligation to make a statement of principle addressing bike use overall.

Gotta go - time for a ride. Thursday's column already is finished, the Wizard isn't going to like it, and knowing this gives me a feeling of accomplishment.