Councilman Phipps meets the enemy -- and finds that they are him.

Several times in the recent past we've cast a flabbergasted glance at these duplicitous machines of sheer uselessness.

The "distracted pedestrian" is a myth, but distracted engineers and planners are another topic.

Neither City Hall nor HWC Engineering sees a problem with this mishap-plagued intersection. Maybe we should appeal to Floyd County government for help.

This means you: "STOP FUCKING DRIVING YOUR CAR AT PEOPLE."

At Strong Towns: "4 Reasons We Must Build Our Streets for People (Not Just Cars).

3rd district councilman Greg Phipps' first mistake was to accept Jeff Gahan's watered-down two-way street grid paving project without a substantive murmur, insisting all the while that to question mayoral authority was even more treasonous than breaking bread with Vladimir Putin.

A neighbor's social media post yesterday about those idiotic solar-powered pedestrian danger crossings puts it all into perspective.

Just throwing it out there: there needs to be a highly visible driver education campaign to teach drivers what this sign and signaled light actually mean. I pushed this button to turn on the light to signal drivers I wanted to cross the street, and had I proceeded, I would’ve been mowed down by nothing short of 10 to 12 cars. Drivers did not even hit the brakes. I think these are a great safety move and I am glad they were installed, but they will not be effective in actually protecting pedestrians until drivers are educated.

A respondent tagged the councilman.

Greg Phipps....any ideas? Or any changes that the city is planning on implementing?

Phipps:
I have mentioned this at least 5-6 times at council and board of works. They are unwilling to add signs in the middle of the street like at the high school :(

Citizen:
What about a public education campaign? It’s seriously a tragedy waiting to happen. I shudder to think if someone made the assumption the traffic would slow and stop. Or children growing up and learning to cross the street. Scary stuff. The street was actually safer without these lights installed. These provide a dangerous false sense of security.

Phipps:
There has been an article in the tribune, but very few read it.

---

Let's go back to this: They are unwilling.

Who are they, anyway?

Isn't Greg Phipps "they"?

Phipps is a Democrat. BOW is populated by Democratic Party appointees, and party appointees trashed Jeff Speck's street grid plan and installed these pathetic, non-functional pedestrian crossing sitting duck mechanisms. 

Phipps passively notes that no one reads the newspaper, and laments being ignored at Board of Public Works meetings?

Seriously?

They and them ARE he and him, one and the same. Phipps was elected to office with C-minus junta support, and has voted with the governing clique roughly 95% of the time. He's one of only nine councilmen (not a single woman) in the entire city, and yet he cannot determine a way to make his voice heard.

Instead, he merely whines in response, not unlike a lashed cur.

But he has the means at his disposal to make "them" listen, doesn't he? After all, he's one of them. Phipps' council vote has immense significance should he ever decide to wield it tactically.

Just imagine if Phipps' vote in favor of the Reisz city hall relocation boondoggle had been made conditional on his fellow Democrats actually DOING something about the pedestrian safety problem, rather than ducking, covering and kicking sand in his face.

A "no" vote on the Reisz Mahal's first reading in May, accompanied by some genuine spinefulness, might well have resulted in both of Phipps' desired outcomes: real-world safety measures on streets AND relief for the oppressed, inhumanely housed city workers. 

The election's next year.

Isn't it time for a change in the 3rd district? 

#EightIsEnough

Neither City Hall nor HWC Engineering sees a problem with this mishap-plagued intersection. Maybe we should appeal to Floyd County government for help.

Photo by AGB.

Insightful observer AGB photographed the scene on Sunday afternoon after a driver deposited his car in the yard of the home on the southwest corner of Elm and 13th.

Yet another wreck at Elm and 13th. This time the cars hit and one went into the yard and hit the house. But those flashing pedestrian walkway lights that nobody pays attention to were a much better choice than 4 way stops ... there is only a 2-way stop here and you can't see around the cars parked. So there's often wrecks/near wrecks at this intersection.

Ironically, it was precisely this intersection that I mentioned last week to Jim Rice of HWC Engineering, the mayor’s preferred contractor for street design, as worthy of added study owing to sight lines and the completely ineffective solar-powered "high visibility" pedestrian crossings.

Rice quickly brushed me off, asking how I knew for a fact these crosswalks don't work. I replied that as a frequent walker, a couple hundred hours of direct experience is something not to be ignored; he answered by denigrating real-life observation as opposed to the sheer brilliance of that segment of the populace which has chosen to become engineers.

Sorry, Jim. If the choice is believing you or my own two eyes, you can hurriedly beat a retreat back to suburban Indianapolis (by car, of course) while as a walker, I'll continue crossing in the middle of the block -- because this is safer than the prevailing reality following your de-Specked abortion of a two-way street grid plan, which your presumably flawless firm of flunkies conjured between amassing campaign donations to a failed mayor who ordered the car-centric butchery in the first place.

