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.

Beak wetting 101: "Why Does Infrastructure Cost So Much?"

You're advised to click through and read Marohn's essay in its entirety. In the interim, the points below are significant. I've underlined a key passage from the standpoint of our experience in Pay to Play City.

Why Does Infrastructure Cost So Much?, by Charles Marohn (Strong Towns)

... There are many technical reasons why infrastructure is so expensive—pick your favorite as they are all elusive to broadly discern—but it's clear that there are two underlying drivers that are not merely technical.

The first underlying driver of U.S. infrastructure costs is that the U.S. has felt so rich as a country that, for decades, we spent freely on infrastructure and never asked serious questions about the return on that investment. Never. As I’ve suggested many times, a study of human behavior in complex environments suggests that, with an abundance of resources, complex feedback loops break down. At this point, it’s difficult to identify one underlying cause because the real cause is systematic. And worse, the players involved work in single-discipline silos where a standard way of operating has become normalized; they don’t even know which questions to ask.

Do we really need a third interchange or can we get by with the two we have? (Traffic counts justify a third and we have two big box stores ready to build.) Do we really need to acquire that five feet of right-of-way so we can have 12-foot lanes when 11.5 foot lanes would be just fine? (Of course we do because that’s our standard.) Do we really need to pay a premium price for that five feet of land, as if it were valuable real estate in Manhattan and not the edge of some parking lot buffer? (Of course, unless you want the project delayed for years and for every case to end up in court.) Do we need ten signs or can we get by with eight? (Remember that one time we were threatened with a lawsuit—don’t want any chance of that happening.)

Individually, these are all reasonable reactions, especially when viewed from within a professional bubble that focuses on one or two metrics for success. Collectively, they are disastrous. The richer you are, the more you can throw money at solving your problems. The more money you can throw at a problem, the less you are confronted with the nuances of that problem and the less pressure there is to be creative. The complex becomes merely complicated. Painful feedback and uncomfortable balancing of priorities are avoided. Costs go up and nobody understands just why.

It’s also important to note that technical professions within the engineering and construction fields have a lot of built-in incentives to not think too critically about this problem. Compensation schedules are often written as a percent of project costs (the more things cost, the more the compensation). When public agencies prioritize fewer, larger projects, it means fewer players making cost decisions, spawning a kind of informal collusion even within a system of competitive bidding. It’s way more rewarding—especially among your peers within a profession—to complain about cheap taxpayers and politicians than to systematically question your own industry practices (trust me, I know).

It’s a little like asking teachers why the cost of public education is so high or asking doctors why medical costs keep going up. Both professions have their preferred scapegoat—administrators and insurance companies, respectively—but neither is in a real position to objectively evaluate their own contribution to the problem. That makes them human, not corrupt. But being human is nonetheless deeply flawed in this regard.

The second underlying driver of U.S. infrastructure costs is how deeply embedded infrastructure spending is within our model of economic growth. We have to spend on infrastructure because we don’t have a mechanism to experience broad economic growth without it, and we must have broad economic growth or everything in our Ponzi-bubble economy will collapse. It’s really that simple.

62,572 annual reasons (and 26 cents) why "a great experience is priceless" is the worst answer for any city employee to give.

Back to one-way.

Shades of "no cost is too great" to rehabilitate the Reisz building. At least David Barksdale's not a mayoral family member, though that's small consolation in terms of squandered opportunity cost.

In New Albany, nepotism is a family tradition.

The Bicentennial Park Summer Re-Elect Jeff Gahan Concert Series begins anew on Friday, August 3. It's the sixth season of these events, followed by a year of rotating "Live @ Five" shows. How much has all this cost the city?

We still have no idea. Here's an article from August 30, 2015.

August 3 is my birthday. let's hope I'm at Pints & Union.

---

Why "a great experience is priceless" is the worst answer for any city employee to give.

What does it cost the city to stage Friday evening concerts at a venue that wasn't built to host them?

Surely somewhere these raw numbers exist: Production Simple does the booking and staging, city workers block the street, prepare the grounds and clean up, police officers act as security, and of course, there are sponsorships, and these defray at least some of the costs, right?

Shouldn't this information be part of the public record?

I asked.

The quick response came not from Shane Gibson, but Chris Gardner: "A great experience is priceless."

Think about that.

Chris Gardner is the city of New Albany's director of flood control. He has a degree in business management (IU Southeast; 2010), used to work at a veneer plant, and is married to the mayor's daughter. These facts are matters of public record, and if subject to review by the most disinterested of space aliens armed with theories of impartiality and a recent dictionary, there'd almost inevitably arise at least some reference to the concept of nepotism.

Perhaps Jeff Gahan's exaggerated fluke of a vote total in 2011 blinded him to the implications of the word "nepotism", or maybe he didn't know what it meant in the first place. I doubt he cares, but even if the director of flood control weren't an otherwise unqualified son-in-law, and even if he were just another unqualified city political patronage employee, can this or any other mayor countenance a taxpayer inquiry being greeted with this?

"A great experience is priceless."

Perhaps Gardner's sequestration down by the river, where few people actually live, has caused Gardner to overlook the plain fact that lots of folks living hereabouts are not enjoying a great experience, because the reality of income inequality is that they cannot afford a frat boy's nonchalance, either in terms of attitude or disposable income. 

