Welcome back, Branden and Broken Sidewalk! Now, a look at what Louisville's doing right for bicycling, since Sharrows Rosenbarger keeps getting it wrong in NA.

This bicyclist seems mistrustful of the Main Street sharrows (2015).

First things first: Branden Klayko, we're damned happy you are feeling and doing better. We need you on the case. Welcome back!

Louisville becoming a more bike friendly city, but has room for improvement (Broken Sidewalk)

While I was gone, Louisville received some major recognition in its efforts to become more bikeable. First up, Bicycling magazine named Louisville the 31st best biking city in its biennial look at American cities. Rankings were determined based on an analysis of Census data, discussions with national and local bike leaders, and key bike-friendly indicators like the number of female bike commuters. The magazine cited the opening of Louisville’s bike and pedestrian Big Four Bridge connecting Waterfront Park with Jeffersonville, Indiana, among the city’s success stories. Since it opened in 2014, the bridge has been wildly popular, promoting walking and biking throughout the community ...

... These infrastructure improvements are also critical for Louisville to reduce its dependency on automobiles. Research has shown that the better a city’s bike network, the more people bike. Louisville’s network is beginning to reach a critical capacity with easy to use bike lanes and Neighborways where biking becomes a very comfortable and safe option for for a larger percentage of the population. Options like well-designed protected bike lanes can help encourage people who haven’t commuted by bike to give it a try. And with only 0.4 percent of the population saddling up to go to work, there’s plenty of room to attract new audiences.

What’s on your bike wish list for Louisville? Do you commute by bike? Share your vision in the comments below.

Jeff Gahan's predictably wasted opportunity to civilize Vincennes Street using Jeff Speck's sensible plan.

This text is pasted from Jeff Speck's landmark New Albany streets study, and now serves to remind us that from a glorious potential starting point of ribeye, we're left with a tiny puddle of fatty stew meat.

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A Limited Mandate

The conclusions from this exercise are clear: downtown New Albany has the potential to become much more crowded with vehicles than it currently is, and the best way to protect against this overcrowding would be to reduce the Supply of downtown lanes to a number that is no greater than the current Demand.

However, as dramatic as this recommendation would sound, it actually has a very limited impact, since so few of New Albany’s streets are more than two lanes wide.

As will be discussed ahead, two-way traffic is superior to one-way traffic for both safety and city vitality, and a conversion of many streets back to two-way traffic will be recommended. This means that only those streets of more than two lanes are candidates for reduction. Within the study area, that condition applies to significant stretches of only the following streets: Vincennes, Market, and Spring.

Within the study area, Vincennes is the easiest street to discuss, because it contains a strange extra northbound lane, creating a 3-lane capacity on a road carrying only slightly more than one lane’s worth of traffic. It also has a massive 5-lane cross-section at its intersection with Main Street, despite its low car counts. Eliminating the extra northbound lane and the unnecessary right-hand turn lane at the Main Street intersection will result in a safer street that is still sized well beyond its current volume would demand.

Vincennes Street

Vincennes Street’s asymmetrical section contains an additional northbound lane that is not justified by traffic demand.

Current Condition
From half a block north of Spring Street to Main Street, Vincennes Street consists principally of a three-lane section, with additional right-hand turn lanes inserted at Spring Street and Main Street, and an additional southbound lane added at Main. This 3-lane section is striped with two lanes northbound and one lane southbound, as if the northbound flow were dominant, but it is not. Hourly traffic counts on Vincennes peak at 490 north of Main, 812 north of Market, and 654 north of Oak.

Analysis
Vincennes Street is clearly oversized for its traffic. At no point do car accounts approach the number that would require a third lane. This condition is supported by the fact that the third lane, rather then being striped for left turns, merely provides northbound redundancy with no southbound counterpart.

Acknowledging that a two-lane section is ample south of the busy Spring Street intersection allows the extra northbound lane to be replaced by a wider parking aisle on that side, holding angled parking instead of parallel. Given that Vincennes is a desired bike route, this parking should be back-in, and sharrows should be placed in the roadway.