As an aside, the idiocy of these "high irrelevancy" pedestrian crossing lights is so blatantly obvious that even 3rd district councilman Greg Phipps noticed it, and made at least one appeal to the somnolent Bored of Works, maybe two.

To no one's surprise, BOW has been completely unresponsive -- and as fatigued city engineer Larry Summers informed council just a few weeks ago, he's so busy coordinating campaign donations from paving companies that there's no time for the consideration of other matters.

Unfortunately, Phipps has a history of stopping short of useful action that might offend Dear Leader, so here we are. Perhaps it's time for residents of the 3rd district to learn from the instructive experience of Vulcan, West Virginia in the late 1980s. There's a crucial and delightful twist, seeing as the USSR and the GDR no longer exist.

Let's ask the Floyd County commissioners for help with this intersection, seeing as we're getting none from the Anchor Regime.

Feeling forsaken by their own government, after repeated pleas to have a new bridge constructed, the people of this West Virginia community made an unprecedented move which soon garnered international headlines. At the height of the Cold War, residents of Vulcan wrote to the Soviet Embassy in Washington, as well as to communist officials in East Germany, detailing their plight and requesting foreign aid from the nations.

Sensing an opportunity to shame the American government, the Kremlin immediately dispatched journalists to the United States.

Interviewing the residents of Vulcan and broadcasting their troubles to the rest of the world, the government in Moscow did what the residents of Vulcan had been attempting to do for years, bring attention to their transportation nightmare.

By mid-December 1977, newspaper headlines around the country were announcing, “Small Town Seeks Russ Foreign Aid” (Spokane Daily Chronicle).

The Spokane Daily Chronicle wrote, “Soviet officials were amused today by reports that the small town of Vulcan, W.Va. has appealed to the Kremlin for foreign aid… The town, with a population of 200, asked the Soviet government for financial help to build a bridge after the town was turned down by the U.S. and West Virginia governments.”

Embarrassed by the attention their lack of assistance was receiving, state officials wasted no time in committing $1.3 million and built a bridge for the tiny community.

These useless crosswalk gadgets are Team Gahan's most wasteful expenditure ever -- at least BEFORE the prioritization of a luxury city hall.

If we disguise them as trees, perhaps David Barksdale will have the Tree Board commence another orgy of removal.

These useless "enhanced" (or "high visibility" -- but please, select your own code words for "this dog won't hunt") crosswalks are such an obvious and profound failure that even 3rd district councilman Greg Phipps grasps it, but because the error was cemented into place by the ruling clique to which Phipps is beholden, there cannot logically be a solution involving the councilman.

This would mean challenging Big Daddy G, and that's a good way to have the AdamBot kneecap your next campaign.

Maybe DNA can hang member advertising placards on them.

Crosswalk safety: Phipps goes on TeeVee; Summers gulps the Kool Aid. Jeff Speck had the street grid answers, but Jeff Gahan urinated on them. Unwalkable New Albany -- what a thrill!

 ... Focusing on the topic at hand, maybe Phipps is beginning to see that without Jeff Speck's principled approach to comprehensive street grid reform, two-way automotive friction alone cannot magically produce walkability -- and the majority of bicycle-friendly design components never made it past Gahan's ingrained cowardice.

Can you explain, Jeff Gillenwater?

"Greg Phipps and Larry Summers are both very aware that much more could have been done via this significant expenditure to protect against and start reversing auto-centric culture. It’s too bad both of them chose silence as a means of protecting their vaunted personal positions while a solid plan to do just that was being butchered by their boss. As lots of us have mentioned, two-way conversion as implemented is a bare bones step. Now we’ll have to spend years more and lots of additional money working toward eventually getting it right."

Granted, clogging our streets with charitable donation bucket brigades MIGHT slow traffic, but it would be UNSAFE to bet on it.

Noting in advance that my 3rd district council representative Greg Phipps is absolutely correct in expressing disgust with the solar-powered Nothing Doing Machines, as erected by planners who never walk, for the ostensible purpose of helping pedestrians cross the street, here's the rough paraphrase of a conversation he and I had following Thursday evening's soul-crushing student city council meeting.

Me: We need to talk about the street grid.

Greg: I know you have issues, but look, at times you have to compromise, and it's better than it was before. It's a start.

Me: Okay, for the sake of argument, let's say it is better than before. It can still be improved, so we need to talk about the next phases for improvement.

Greg: Well, you know, probably nothing else is ever going to happen.