What's more, not many of them are in a position to enjoy the bread, circuses and musical events being staged for their benefit. They're working multiple jobs, juggling parental duties and just scraping through. They're struggling with finding and keeping affordable housing. Whether we care to admit it or not, most of us are far closer to poverty than we'll ever be to the lofty ease of the 1%, and we'd be advised to remember how quickly any of us could fall through the patchwork safety net, which Republicans keep trying to dismantle. 

Shouldn't Democrats be more concerned with maintaining a functional, level playing field than pretending to be Walt Disney?

Seriously, how many of us shrug and spend money without looking at the price?

Let's say I come home with a brand new car, run inside the house, get Diana and say, "Look at the nice shiny thing I bought for you."

Is anyone outside of the 1% NOT going to ask me how much it cost, to demand an explanation, to point out that we already owe far more than we make, and can we really afford it?

New Albanians should do the same. Experiences may indeed be priceless, but creditors are notoriously inconvenient when it comes to seeing the transaction in a different light. When Jeff Gahan's minions brag to you about their nice shiny objects, don't forget to ask them how much they cost ... and how do we pay for them ... and how many years will we be paying?

You'd ask these same questions when making your household purchases, wouldn't you?

Some day those objects won't be quite as shiny -- and your grandchildren will still be paying for them. That's neither great nor priceless, is it?

Free bus rides? "It is a question of political priority."

I keep returning to stories like these.

"On July 1, the entire country of Estonia will create the largest 24/7 free public transit zone in the world."

Starting in November, Madrid will make clear that downtown streets are not for drivers.

Also, I keep returning to a rant: until the moment when the Regional Development Authority begins talking about mobility solutions that involve modes of transportation like buses and light rail, as opposed to more of the same passenger cars with only the driver inside, then I'm not taking the RDA seriously.

Dant Chesser hits the Gahan ATM and solves the oligarchs' RDA funding puzzle.

What can I say, Wendy. I'm a Europhile social democratic liberal arts/humanities major.

This Petite French Town Turned a Stadium Boondoggle Into Free Public Transportation, by Laura Bliss (CityLab)

“It is a question of political priority.”

Dunkirk is a shrinking, suburban city on the northern coast of France. It’s a car town, where public buses are a mode of last resort: They represent only five percent of trips.

But when Patrice Vergriete ran for mayor in 2014, he envisioned something different: a sustainable city that allures and serves young people, families, and the elderly alike. So he made a radical campaign promise, which he thinks helped him win: make the buses free.

“I wanted to give back purchasing power to the families,” Vergriete says in an interview at CityLab Paris.

In 2015, Vergriete’s administration launched free weekend service. It was a popular move: Saturday ridership increased by 30 percent, and Sunday ridership by some 80 percent. People loved it, telling local media that they saved money and time by avoiding the stress of parking.

What’s more, passengers diversified. Before, transit in the Dunkirk area had been solely the province of the poor, the elderly, and young students. Now professionals and families—car owners, in other words—began to ride, too. They scarcely considered transit over driving when both modes cost them money, even if bus fare was as cheap €1.40, according to Vergriete. But a totally free option “made people stop and think,” he said.

Now buses in the Dunkirk region will be fully gratis, seven days a week, starting in September 2018. Dunkirk will be the largest city in France to offer such a service (though it won’t be the first).

Some people can’t believe the metro can afford it, Vergriete says. “They think it’s like magic,” he says. “They think it’s not possible, that you are a liar. You cannot pay the salaries of the drivers, for the buses, with free transport.”

But rider fares only ever made up about 10 percent of transit’s operating budget, which is about €50 million per year, he explains. The rest come from a special transport tax levied on businesses and the regional government’s operating general budget. Transit systems all over the world operate on similar budget breakdowns, where “farebox recovery” is quite low. When riders are already paying so little, “I think mayors should think about making it free,” he said. “It’s really a choice that we are making to charge” ...

"On July 1, the entire country of Estonia will create the largest 24/7 free public transit zone in the world."

Tallinn, 2016.

During the three decades I've traveled in Europe, it has been understood that $8-per-gallon petrol discourages excessive auto use, and that subsidies for public transportation achieve more than one purpose.

"Like roads, mass transit is not self-sustaining: both roads and mass transit require a combination of user fees and other government funding to pay for operations, maintenance, and expansion," The Hamilton Project authors wrote in a May 2015 paper titled, "Racing Ahead or Falling Behind: Six Economic Facts About Transportation Infrastructure in the United States."

Dare we mention quality of life?

Liberating all transit would cost the Paris region an extra €6 billion annually, according to one estimate. But the potential upsides are equally enormous: cleaner air, reduced healthcare costs, plummeting carbon emissions. There’s also the possibility that free-transit-for-all would make Paris so pleasant and easy to live in that it becomes irresistible to investors.

As usual, Estonia explores the periphery of the sensible. If it weren't for the complexity of the language, we'd retire there. Are tutors available?

Estonia Will Roll Out Free Public Transit Nationwide, by Feargus O'Sullivan (CityLab)

... On July 1, the entire country of Estonia will create the largest 24/7 free public transit zone in the world, one that will stretch across its entire territory. That will make it feasibly possible (if complicated) to travel by bus from one end of this 1.3 million-strong Baltic nation to the other without paying a cent.

snip

The implications of such a model are vast. Free buses for all could lead to a massive democratization of mobility for Estonians, meaning that travel costs paid at point of use need no longer be factored into many people’s monthly budgeting. And while outsiders might assume the government’s costs to be prohibitive, it won’t actually be that expensive to implement.