As it approaches Main Street, the tapered cross section gains additional width that should be put to used as a center turn lane, with other lanes (including the parking lane) widening slightly in order to use up the extra asphalt.

Recommendation
From Division to Stone, restripe Vincennes to include 8-foot parallel parking on its western curb and 17-foot back-in angle parking (at 60 degrees) on its eastern curb. South of Stone, as the street widens, insert a 12-foot left-hand turn lane, and broaden the parking bays to 10 feet and 18 feet respectively. Insert sharrow markings in roadway near each intersection.

Lower speed limits "can set expectations for traffic calming redesigns in the future."

Last week, when Mayor Jeff Gahan finally emerged from the down low bunker to speak publicly about two-way streets for the first time in months, the News and Tribune's Elizabeth Beilman recorded a typical potted Gahanism.

"What we don't want is the volume to turn Spring Street into a raceway," Gahan said.

I hate to be the one to break the news to a sheltered guy who spends most of his time underground reading his own press clippings, but dude -- Spring Street's been a raceway since about 1960.

Since it was made into a one-way street. 

For Gahan to suggest that speeding on New Albany's one-way street grid won't become a problem until tolls come into force constitutes a pole-vault beyond delusional, straight to profoundly sad.

Portland Wants to Rethink Speed Limits By Factoring in Walkers and Bikers, by Angie Schmitt (Streetsblog USA)

For cities trying to get a handle on traffic fatalities, dangerous motor vehicle speeds are an enormous problem. Once drivers exceed 20 mph, the chances that someone outside the vehicle will survive a collision plummet.

But even on city streets where many people walk and bike, streets with 35 or 40 mph traffic are common. Cities looking to reduce lethal vehicle speeds face a number of obstacles — including restrictions on how they can set speed limits ...

 ... Street design is a more important safety factor than speed limit signs, of course, but lower speed limits can still send a signal to motorists to proceed more cautiously — and they can set expectations for traffic calming redesigns in the future. If the speed limit is 30 mph but motorists consistently go faster, the design clearly needs to change.

Following up: Progressive embarrassment, political cowardice and NA falling behind Jeffersonville.

There was this, and quite a lot of you read it today. I'm thankful.

ON THE AVENUES: Really, the word “progressive” embarrasses you? That’s okay, because political cowardice disgusts me.

... Of course, right now, as it stands, the city’s interminable, fear-driven delay of street grid reform is quite effectively achieving the very same result (small business failure), by leaving in place a one-way arterial street grid that nullifies every penny-ante ribbon cutting and “stay open late” promotion tossed into the air by increasingly desperate indie shop owners in the absence of a downtown economic development plan, because while street grid reform could be so very helpful, and constitute an economic development plan in itself, it would fatally embarrass a Democratic mayor to be seen openly advocating it.

Subsequently, JeffG succinctly applied my column's conclusions to a real-life evening with real, live people.

K and I spent last evening at BSB with a group of artists, musicians, and writers preparing for an exhibit and performances in New Albany. Initial conversation was about redevelopment in various areas of the metro. When it came to NA, the very first thing mentioned (and not by K or me) was that there are some good things happening (independent businesses and arts) but that the streets "are so wide and fast, it makes it all less appealing". The first response? Another person pointed to Elm Street where they'd just been, saying, "Yeah, people do what seems like 80 mph just on that street, and it's smaller than some of the rest", pointing out Spring as worse. When I explained that some of us are aware and have been petitioning the City for change, the original commenter said "I'm sure you are, it's needed" and then proceeded to make a comparison with Jeffersonville, where the streets are narrower, slower, and more visitor friendly. Then someone else mentioned that the general consensus among their acquaintances was that they wished New Albany's businesses and activities were in Jeffersonville.

That's right, Jeff and David and John and Adam.

In Jeffersonville.

Back in July, I clearly repudiated Big Four Envy, and enunciated the program by which New Albany could have its own "Big Four." We're due for a reprise, so here is an excerpt.

ON THE AVENUES: We have our own Big Four. They’re called Main, Market, Spring and Elm.