Me: 

As reported earlier, council devoted thirty minutes to a discussion of potential ways to alter the body's own previous legislation in 2013 to ban non-profits, little leaguers, knitting circles and Dishevel New Albany from sending volunteers wading out into the street to solicit donations from road-enraged drivers at major  intersections.

Back in 2013, when Dan Coffey lobbied furiously in favor of this ban (now he's caterwauling just as frenetically against it), the major point in its favor was safety:

"Drivers suck and they're distracted, and walkers suck and they're distracted, and we need to keep them separate." 

Actually there's a far better argument, one so obvious that even Bob Caesar grasps a shard of it, in that if non-profits can't come up with any better way to raise money than shaming distracted drivers, maybe they need to rethink their entire existence.

But I digress.

Last Thursday night, the discussion got predictably weird when Phipps suggested that in the aftermath of the two-way grid project's completion, and the addition of turn lanes at those major intersections preferred by city-sanctioned panhandlers, it is more dangerous for bucket brigades in 2018 than it was in 2013, to which Coffey turned on this lazy fastball down the middle of the chute and correctly replied, paraphrased:

But if the grid project actually has slowed traffic and improved matters for the pedestrians like you say it has, wouldn't collecting donations be safer, not more dangerous?

Yes, it was THAT kind of night. Here's a series at Strong Towns, which I'll introduce with this passage, substituting Our Town for Wichita):

In cities where Vision Zero has worked, the public sector has shown dedication to reorienting its departments away from the traditional, siloed approach toward a collaborative, multi-disciplinary approach to streets that involve traffic engineers, police and fire departments, elected officials, public health professionals, and the community from the very outset of streets projects — extending this collaboration to community-wide planning for safe streets.

In New Albany, we must change our conception of streets simply as conduits to move cars as efficiently as possible to places that enhance the health, wealth, and safety of all New Albanians.

In successful cities, streets are for people.

A New Vision for our Streets: Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 by Alex Pemberton

A completely preventable traffic death shows us how street design makes our cities unsafe, and how simple adjustments could change that.

Crosswalk safety: Phipps goes on TeeVee; Summers gulps the Kool Aid. Jeff Speck had the street grid answers, but Jeff Gahan urinated on them. Unwalkable New Albany -- what a thrill!

When the somnolent finally awaken, it's cause for acknowledgement, if not champagne toasts.

Maybe my 3rd district councilman Greg Phipps genuinely (albeit belatedly) grasps the way he's been used and comprised, time and again, by both mayor and political party for the past six years. They laugh at Phipps, not with him, and even I find this to be sad. Once discarded, principles are hard to re-establish.

If the anesthesia-flavored Kool-Aid is wearing off, that's progress, and proof of Phipps being "woke" will or will not be displayed in the months to come. Here's a friendly hint, Greg.

Gahan's rancid public housing putsch is an abominable moral and ethical failure, and your silence only abets it. Where is your Human Rights Commission when it's needed the most?  

However, focusing on the topic at hand, maybe Phipps is beginning to see that without Jeff Speck's principled approach to comprehensive street grid reform, two-way automotive friction alone cannot magically produce walkability -- and the majority of bicycle-friendly design components never made it past Gahan's ingrained cowardice.

Can you explain, Jeff Gillenwater?

"Greg Phipps and Larry Summers are both very aware that much more could have been done via this significant expenditure to protect against and start reversing auto-centric culture. It’s too bad both of them chose silence as a means of protecting their vaunted personal positions while a solid plan to do just that was being butchered by their boss. As lots of us have mentioned, two-way conversion as implemented is a bare bones step. Now we’ll have to spend years more and lots of additional money working toward eventually getting it right."

In a nutshell, yes. Let's look at WDRB's coverage.

New Albany councilman concerned about safety at newly installed crosswalks, by Chris Sutter (WDRB)

NEW ALBANY, Ind. (WDRB) -- Pedestrians have the right of way, but apparently those lessons of driver's education are a distant memory for several Hoosiers.

Pedestrian signs and lights were put up at several intersections in downtown New Albany during the two-way street conversions, but City Council Vice President Greg Phipps said few drivers seem to notice or care, blowing right through the intersections ...

And a predictable response from the very same engineer who at one time told me that some form of traffic cones or flexible stakes were being actively considered for use at certain of these intersections. Looks like Larry's been given a high-proof dose of Jeff Gahan's intellectual acquiescence serum.

New Albany City Engineer Larry Summers thinks that could just cause more confusion.

"It's more of an educational component that needs to occur than additional modifications that need to take place," Summers said.

Summers added that the city will be posting Facebook videos to the city's account and sending safety information with the sewer bill so that people are aware of what they need to do at each crossing.

Phipps should consider how different this might have played out had City Hall been willing to publicize HWC Engineering's de-Specked plan before implementation. Collective eyes surely would have spotted this and other issues, but no, it had to be a secret -- because secrecy is what Jeff Gahan is, and he knew all along he'd be gutting Speck's recommendations.