That’s because Estonia’s public transit already gets extremely generous subsidies. The state-owned railway operator Elron, for example, will get a €31 million boost from taxpayers next year. The rural bus routes due to go free, meanwhile, are already subsidized to up to 80 percent of cost as it is. Making them entirely fare-less should only cost around €12.9 million ($15.2 million) more—not a vast amount for even a small country such as Estonia.

Getting rid of ticket sales and inspections, meanwhile, will eliminate some overhead—and also cut down on delays. I couldn’t turn up any figures on the actual cost of charging for Estonian bus travel, but on larger, more complex networks such as New York’s MTA, it can reach 6 percent of all budget. When only 20 percent of the bus network’s costs are being recouped from fares, it’s easy to see how maintaining a ticket sale and inspection system can come to seem like a burden worth shedding.

But why is Estonia going so big on free transit now? At its root, this is a form of fiscal redistribution. Rural Estonians, who comprise 32.5 percent of the country’s total population, are generally older and less affluent than their urban counterparts; younger country-born Estonians have increasingly moved to cities and to other countries. The rural parts of this former Soviet state, which joined the E.U. in 2003, thus rely heavily on decent functioning public buses. Making this system free to use for all might help slow this rural population drain.

"The negative consequences of car dependency."

Idea credit: Bluegill.

The conclusion first:

Car-centric towns are isolating, discriminatory, expensive, harmful to small businesses, and bad for public health. In contrast, walkable, human-oriented communities tend to be the happiest and healthiest and the most financially productive types of places to build and retain.

Let's focus on building places that cater to the needs of humans, not the needs of cars.

Another outstanding entry from Strong Towns.

THE NEGATIVE CONSEQUENCES OF CAR DEPENDENCY, by Andrew Price (Strong Towns)

The majority of American towns and cities are built around the automobile. From multi-lane highways to vast paved parking lots, our communities have been shaped around a single mode of transportation over the last seventy years. While this may feel like progress, it has also harmed ourselves and our towns in ways that will be felt for generations.

Today I'm going talk about some of the negative consequences of car dependency and how a more walk-friendly, human-scaled development pattern would make us all better off. Specifically, I'm going to talk about them from the perspective of a town or suburb that has gone all-in on the auto-oriented pattern of development, where car travel and storage is prioritized over any other mode of transportation, and where the entire community is designed around car use.

Some of these negative consequences are:

Social isolation
Discrimination
Expense
Decline of small businesses
Effect on public health

Them's fightin' words: "Streets are for everyone, not just motorists."

At the risk of repeating myself, allow me to repeat myself.

From Victoria, British Columbia, comes another reinforcement of well-reasoned points that consistently elude so many New Gahanians as they stare at their phones while driving.

A few bucks more for complete streets?

Of course. We have a hundred years of redress to accomplish.

Comment: Streets are for everyone, not just motorists, by Todd Litman (Times Colonist)

... Many urban streets are becoming more complete and multi-modal, including better sidewalks and crosswalks, bike lanes, bus lanes and bus stops.

Some people assume that this harms motorists. They are wrong. Everyone benefits from improved travel options that reduce traffic and parking congestion, increase road safety and reduce motorists’ chauffeuring burdens. Most people will experience times when they cannot drive; better mobility options prepare our community for our future selves.

Of course, roadway changes are disruptive, but please give them a chance. Slowly but surely, complete-streets policies are helping to create more efficient and complete communities.

Thanks Victoria, for improving walking, cycling and public transit. Please don’t stop.

Why is infrastructure so expensive? “Our infrastructure incentives are all wrong. Until we fix them ... throwing more money at this system is simply pouring good money after bad.”

Thanks, Clint.

Here in New Albany, the whole fucking city is under construction. Some of the work is necessary. Other bits, not as much. A cynic like me lumps all of it into a Two year Plan (2016 - 2017) meant to coincide with election cycles.

Either Jeff Gahan will run for State Senate in 2018, or he'll seek a third term as mayor in 2019. He might end up doing both if the first effort fails. In any event, he'll campaign on the basis of massive infrastructure changes in New Albany, which wouldn't have occurred absent his divinely-inspired perfection of leadership.

As well as millions upon millions of dollars.

Apart from other pressing matters like transparency and top-down decrees, all we've wanted to know is why these construction projects are so expensive.

In this essay, Strong Towns founder Charles Marohn discusses a few possible answers, beginning with a parallel example in Catastrophic Care: Why Everything We Think We Know about Health Care is Wrong, a book by David Goldhill.

From a brief survey of Goldhill's "Healthcare Island," Marohn shifts the scene to Infrastructure Island. His relentlessly sensible points are something to consider while navigating streets currently being repaved by perennial low bidder MAC Construction, as remunerated with money largely procured from the feds.

I've chosen a few sections to make the overall point, but you'll want to click through and read the entire essay.

THIS IS WHY INFRASTRUCTURE IS SO EXPENSIVE, by Charles Marohn (Strong Towns)

 ... Last week, Bloomberg's Noah Smith wrote an article titled "The U.S. Has Forgotten How To Do Infrastructure" that asked a lot of questions that would get us to a Goldhill like analysis of our infrastructure approach. Just like on Healthcare Island, on Infrastructure Island we have our own way of talking about things. And we never talk about prices, only about costs. And as Smith suggests, costs go up and nobody seems to understand why.