... The Big Four Bridge is open every day, and people use it every day. It isn’t open once a year, or once a month. It’s every day. As I write, metro Louisville residents are making the Big Four part of their daily arsenal of lifestyle and recreational choices. That’s all of it in a nutshell. Meanwhile, New Albany has the ideal means to steal a march not just on Jeffersonville, but on the remainder of the metropolitan area, by thinking about what makes the Big Four “special” on a daily basis … just without an actual bridge.

With our streets.

We have a street study coming from the nationally renowned Jeff Speck, who (believe it or not) knows even more about such matters than Bob Caesar, and when Speck’s study is finished, we must embrace walkability and embark upon a progressive, rapid, no-compromises program of traffic calming, complete streets and two-way street conversions.

By doing so, and by staking a claim to being the most walkable and bikeable neighborhood in metro Louisville, we can utilize the street grid we already possess to enhance our quality of life every single day, not just during those exhaustively conjured “special” occasions.

In effect, and to a far greater physical degree, New Albany’s street grid is our Big Four Bridge. The reformatted street grid is the canvas, and its users will do the painting. A walkable and bikeable street grid will be the daily complement to business and residential interests, rather than catering solely to cars and trucks alone, encouraging a broader base for the type of “special” activities the city currently takes upon itself to plan. They’ll happen more often, and more spontaneously, as instigated by businesses and residents.

In short, New Albany can be rendered “special” every single day by design, with the street grid supporting revitalization, not working against it – as our sad, outmoded truck-choked, speeding one-way streets do now.

There's the tourist slogan: "New Albany: For 196 Years, We Coulda Been a Contender."

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

ON THE AVENUES: We have our own Big Four. They’re called Main, Market, Spring and Elm.

ON THE AVENUES: We have our own Big Four. They’re called Main, Market, Spring and Elm.

A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.

If car ownership is mandatory, [the place is] not urban.
– Donald Baxter

Seeing as you’re entitled to my opinion, here it is.

I believe it serves as evidence of a lack of imagination (at best) and a latent inferiority complex (at the worst) when we focus on the occasional yearly highlight at the expense of everyday possibilities.

Take Harvest Homecoming.

Please, take it.

(rim shot)

Actually, today I have come neither to bury Harvest Homecoming, nor to praise it. Rather, I’d like for you to consider the primary operational conceit of Harvest Homecoming, and by this, I don’t mean the festival’s campy parade, or its elephant ear-fueled events, or even its Wal-Mart target demographic.

What I mean is the most, basic, elemental aspect of Harvest Homecoming itself.

It occurs only once each year.

It is designed to be a temporary annual festival, and has been planned and designed accordingly. In short, everyday reality downtown is radically supplanted, and a template of temporary reality superimposed atop it.

This spring, when New Albany city officials began exploring the conceptual threads that led to Boomtown, their thinking was the same. It was to be a special event, perhaps repeated once each year in May, so as to contrast and bookend with Harvest Homecoming’s October hegemony.

Note that by drawing this very contrast, City Hall is implicitly conceding that Harvest Homecoming’s autumnal invasiveness downtown will continue to go unreformed, but that’s a different topic for another time. Simply know that Boomtown differs from Harvest Homecoming in one highly significant way, because while it is a one-off event, it actually showcases downtown rather than buries it.

---

We might take this “special event” notion a step further, and posit that thinking in terms of one-off festivals and celebrations is a recurring feature of city government, now and in the past. For instance, there’s the Bicentennial Park concert series and the July 3 fireworks.

Develop New Albany organizes special events like the Jingle Walk and the now mercifully defunct Exclusively New Albany. NA First is planning its third annual Indie Fest. Churches have their summer picnics, and so on.

As a restaurant and brewery owner, we sometimes think in a similar way as these groups. There’s Gravity Head each year, and the brew crew spends most weekends during the warm weather months showcasing our wares at annual outdoor celebrations throughout Indiana and Kentucky (and one in Wisconsin). It’s always fun to do something different.

But the trick isn’t in the special events, although they require hard work and expertise to execute correctly. Rather, the objective for a food and drink business is to provide consistency on a daily basis, each and every time the door is unlocked and customers are invited inside. To do so, we try to institute a routine. If the routine is working as it should, you’ll get a clean glass each time you order a beer, even if the contents vary in style.