Remember this in 2019, when the secret ballot will come in handier than brooms for the necessary sweeping. As an addendum, below is NAC's post from December 12.

---

ASK THE BORED: Crosswalk safety and the silent CM? Hey, we're delighted whenever someone repeats what we've been saying for weeks on end.

In other words, precisely what was written here on November 28 -- and we thank the councilman for reading.

Grid Control, Vol. 30: These weird, useless "enhanced" crosswalk gizmos remind us that HWC's and Deaf Gahan's "complete roads" downtown are not "complete streets."

This passage might have been written by HWC Engineering, hence the sad reality of the imperfect implementation of two-way roads (are they streets?) in New Albany.

That's because as a non-automotive user of the city streets, I've found these credit-card-sized flashing beacons to be complete and utter jokes.

People walking still will find it far safer to look both ways and cross in the middle of a block; in spite of claims that traffic is moving more slowly since the reversion, the fact is that far too few calming measures were built into the rebooted grid. Team Gahan bet the farm that "friction" alone would calm traffic sufficiently for the myriad other two-way benefits to emerge.

Maybe, though these streets are still straightaways, just like before. They're still built to promote speed and indifference, just like before, though now with "enhanced" crosswalk beacons intended not as a legitimate means of rectifying a root problem, but as a "hey, we did something" gesture, another bright, shiny paste-over symbol, this one pointing to how the fundamental mobility issues downtown have not been addressed at all by a "modernization" program that preserved (certainly on purpose) the downtown grid as composed of "complete roads" rather than altered into "complete streets."

By the way, Greg ... it's just the way your political mentor Deaf Gahan wanted it to be. You, me and all the others have been the victims of a bait 'n' switch. I hope you continue to speak out publicly about it, and don't worry; I'm sure Greg Fischer won't unfriend you.

NEW ALBANY: Crosswalk safety questioned, by Chris Morris (Hanson Diffusion Compiler)

Education on flashing yellow lights needed, councilman says

NEW ALBANY — New Albany's grid modernization plan, which converted downtown streets to two-way traffic, has been well received by the driving public. But that is not what brought City Councilman Greg Phipps to Tuesday's New Albany Board of Public Works and Safety meeting Tuesday.

Phipps told the board he is concerned about pedestrian safety at the new crosswalks. He fears a majority of drivers don't understand when the yellow light is flashing to yield to pedestrians. He said that is a formula for disaster.

"I'm afraid a pedestrian will start out in the crosswalk and a driver will be distracted and not see them," Phipps said.

The news crosswalks are activated by a chip. City engineer Larry Summers said some of the chips are not functioning correctly and will have to be replaced. He also said a list is being made of crosswalks and areas along the conversion grid that need to be addressed.

Phipps said a few intersections are more dangerous than others, singling out the one at 10th and Elm streets. He said the red flashing light there has been taken down and drivers are "not coming to a complete stop."

"Motorists are not stopping when lights are flashing," he said.

He said he has seen similar issues at crosswalks at 13th and Spring streets, Eighth and Elm streets and in front of St. Mary's Catholic Church on Spring Street.

Educating the public is key, Phipps said. He said there has been some information about the new crosswalks tucked inside monthly sewer bills. He also told the board he would be in favor of the city paying for and placing flexible yellow cones at intersections to warn the public.

"They [motorists] are used to stopping at red flashing lights, but they need to understand a yellow light flashing alerts them to pedestrians, and pedestrians always have the right of way," Phipps said ...

ASK THE BORED: Crosswalk safety and the silent CM? Hey, we're delighted whenever someone repeats what we've been saying for weeks on end.

In other words, precisely what was written here on November 28 -- and we thank the councilman for reading.

Grid Control, Vol. 30: These weird, useless "enhanced" crosswalk gizmos remind us that HWC's and Deaf Gahan's "complete roads" downtown are not "complete streets."

This passage might have been written by HWC Engineering, hence the sad reality of the imperfect implementation of two-way roads (are they streets?) in New Albany.

That's because as a non-automotive user of the city streets, I've found these credit-card-sized flashing beacons to be complete and utter jokes.

People walking still will find it far safer to look both ways and cross in the middle of a block; in spite of claims that traffic is moving more slowly since the reversion, the fact is that far too few calming measures were built into the rebooted grid. Team Gahan bet the farm that "friction" alone would calm traffic sufficiently for the myriad other two-way benefits to emerge.