He goes through and dismisses all of the usual suspects. Union wages drive up infrastructure costs (yet not true in countries paying equivalent wages). It's expensive to acquire land in the property-rights-obsessed United States (yet countries with weaker eminent domain laws have cheaper land acquisition costs). America's too spread out or our cities are too dense (arguments that cancel each other out). Our environmental review processes are too extensive (yet other advanced countries do extensive environmental reviews with far less delay). I concur with all these points, by the way.

Smith concludes with this:

That suggests that U.S. costs are high due to general inefficiency -- inefficient project management, an inefficient government contracting process, and inefficient regulation. It suggests that construction, like health care or asset management or education, is an area where Americans have simply ponied up more and more cash over the years while ignoring the fact that they were getting less and less for their money. To fix the problems choking U.S. construction, reformers are going to have to go through the system and rip out the inefficiencies root and branch.

Much like health care, our infrastructure incentives are all wrong. Until we fix them -- until we go through the system and rip out the inefficiencies root and branch -- throwing more money at this system is simply pouring good money after bad.

Beak-wetting incentives ... to wet more beaks.

The more lane miles a state has, the more federal transportation dollars that state qualifies for. What is the incentive? It is, of course, to build more lane miles. Add to this the fact that federal transportation programs generally pay 90%+ for new construction, but only ~50% for maintenance, and we have a system that encourages states to build more than they can ever maintain.

That's okay. When we put together our appropriation request, is it better to show a catastrophic level of need or is it better to prudently ask for only what is absolutely necessary? It's an altogether silly question; the more desperate we can make ourselves and the more miserable we can make taxpayers, the more they will demand that governments pay more for infrastructure.

Open checkbook -- open TIF books?

In addition, the longer the project takes, the more everyone gets paid. Change orders -- because of weather, redesign, special requests, etc... -- often add to project costs and, even when they don't, take time ($$) to administer. Once a government commits to a project, they are committing to an open checkbook. That check will be written in a system where nearly everyone involved will be compensated more the longer the project takes and the more expensive it becomes.

Minnesota, meet New Albany: "Incentives for all kinds of shenanigans."

In Minnesota where I live, public contracts are required to always take the lowest bid price. This creates incentives for all kinds of shenanigans. I worked on one state paving project where the low bidder bid most every item far below cost except for bituminous, where they were the highest price by many multiples. The strategy for executing the contract was then clear: Do the least amount necessary to fulfill the contract agreement and overrun the bituminous as much as possible. An extra 1/8 of one inch of pavement over a 40 mile project -- an amount hardly perceptible -- caused a massive cost overrun.

I could go on, but here's the crazy thing: On Infrastructure Island, this all makes sense. Nobody there is really unethical, it's just that the incentives have perverted what, in other realms, would be seen as normal and acceptable. Make the project big. Make it take a long time. Create a lot of overruns. Don't maintain it until it falls apart catastrophically. Few on Infrastructure Island set out to do these things, but they happen and nobody loses a lot of sleep over it. That's because, for the players involved, there is little negative feedback and lots of positive feedback associated with these perverse outcomes.

Marohn's proposed solutions follow, so go to Strong Towns and read them.

Urban, suburban and UniGov: "Municipal consolidation will only amplify the underlying fragilities inherent in our development pattern."

I'm going to repeat something written two years ago during the pirate's mayoral campaign, but first, the 2011 article that prompts it.

CONSOLIDATION IS THE WRONG RESPONSE, by Charles Marohn (Strong Towns)

... Consolidation is a response to the notion that our problem is essentially one of efficiency. The idea is that local governments are not efficient enough and therefore we can increase efficiency by combining them into fewer governments. Like the banking sector, fewer players means more efficiency, and like banks, fewer players will amplify fragility.

Take school consolidation as an example ...

LEAP FORWARD

... Our biggest problem as a nation right now is that our places are generally all vulnerable to the same things. That is because we have all used the same cookbook (standard zoning) and the same Mechanisms of Growth (government transfers, transportation spending and debt) to get to where we are now. Fundamentally, our cities are all pretty much the same. When gas prices rise, our cities struggle. When growth slows or stalls, our cities go into decline. When government aid goes away, our places start to implode. This lack of resilience will only be covered up by consolidation, the day of reckoning pushed off and made more difficult as a result.

Instead of consolidation, we should embrace the core strength of our system; an ability to innovate. This means loosening the controls we have placed on our cities and towns thus allowing local officials to try different solutions to the problems they face. The correct response is not to become more parochial, it is to become less ...

Indeed, county government no longer is "starved" of cash since last year's sale of Floyd Memorial Hospital. But the pattern of development remains exactly the same.

---

Urban, suburban and UniGov.

Hoosiers typically refer to combined city-county government as "Unigov," this being the catch phrase that originated 45 years ago when Indianapolis and Marion County undertook a "consolidation" of government pushed by then-mayor Richard Lugar.

What this notion of "combining" governments implies to me is an economy of scale -- but not the one we usually hear mentioned. We're told about the myriad small efficiencies to be derived from reducing or eliminating overlap, and while I don't contest these in every instance, what I see is a different kind of efficiency, or more accurately, inefficiency: Compact urban expenditures versus suburban sprawl subsidies.

It's the 800-lb gorilla in the room, as illustrated and explained here.

Sprawl Costs the Public More Than Twice as Much as Compact Development, by Angie Schmitt (Streetsblog)

How much more does it cost the public to build infrastructure and provide services for sprawling development compared to more compact neighborhoods? A lot more, according to this handy summary from the Canadian environmental think tank Sustainable Prosperity.