Throughout the year, customers come to us all the time when we’re not doing anything “special” – but they are. Maybe it’s a date night, someone’s birthday, a promotion or a graduation. They come to celebrate their world, in our place, by drinking our beer and eating our food. We provide a canvas, but our customers do the painting.

It’s what a city does, too. The special event planning only makes sense if the daily routine of infrastructure is maintained for 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and 365 days a year. Admittedly these days utility monopolies do much of it, although City Hall successfully reabsorbed the sewer department.

The city controls a cemetery and a system of public parks, features of which are usable throughout the year. It also possesses the street grid, which is the biggest single chunk of municipal property, and therein lies my larger point.

Since the Big Four Bridge opened and Jeffersonville became the new regional hottest ticket, I’ve heard many worried comments and witnessed an epidemic of hand-wringing. Can’t New Albany get a bridge, too? Can’t we stage more festivals, more special events, and more one-offs – you know, like Jeffersonville does?

Well, there won’t be a pedestrian bridge for New Albany unless we pry the K & I out of Norfolk Southern’s (preferably) cold, dead hands, and while we’re on the topic, do you know what is the most important facet of the Big Four Bridge?

It isn’t special at all.

---

The Big Four is open every day, and people use it every day. It isn’t open once a year, or once a month. It’s every day. As I write, metro Louisville residents are making the Big Four part of their daily arsenal of lifestyle and recreational choices. That’s all of it in a nutshell. Meanwhile, New Albany has the ideal means to steal a march not just on Jeffersonville, but on the remainder of the metropolitan area, by thinking about what makes the Big Four “special” on a daily basis … just without an actual bridge.

With our streets.

We have a street study coming from the nationally renowned Jeff Speck, who (believe it or not) knows even more about such matters than Bob Caesar, and when Speck’s study is finished, we must embrace walkability and embark upon a progressive, rapid, no-compromises program of traffic calming, complete streets and two-way street conversions.

By doing so, and by staking a claim to being the most walkable and bikeable neighborhood in metro Louisville, we can utilize the street grid we already possess to enhance our quality of life every single day, not just during those exhaustively conjured “special” occasions.

In effect, and to a far greater physical degree, New Albany’s street grid is our Big Four Bridge. The reformatted street grid is the canvas, and its users will do the painting. A walkable and bikeable street grid will be the daily complement to business and residential interests, rather than catering solely to cars and trucks alone, encouraging a broader base for the type of “special” activities the city currently takes upon itself to plan. They’ll happen more often, and more spontaneously, as instigated by businesses and residents.

In short, New Albany can be rendered “special” every single day by design, with the street grid supporting revitalization, not working against it – as our sad, outmoded truck-choked, speeding one-way streets do now.

All we have to fear is fear itself.

And that, my friends, is the biggest problem of all because boy, are we scared.

New Albany's one-way street grid is safe and works just fine -- says no walker or biker, ever.

Yesterday I walked from my house to the downtown branch of my bank. My route took me south on 11th Street, then westbound on Market Street, toward the center of the city.

While crossing 9th Street, I noticed movement over my left shoulder. It was a car, moving in the same direction as me, which of course means that it was traveling the wrong way on a one-way street. This apparently had yet to dawn on the driver, as she was slowing and lowering the passenger window to ask directions of me.

I motioned her onto 9th Street to get her off Market, and learned that she had come all the way from Vincennes -- seven blocks, driving the wrong way in broad daylight. At this juncture, she was trying to find the Kroger on Charlestown Road, having gotten lost at the road closure on Grant Line.

The experience left me thinking about how much one sees, hears and feels while walking. I've walked or biked to work as often as possible for a very long time, close to 20 years. Concurrent with this, generations of City-County Building workers have driven to work; probably 100% of them, 100% of the time, or if not, then a number only slightly below it. Even the ones living close by -- say, on Main Street -- probably have driven to work most of the time, haven't they?

So, to put it succinctly: How do they know what walkability and bikeability could possibly be like?