Maybe, though these streets are still straightaways, just like before. They're still built to promote speed and indifference, just like before, though now with "enhanced" crosswalk beacons intended not as a legitimate means of rectifying a root problem, but as a "hey, we did something" gesture, another bright, shiny paste-over symbol, this one pointing to how the fundamental mobility issues downtown have not been addressed at all by a "modernization" program that preserved (certainly on purpose) the downtown grid as composed of "complete roads" rather than altered into "complete streets."

By the way, Greg ... it's just the way your political mentor Deaf Gahan wanted it to be. You, me and all the others have been the victims of a bait 'n' switch. I hope you continue to speak out publicly about it, and don't worry; I'm sure Greg Fischer won't unfriend you.

NEW ALBANY: Crosswalk safety questioned, by Chris Morris (Hanson Diffusion Compiler)

Education on flashing yellow lights needed, councilman says

NEW ALBANY — New Albany's grid modernization plan, which converted downtown streets to two-way traffic, has been well received by the driving public. But that is not what brought City Councilman Greg Phipps to Tuesday's New Albany Board of Public Works and Safety meeting Tuesday.

Phipps told the board he is concerned about pedestrian safety at the new crosswalks. He fears a majority of drivers don't understand when the yellow light is flashing to yield to pedestrians. He said that is a formula for disaster.

"I'm afraid a pedestrian will start out in the crosswalk and a driver will be distracted and not see them," Phipps said.

The news crosswalks are activated by a chip. City engineer Larry Summers said some of the chips are not functioning correctly and will have to be replaced. He also said a list is being made of crosswalks and areas along the conversion grid that need to be addressed.

Phipps said a few intersections are more dangerous than others, singling out the one at 10th and Elm streets. He said the red flashing light there has been taken down and drivers are "not coming to a complete stop."

"Motorists are not stopping when lights are flashing," he said.

He said he has seen similar issues at crosswalks at 13th and Spring streets, Eighth and Elm streets and in front of St. Mary's Catholic Church on Spring Street.

Educating the public is key, Phipps said. He said there has been some information about the new crosswalks tucked inside monthly sewer bills. He also told the board he would be in favor of the city paying for and placing flexible yellow cones at intersections to warn the public.

"They [motorists] are used to stopping at red flashing lights, but they need to understand a yellow light flashing alerts them to pedestrians, and pedestrians always have the right of way," Phipps said ...

Grid Control, Vol. 30: These weird, useless "enhanced" crosswalk gizmos remind us that HWC's and Deaf Gahan's "complete roads" downtown are not "complete streets."

They've been called "enhanced" crosswalks and "high visibility" crosswalks. They're a prominent feature of downtown New Albany's new two-way street (or is it "road"?) grid.

In the following announcement from the University of Virginia, crosswalk safety remains entirely about the pedestrian, who must "use" these mechanisms correctly in the faith-driven hope that drivers might understand their own responsibilities to share the patch.

Not everyone pushes the button.

But how many drivers are paying attention?

How many know what this means?

Rapid Flashing Beacons Enhance Crosswalk Safety at the Push of a Button

... “Rapid Flashing Beacons allow the University to put more lights in more locations across Grounds in ways that are less invasive, easier to maintain, and less disruptive to traffic. Most importantly, RFBs are very reliable. All of this points to increased pedestrian safety if used correctly,” said Director of Safety and Emergency Preparedness Marge Sidebottom.

Because these lights are above ground at approximately eye level, it’s easy for pedestrians to check that lights are flashing before entering the crosswalk. Drivers should be aware that flashing lights means that a pedestrian is near. Unfortunately, though, not everyone pushes the button.

“The key to safety is that pedestrians must activate the lights,” Sidebottom said. “Studies have shown that the rapid flashing lights are effective in getting drivers' attention, but pedestrians need to push the button. Then, they need make sure that cars have stopped before entering the road. Pedestrians always face the greatest danger in a run-in with a car, regardless of who has the legal right-of-way.”

This passage might have been written by HWC Engineering, hence the sad reality of the imperfect implementation of two-way roads (are they streets?) in New Albany.

That's because as a non-automotive user of the city streets, I've found these credit-card-sized flashing beacons to be complete and utter jokes.

People walking still will find it far safer to look both ways and cross in the middle of a block; in spite of claims that traffic is moving more slowly since the reversion, the fact is that far too few calming measures were built into the rebooted grid. Team Gahan bet the farm that "friction" alone would calm traffic sufficiently for the myriad other two-way benefits to emerge.

Maybe, though these streets are still straightaways, just like before. They're still built to promote speed and indifference, just like before, though now with "enhanced" crosswalk beacons intended not as a legitimate means of rectifying a root problem, but as a "hey, we did something" gesture, another bright, shiny paste-over symbol, this one pointing to how the fundamental mobility issues downtown have not been addressed at all by a "modernization" program that preserved (certainly on purpose) the downtown grid as composed of "complete roads" rather than altered into "complete streets."