To create this graphic, the organization synthesized a study by the Halifax Regional Municipality [PDF] in Nova Scotia, and the research is worth a closer look.

Halifax found the cost of administering services varied directly in proportion to how far apart homes were spaced. On the rural end, each house sat on a 2.5 acre lot. On the very urban end, there were 92 people dwelling on each acre. Between those two extremes were several development patterns of varying density.

It costs more to "service" infrastructure for a few houses five miles off the main road outside Greenville than it does multiple homes located on a city block downtown. Precisely for this reason, Floyd County government is starved for money. Sprawl costs more, and revenues aren't sufficient to cover it. Somewhat surprisingly, the News and Tribune recently editorialized in favor of higher taxes to make up the difference, although the newspaper's editorial board didn't trace the need to the root cause: Sprawl costs more.

Of course there are areas suitable for sharing and cooperation between city and county government. These can and should be explored.

There's also a fundamental difference in settlement patterns between more and less densely populated areas, with ramifications for the cost of services and infrastructure maintenance. The latter represents a serious discussion we have not had.

Shall we begin?

The impending grandeur of breaking wind (or, All About The Breakwater).

The Break Wind Lofts at Duggins Flats, sometimes referred to by those enamored of literalism as The Breakwater, soon will be leasing.

More on that in a moment.

First, echoing a question asked on social media, there's the question of parking. Are there sufficient spaces on the old Coyle block for the number of cars we'd expect to belong to Americans residing in 190 units?

Almost certainly not, although I can't find the answer to this question (please direct me if you know), although very early on, the city began referring to parking arrangements with AT&T just across the street, and this likely is a tacit admission of parking inadequacy within the confines of The Break Wind itself.

In turn, it's recognition that non-automotive millennials with bicycles, not cars, actually won't be able to afford living in these apartments, but let's ignore that and consider what it means to offer overflow parking across Spring Street when there is no semblance of a crosswalk mentality, now or in any two-way future -- hence, the photo above, and another view here.

Of course, the dynamic renderings already posit a two-way future -- if not a crosswalk. Recall that City Hall denies ever discussing the street grid with the builder, Flaherty Collins, a representative of which confirmed such talks when asked by a citizen.

The view from 4th and Spring:

These renderings also take a highly stylized view of downtown Louisville's proximity to one-way Nawbany.

Talk about plate tectonics -- Louisville has shifted overnight, and residents of The Break Wind will almost be able to reach out and touch the Yum! Center.

I went to The Breakwater web page to see if the parking question is answered there, and it is:

"Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiuts smod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua."

Just look at these amenities, this time in English:

"Resort-Style Heated pool, Cabanas, Outdoor Kitchen w/ Grilling Stations, Fire Pit, Pet Spa, Dog Run, Smart Package Room, Bike Room w/ Storage and Repair Tools, Courtyard w/ Pool Deck, Outdoor Movie Screen and Fitness Club."

But what about rental prices? For this, we must visit Craigslist (thanks to T) and dodge exclamation marks.

New Albany Indiana, just outside of Louisville Kentucky, now has BRAND NEW LUXURY apartment homes for rent!

The Breakwater is a brand new luxury community that offers studio, one, and two bedroom apartments for rent in downtown New Albany, IN.

As you step into your apartment home, you will enjoy 9 foot ceilings, 42" kitchen cabinets, granite counter-tops, hard wood floors, full size washer and dryer, stainless steel appliances, and blinds.

Our residents will enjoy upscale, resort style amenities, including a heated salt water swimming pool with cabanas, outdoor movie screen, bike storage, pet wash room, fitness studio, dog walk, club room, and an outdoor kitchen with grilling stations and a fire pit. Attached and Unattached garages are available to rent also! The Breakwater is just minutes from shopping, dining, entertainment, and provides easy access to the freeway. Take advantage of the upscale amenities available to you at The Breakwater today!

We have the following floor plans available:

* Studio - 517 sq to 622 sq - $705 to $830
* One bedroom - 769 sq - 912 sq - $910 to $1190
* One bedroom with a Den - 1148 sq - $1195 to $1215
* Two bedroom/Two Bath - 1180 sq to 1204 sq - $1495 to $1670

Call now to pre-lease your new apartment home today, we are filling up fast!

I suppose this means the Bocce Ball court didn't make the cut.

Sad!

Just imagine what these units would cost had the city not waived sewer tap-in fees ...

"In almost every way imaginable, the car, as it is deployed and used today, is insane."

It starts and ends with this. I've broken down the article into bullet points. If the author's thesis is valid, and I believe it largely is, then the corollary is that virtually every decision taken by city government begins with the acknowledgement of this fundamental, unshakable insanity.

Think about that.

The Absurd Primacy of the Automobile in American Life, by Edward Humes (City Lab)

Considering the constant fatalities, rampant pollution, and exorbitant costs of ownership, is the car’s dominance a little insane?

 ... But convenience, along with American history, culture, rituals, and man-machine affection, hide the true cost and nature of cars. And what is that nature? Simply this: In almost every way imaginable, the car, as it is deployed and used today, is insane.

• First and foremost, they are profligate wasters of money and fuel.
• While burning through all that fuel, cars and trucks spew toxins and particulate waste into the atmosphere that induce cancer, lung disease, and asthma. These emissions measurably decrease longevity—not by a matter of days, but years. 
• There are also the indirect environmental, health, and economic costs of extracting, transporting, and refining oil for vehicle fuels, and the immense national-security costs and risks of being dependent on oil imports for significant amounts of that fuel.
• Then there is the matter of climate. Transportation is a principal cause of the global climate crisis, exacerbated by a stubborn attachment to archaic, wasteful, and inefficient transportation modes and machines. 
• If the price of gasoline and the vehicles that burn it actually reflected the true costs and damage they inflict, the common car would go extinct. Gasoline would cost way more than $10 a gallon. That’s how big the secret subsidy is.
• And that’s not even counting cars’ most dramatic cost: They waste lives. They are one of America’s leading causes of avoidable injury and death, especially among the young.
• If U.S. roads were a war zone, they would be the most dangerous battlefield the American military has ever encountered. 
• The car is the star.

Why "a great experience is priceless" is the worst answer for any city employee to give.

What does it cost the city to stage Friday evening concerts at a venue that wasn't built to host them?

Surely somewhere these raw numbers exist: Production Simple does the booking and staging, city workers block the street, prepare the grounds and clean up, police officers act as security, and of course, there are sponsorships, and these defray at least some of the costs, right?

Shouldn't this information be part of the public record?

I asked.

The quick response came not from Shane Gibson, but Chris Gardner: "A great experience is priceless."

Think about that.

Chris Gardner is the city of New Albany's director of flood control. He has a degree in business management (IU Southeast; 2010), used to work at a veneer plant, and is married to the mayor's daughter. These facts are matters of public record, and if subject to review by the most disinterested of space aliens armed with theories of impartiality and a recent dictionary, there'd almost inevitably arise at least some reference to the concept of nepotism.

Perhaps Jeff Gahan's exaggerated fluke of a vote total in 2011 blinded him to the implications of the word "nepotism", or maybe he didn't know what it meant in the first place. I doubt he cares, but even if the director of flood control weren't an otherwise unqualified son-in-law, and even if he were just another unqualified city political patronage employee, can this or any other mayor countenance a taxpayer inquiry being greeted with this?

"A great experience is priceless."

Perhaps Gardner's sequestration down by the river, where few people actually live, has caused Gardner to overlook the plain fact that lots of folks living hereabouts are not enjoying a great experience, because the reality of income inequality is that they cannot afford a frat boy's nonchalance, either in terms of attitude or disposable income. 

What's more, not many of them are in a position to enjoy the bread, circuses and musical events being staged for their benefit. They're working multiple jobs, juggling parental duties and just scraping through. They're struggling with finding and keeping affordable housing. Whether we care to admit it or not, most of us are far closer to poverty than we'll ever be to the lofty ease of the 1%, and we'd be advised to remember how quickly any of us could fall through the patchwork safety net, which Republicans keep trying to dismantle. 

Shouldn't Democrats be more concerned with maintaining a functional, level playing field than pretending to be Walt Disney?

Seriously, how many of us shrug and spend money without looking at the price?

Let's say I come home with a brand new car, run inside the house, get Diana and say, "Look at the nice shiny thing I bought for you."

Is anyone outside of the 1% NOT going to ask me how much it cost, to demand an explanation, to point out that we already owe far more than we make, and can we really afford it?

New Albanians should do the same. Experiences may indeed be priceless, but creditors are notoriously inconvenient when it comes to seeing the transaction in a different light. When Jeff Gahan's minions brag to you about their nice shiny objects, don't forget to ask them how much they cost ... and how do we pay for them ... and how many years will we be paying?

You'd ask these same questions when making your household purchases, wouldn't you?

Some day those objects won't be quite as shiny -- and your grandchildren will still be paying for them. That's neither great nor priceless, is it?

Baylor for Mayor: Urban, suburban and UniGov.

Hoosiers typically refer to combined city-county government as "Unigov," this being the catch phrase that originated 45 years ago when Indianapolis and Marion County undertook a "consolidation" of government pushed by then-mayor Richard Lugar.

What this notion of "combining" governments implies to me is an economy of scale -- but not the one we usually hear mentioned. We're told about the myriad small efficiencies to be derived from reducing or eliminating overlap, and while I don't contest these in every instance, what I see is a different kind of efficiency, or more accurately, inefficiency: Compact urban expenditures versus suburban sprawl subsidies.

It's the 800-lb gorilla in the room, as illustrated and explained here.

Sprawl Costs the Public More Than Twice as Much as Compact Development, by Angie Schmitt (Streetsblog)

How much more does it cost the public to build infrastructure and provide services for sprawling development compared to more compact neighborhoods? A lot more, according to this handy summary from the Canadian environmental think tank Sustainable Prosperity.

To create this graphic, the organization synthesized a study by the Halifax Regional Municipality [PDF] in Nova Scotia, and the research is worth a closer look.

Halifax found the cost of administering services varied directly in proportion to how far apart homes were spaced. On the rural end, each house sat on a 2.5 acre lot. On the very urban end, there were 92 people dwelling on each acre. Between those two extremes were several development patterns of varying density.

It costs more to "service" infrastructure for a few houses five miles off the main road outside Greenville than it does multiple homes located on a city block downtown. Precisely for this reason, Floyd County government is starved for money. Sprawl costs more, and revenues aren't sufficient to cover it. Somewhat surprisingly, the News and Tribune recently editorialized in favor of higher taxes to make up the difference, although the newspaper's editorial board didn't trace the need to the root cause: Sprawl costs more.

Of course there are areas suitable for sharing and cooperation between city and county government. These can and should be explored.