Charles Marohn nails the explanation of this difference in a six-year-old post from Strong Towns. It is published here in its entirety. Jeff Gahan made sausage out of Jeff Speck's prime proposals by handing them to HWC Engineering, and HWC Engineering co-opted it in precisely the fashion described by Marohn.

Speck understood the transformative nature of a genuine complete street. Gahan feared it.

Cowardice won.

---

CO-OPTING COMPLETE STREETS

The idea of a Complete Street is compelling in almost every way, but when the engineering profession begins to adopt it wholesale, we need to pause and look at the outcomes. Are we getting Complete Streets, or are we getting Complete Roads. The difference is tremendous and will impact the financial viability of an approach to building places that is long overdue.

The Complete Streets concept is one that is long overdue. We've spent two generations transforming a public realm once comprised of walkable, mixed-use neighborhoods into auto-only zones. These are places where the kids used to play ball in the street. Today a kid can't even play safely in their own front yard.

At Strong Towns, we've worked to illuminate the fact that this transformation has been done at tremendous financial cost. This is not only because the construction of wider, flatter and straighter streets has been expensive, but because the auto-centric nature of the transformed public realm drives private-sector investment out of traditional neighborhoods, dislocating it to places that provide more buffering to the car.

Not only that, but the redevelopment that has happened in these neighborhoods has largely been on a suburban framework, using the parking ratios, setbacks and coverage restrictions of modern zoning to reduce density (and the rate of return). Financially, these places are largely insolvent, lacking the tax base to maintain their basic infrastructure.

Enter the concept of a Complete Street. To me, the fundamental contribution of Complete Streets to the discourse surrounding the future of our towns and neighborhoods is the recognition that our streets must serve more than just cars and that the public realm can no longer be an auto-only zone. The fact that the Complete Streets model has broken the stranglehold that the auto-only design mentality has had on our streets should be the cause of unending rejoice.

In March I was able to have dinner with Kaid Benfield. During the course of our conversation, he enlightened me on how the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standards were tweaked with Neighborhood Design principles. The result, LEED-ND, takes a great concept -- buildings that are energy efficient and environmentally friendly -- and overlays it on a development framework that reinforces these principles. In other words, no more "green" buildings in the middle of a greenfield, with 30 mile commutes each way.

In a similar vein, we're going to now, humbly, suggest a way in which the Complete Streets concept can evolve to achieve what I believe is its principle intent, that being Complete Neighborhoods.

I've now seen two projects where engineers promoted the use of "complete streets". In each I see the engineering profession co-opting the Complete Streets moniker without any thought to a Complete Neighborhood. For the engineers on these projects, the approach remains the same. I'll quote from our piece, Confessions of a Recovering Engineer:

An engineer designing a street or road prioritizes the world in this way, no matter how they are instructed:

Traffic speed
Traffic volume
Safety
Cost

The rest of the world generally would prioritize things differently, as follows:

Safety
Cost
Traffic volume
Traffic speed

In other words, the engineer first assumes that all traffic must travel at speed. Given that speed, all roads and streets are then designed to handle a projected volume. Once those parameters are set, only then does an engineer look at mitigating for safety and, finally, how to reduce the overall cost (which at that point is nearly always ridiculously expensive).

One of the places I've seen Complete Streets applied is My Hometown's Last Great Old Economy Project (also known as the College Drive project). In this instance, the design starts with a minimum design speed and a projected traffic volume, the latter being the stated impetus for the project. This analysis provides us with four lanes of fast-moving traffic. The engineers then move on to the "safety" criteria and the mandate that -- if we can afford it -- we accommodate bikes and pedestrians. This is done, of course, at tremendous cost - estimated at over $7 million for a mile of road.

Now notice that I called this route a "road" and not a "street". Understanding the difference between a road and a street is critical to understanding the problem we have with engineers misusing the Complete Streets approach. From our Placemaking Principles for a Strong Town:

To build an affordable transportation system, a Strong Town utilizes roads to move traffic safely at high speeds outside of neighborhoods and urban areas. Within neighborhoods and urban areas, a Strong Town uses complex streets to equally accommodate the full range of transportation options available to residents.

Roads move cars at high speeds. Streets move cars at very slow speeds. We should build roads outside of neighborhoods, connecting communities across distances. We should build streets within neighborhoods where there are homes, businesses and other destinations. The auto-road is a post-WW II replacement of the rail-road. The street should be what it has always been; the street.

The fundamental design flaw of the post WW II development pattern -- the false premise upon which every other design tragedy has been committed -- is the transformation of our streets into roads.