There's also a fundamental difference in settlement patterns between more and less densely populated areas, with ramifications for the cost of services and infrastructure maintenance. The latter represents a serious discussion we have not had.

Shall we begin?

Baylor for Mayor: On parking "opportunities" in downtown New Albany.

Thanks to JS for the Google Map view.

There is a popular perception that downtown New Albany has a parking problem. This perception is mistaken, and results from two factors, both of which involve an abdication of responsibility.

First, downtown merchants and business owners have been unwilling or unable to become better informed about parking, and to speak as one voice about parking. Worse, not all of them have policed parking on behalf of downtown's better interests, as when employees (and owners) are allowed to use customer parking spaces.

Why would you do this?

Second, beginning with Doug England's third term, the city of New Albany has chosen not to enforce any semblance of a level playing field as it pertains to downtown parking. When an employee uses a parking space for eight hours during prime time, there are no consequences.

Why would you do that?

Too many employers do nothing. The city does nothing. Both point at the other, expecting solutions, when neither will expend capital to find them. Free parking comes at a price, and the sooner we recognize this fact, the easier it will be to do something.

It seems almost as though neither the merchants nor City Hall wishes to actually lead by deciding what works best for the most users in the broadest physical space, implementing a policy, using the bully pulpit to educate and inform, and connecting parking solutions to an overall plan for multi-modal use of streets and sidewalks.

We have no overall multi-modal street and sidewalk plan, no goals, and no notion of what vitally necessary steps like Jeff Speck's downtown street network proposal entail in terms of preparing ourselves for implementation and making walkability an aspect of design, rather than an accidental outgrowth of serendipity.

Parking's a part of this. Public safety for all users is a part of this. All of this currently is being neglected, and this neglect will cease during my administration.

Dunman: "Development without preservation isn’t a risk worth taking."

If Louisville is ranked the 11th-poorest city in the country, what does it say about a place like New Albany, which for decades has happily agreed to be the low-rent whipping boy of the Louisville metro area in exchange for reliable slumlord campaign contributions and extractive heavy industry "development" models?

(An aside: As I write, the city council is about to trumpet the "reform" of our building codes, a revision that will not include rental property registration, with both major parties evidently agreeing that it would be far too expensive to raise the bar, when a lowered bar affords so many practical campaign donations)

Back to Dunman's essay. It's like we said during the time of Mainland's River View project: Who's going to buy the pricey condos?

Couldn't the same money be spread out between historic rehabs and selected infill, and achieve better results?

Wouldn't the millennials be more likely to live in more affordably priced properties in neighborhoods near downtown?

Of course, they'd be more inclined to do so if we put the genuine clamp on slumlords and made our streets walkable and bikeable -- but 79-year-olds like Irv Stumler, extractors like Tiger Trucking and rental property owners like mayoral candidate Kevin Zurschmiede) stand in the way of rationality ... don't they?

So, why do we tolerate them?

Joe Dunman: Development without preservation isn’t a risk worth taking, by Joe Dunman (Insider Louisville)

... Louisville is not a rich city, after all. In fact, it was recently ranked the 11th-poorest city in the country. Its young professionals are few in number and aren’t, as a group, paid very handsomely. And housing is not so limited or overpriced that quality apartments, condos, and even single-family homes can’t be found for affordable prices very close to a downtown that remains mostly a daytime destination for white-collar commuters.

New residential developments like the proposed condo building in Butchertown are risky endeavors. And without preservation restrictions, there is a danger that historic structures will be lost to new projects that end up vacant or underutilized if demand for pricey condos and studio apartments fails to fully materialize.

"Sprawl Costs the Public More Than Twice as Much as Compact Development."

Just remember this when David White comes knocking to speak with you about NA-FC "unigov."

Sprawl Costs the Public More Than Twice as Much as Compact Development, by Angie Schmitt (Streetsblog)

How much more does it cost the public to build infrastructure and provide services for sprawling development compared to more compact neighborhoods? A lot more, according to this handy summary from the Canadian environmental think tank Sustainable Prosperity.

To create this graphic, the organization synthesized a study by the Halifax Regional Municipality [PDF] in Nova Scotia, and the research is worth a closer look.

Halifax found the cost of administering services varied directly in proportion to how far apart homes were spaced. On the rural end, each house sat on a 2.5 acre lot. On the very urban end, there were 92 people dwelling on each acre. Between those two extremes were several development patterns of varying density.

ON THE AVENUES: On quality of life and newfound loot.

ON THE AVENUES: On quality of life and newfound loot.

A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.

Since infancy, mankind has displayed an irrepressible proclivity to seek intoxication.

Humans simply will not be deterred. We’ve fermented grapes and grains, chewed strange buds, torched wild weeds and gleaned all sorts of useful scientific knowledge from the theory and practice of evading, if only for a little while, the intrinsic angst of the cosmic cycle of life and death, by means of ingesting substances that alter our consciousness.

Oddly, also from the very start, we’ve balanced our blood alcohol counts with vivid cautionary accounts, beginning with the oral tradition, and only later through emerging written languages. Consequently, the Western literary canon is filled with stories about sodden inebriates doomed to oblivion – a place where we’re all headed, anyway, but stick with me for a moment.

It seems almost as if the “officially” accepted rules of fiction permit only random moments of intelligence, heroism or Falstaffian levity in drinkers, while in the main, they’re not permitted to be humorous or sympathetic without extensive qualification. They’re commonly cast not as people, but as walking, talking and sometimes gurgling morality plays.