High speed auto travel has no place in urban areas where the cost of development demands a complex neighborhood pattern with a mixing of uses, multiple modes of travel and a public realm that enhances the value of the adjacent properties. High speed traffic destroys value in our neighborhoods. It drives out investment. There is no amount of pedestrian enhancement that we can build to offset the negative response people have to being in the close proximity of speeding traffic.

Without aggressive traffic calming -- which is part of the Complete Streets playbook -- we will simply be building Complete Roads. A Complete Road will not transform the public realm, no matter how much money we put into accommodating pedestrians and bikers with bridges and tunnels. A Complete Road will not attract significant private-sector investment in the key neighborhoods where we have so much existing infrastructure liability. And a Complete Road will cost a fortune, without changing the insolvency problem facing our cities.

If there is one thing our current financial situation should teach us about the engineering profession it is this: engineers will bankrupt us if given the chance to build our cities and towns the way they envision them. It is predictable that the engineering profession will embrace the concept of a Complete Road -- which is nothing more than a bad design made PC by throwing an expensive bone to bikers and pedestrians -- because it fits with their hierarchy of values (speed, volume, safety and then cost). Insidiously, promoting Complete Roads will ensure them more funding than they would otherwise receive. You can call them "streets" all you want - unchecked, they are going to build "roads". (For example, check out the 14-foot highway lane widths on the Complete "Street" cross section on My Hometown's Last Great Old Economy Project).

We love Complete Streets. They are essential to a Strong Town. Let's get out there and build them, but make sure the engineers don't con you into a Complete Road. Demand slow cars and a Complete Neighborhood to go along with your Complete Street.

---

For previous Grid Control series links, go here.

Yes, Virginia, there was a time in 2011 when Dan Coffey insisted on the immediate implementation of two-way streets.

"Coffey is arguing that it's the pedestrians that are causing trouble

for the 'poor' motorist. Poor is a quote. Subject new crosswalks."

I missed a city council meeting last Thursday, and so was denied the orgasmic opportunity to witness the latest configuration of the Contortionist Copperhead, our Councilman Cappuccino.

Of course, in many world languages the hard variable "C" of English is represented with the letter "K", which would render the preceding usage a delightful quartet: KKKK.

But enough of strikeouts.

If you're just coming to NAC's coverage of New Gahania, you may not know why we often refer to Dan Coffey as a Copperhead (Kopperhead).

Actually, we didn't pioneer this appellation. It's how Coffey once referred to himself.

Dan Coffey's copperhead shake described: "Hot toadstools and cold cappuccino" (2015/2011/2009).

... surrounded by witnesses numbering at least one fellow council member and various other public officials as well as ordinary pub patrons, Coffey initiated a heated discussion with (Jeff) Gillenwater that ended with Coffey aggressively grabbing Gillenwater by the shoulders and vowing to be “like a copperhead” and to “strike when you least expect it.”

In case you’re wondering, here is the definition of assault ...

Naturally, nothing whatever was done about Coffey's bullying then, nor will it be now. New Albany's "pillars" of leadership -- chief among them Dear Leader, Jeff Gahan -- always tolerate Coffey's antics because they think he can be used, when in fact, he's almost always the one pushing their buttons.

Beyond this idiotic cowardice on the part of presumed community standard bearers, it also may be surprising to learn there was a time when Coffey not only supported two-way traffic on New Albany's interstate-grade streets, but also wanted to be seen as the valiant leader of the effort.

From March 11, 2015, this remembrance of the forgotten time in 2011 when Coffey thought he could fool a new generation of downtown business operators into respecting him.

For once, he miscalculated. They laughed -- and that's why Coffey has returned to bashing them, and defending our beleaguered universal autocentrism.

(thanks Mark)

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Our long civic nightmare finally ends as CM Cappuccino returns to the country comforts of obstructionism.

Boy, that was strange.

Around the time the Sherman Minton Bridge became ill back in 2011, Dan Coffey started making sense on occasion. I remember him convening a meeting at Lancaster's, and speaking stridently of the importance of using the opportunity of the bridge shutdown to restore two-way traffic to New Albany's streets, RIGHT NOW.

Why? Because it would be beneficial to small, independent businesses downtown.

In subsequent years, the unknown space alien continued to occupy Coffey's body. Heads were scratched raw as he actually became the voice of reason at council meetings. Perhaps the makeover was a run-up to the county commissioner's race in 2014, when Coffey -- with no city council seat to wager or lose -- was unable to muster any semblance of a fighting spirit, and suffered a humiliating 22-point defeat to Mark Seabrook.

Maybe he just decided that urban demolitions were more lucrative kicking back than exurban bulldozing.

Whatever the rationale, the universe has been out of sync, and the gods obviously weren't happy, and so now, at long last, we have our Cappuccino back, merrily contradicting himself on the topic of streets, and -- unopposed in his re-election to the post of Wizard of Westendia -- freely caterwauling and chewing scenery on topics of which he knows next to nothing. It's just like old times. Now all we need is Professor Erika blowing rancid cigarette smoke in his face.