Imbibers are car-crashing, fight-starting, self-immolating accidents waiting to happen, and those who are well adjusted and functional seldom fit snugly into any serious narrative. At best, they are allowed to wax and wane in deference to tragicomedy, a device primarily deployed as foreshadowing in advance of their subsequent denouement as self-destructive, innocence-shattering villains.

To summarize, not unlike the fate of the Consul on Mezcal in Malcolm Lowry’s “Under the Volcano,” their tales always end badly, and as a professional drinker of many years standing, with a gold-plated union card and squealing liver to prove it, I find the repetition thoroughly tiresome.

Not that I am willing to argue against the varied and exhaustively documented costs of alcoholism. Rather, while negative considerations are genuine, I contend they are not to be confused with the myriad and conducive joys of social drinking, both educationally and recreationally.

And, quite frankly, also for medicinal reasons.

For instance, consider the city of New Albany. There are times when this place seems so bizarrely unreal that only fiction lubricated with alcoholic beverages can properly capture the sensation.

As in: Lately.

---

If the newspaper had a sense of humor (rest assured, it doesn’t), the banner headline would have read something like this: “End of rainbow discovered near Hauss Square as history comes to dead stop.”

A full two centuries down the line, New Albany abruptly rose from a slumber of Rip Van Winkle dimensions to find itself slouching, perhaps hungover, at a juncture long anticipated, sometimes predicted, generally dismissed, and often doubted by the very civic leaders who now have determined that we really do have all the money we need.

Imagine it!

Suddenly, after all those wasted years of miserly and penurious parsimony, forever lashed by the imminent tightening of ropes (heck, we couldn’t even afford actual belts), now petty cash is as common as litter on city streets bearing names but no trash receptacles. Verily, either Switzerland or Dubai lies within easy reach, maybe even Singapore, and all we need do to attain the brass ring is float a bond, build some parks, and kick back to watch our children win athletic scholarships and leave town, never to return.

---

After last Thursday’s council meeting, when a resolution was approved to speed New Albany toward nirvana or a $19+ million bond issue for parks and recreation (whichever comes first), I was chatting with Councilman Scott Blair about prospective two-way street conversions. His very first question was to ask if any of us knew how much it would cost, because he’s a cost benefit analysis kind of guy.

CM Blair also counts himself firmly among those who advance parks and recreation as “no brainer” quality-of-life issues, and while I personally don’t entirely disagree with this point of view, it seems to me that “quality of life” as a consideration surely must embrace other aspects of the human experience beyond organized recreational facilities.

Even interpreted narrowly, as a concept pertaining solely to recreation, quality of life certainly includes an ability to use the entire city as potential playground, in the sense of walking, riding bicycles or eating a sandwich on a streetside bench … alas, with no garbage can nearby. Hence, the under-valued importance of the municipal street grid itself, because just as the skin is your body’s largest organ, a city’s streets tie every single one of its other facets together into a whole.

That’s why I found it noteworthy that CM Blair, a skilled and respected banker, immediately pounced on the notion of two-way street conversions as a prime candidate for rigorous cost-benefit analysis (and indeed, numerous studies have been conducted, here and elsewhere), while accepting virtually without question the aquatics center-as-quality-of-life truism.

With virtually all in attendance advancing the notion of recreational facilities as sole determining factor governing whether “our children” become taxpayers or axe murderers, and largely refusing to countenance arguments of a more subtle nature suggesting otherwise, exactly how do we reduce such an equation to dollars and cents and cost-benefit – apart from guesstimates of attendance and user fees worth somewhat less than the PowerPoint they’re printed on?

It isn’t my intention to “bully” CM Blair, who’s quite capable of advancing his viewpoint and has done so with me on several occasions. We talk just fine, Daniel. Rather, it’s to explicate yet again (sadly) this default tendency of power brokers to lapse into stupor at the very suggestion that prioritizing basic everyday infrastructures of living, from transport to design to neighborhood structure, might address “quality-of-life” issues far more fundamentally and comprehensively than parks and recreation facilities created (and financed) in isolated, self-perpetuating vacuums.

Two hundred years after the Scribners rowed ashore to take a leak and get some good ol’ homebrew cooking, the Gahan administration evidently has found the pot of gold buried beneath the manhole covers out back in the street department’s parts shed. Not only that, there’s a council mercifully absent Li’l Stevie and King Larry, and with an alien occupying the body formerly known as Dan Coffey’s, and what this adds up to is a majority seemingly in favor of spending the uncovered loot as quickly as possible.

So be it. I’m for borrowing every last cent if it means making this city a better place, and one that requires less personal alcohol consumption to make life tolerable (but please, keep drinking Progressive Pints, because daddy likes to get paid).

All I’m asking is for a closer look at “quality of life” and what it entails, and with less rolling of eyes, particularly as the concept pertains to the majority of residents who neither do the backstroke nor swat horsehide. Make this whole damned city a recreational area, guys -- and then we’re getting somewhere.

Now if you’ll slide that bottle across the table, we can get back to nationalizing the railroad.

Open thread: What does it mean for a public works project to pay for itself?

Bluegill asked this question in another thread after a discussion developed about the existing downtown parking garage and prospects for a new one:


What does it mean for a public works project to pay for itself? Is it the direct repayment of dollars like collecting parking fees at a garage or something else, like a quality of life issues that indirectly lead to more dollars by making someone want to be around, raising property values, private spending levels, and economic opportunities?


We already know how the conjoined councilmen feel. Your opinions?