The odds that Coffey actually read Speck's report?

Same probability that I've chugged a Miller Lite in the last five years, which is to say: Zero.

Welcome back. We've missed you so very much.

(Click through to read reporter Suddeath's redevelopment report in its entirety)

River Ridge may gain Toyota instead of New Albany, by Daniel Suddeath (N and T)

TIF ALSO TIED TO TWO-WAY STREETS

New Albany would likely use TIF funds to provide its 20 percent match to a $2.5 million federal grant for calming traffic in the city’s downtown.

The money could, for example, be used to flip one-way streets to two-way traffic.

On March 18, the city will hold its final public hearing on planner Jeff Speck’s street study, which is strongly in favor of two-way conversion, smaller traffic lanes and more on-street parking.

It’s one step the city has taken as it prepares its strategy for utilizing the federal grant, which was awarded through the Kentuckiana Regional Planning & Development Agency, or KIPDA.

But New Albany City Councilman Dan Coffey believes the city might need another report.

“I still don’t think it would hurt to have another, unbiased study,” said Coffey, who is also a member of the redevelopment commission.

Speck’s study is a plan “that’s been slanted toward one view,” he added.

“I’m really disappointed in the way that turned out,” Coffey said.

Mayor Jeff Gahan’s administration has largely remained noncommittal on Speck’s recommendations. With the Ohio River Bridges Project expected to bring more motorists to New Albany, Gahan has acknowledged the city will likely need to make adjustments to the traffic grid.

The final public meeting on the Speck report will be held from 6 to 7:30 p.m. on March 18 at the Pepin Mansion, which is located at 1003 E. Main St.

Grid Control, Vol. 18: Finally a few BoW street grid project answers, almost all of them citing "contractor error."

I accompanied the Bookseller to yesterday's meeting of the Board of Public Works and Safety, and asked some of the questions we've all been asking about the downtown street grid (two-way) project.

Chris Morris of the News and Tribune was there, watching as I asked his questions. He'd have noticed that I received answers, most of which were coherent, and some of which weren't so much.

But Morris chose not to mention a single iota of it in his dispatch for the newspaper, and to be succinct, this is why so few of us any longer trust the newspaper's commitment to truth-telling in New Albany. You can read the triumph of the stenographer's art here: Questions? Me?

Before I run down the list, a larger question:

If all these snafus owe to "contractor error," who among Team Gahan has been watching the contractors? 

Let's begin with the case of the British traffic arrows.

Grid Control, Vol. 17: Judging by the misdirection of this "CROSS TRAFFIC DOES NOT STOP" sign, we now reside in the British Empire.

City engineer Larry Summers said he discovered this mistake first, even before NAC brought it to your attention, and that it owes to ... yes, "contractor error." All mistaken signs will be replaced, he added.

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Next, the question of cross hatching repairs. After NAC pressed the issue, HWC Engineering acknowledged this error (on Facebook, no less), and has since said it will pay to redraw the lines. 

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

NAC's question: Seeing as nothing's been done for a month, will this fix take place before or after Spring Street is open for two-way traffic?

Summers said he expects it to occur before the debut of two-way traffic, and that doing so will not require the north lane of Spring Street to be closed.

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Next, parking space size disparity.

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

We'll be returning to this one.

In answering my question, Summers told the board that while Spring Street's width isn't uniform, citing the street's quirks and age, he could find only "four or five" parking spaces out of sync in terms of measurement, on the whole of the north side of Spring between Vincennes and 4th, where the bike lanes dissolve into nothingness to make room for Padgett's fleet of community value reducers.

He also mentioned the contractor perhaps erring in places while measuring from the middle of the street, which gave me pause, because I personally witnessed measurements on Elm being made from the curb on the south side of the street -- not from the middle.

Stay tuned for NAC's parking space measurement survey, coming soon or whenever I get the time to do someone else's job (again). Maybe Morris would like to help me with the calculations.

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Then, the biggest question.

What about the death trap meat grinder at Spring & 10th?

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

According to Summers, this bizarre made-for-mayhem dog leg is yet again the result of "contractor error," with the contractor having been told to make repairs.

The nature of the fix was not disclosed, but I asked Summers whether he thinks this intersection can be made safe and manageable without controlling it by installing stop signs or stop lights.

Yes, he said. It can be.

As a side note, and in theory, state guidelines proclaim that there should not be crosswalks drawn across a street like Spring in the absence of stop signs or stop lights to control the crosswalk, hence the necessity of "high visibility" (and added expense) crosswalk lighting.

Concurrently, City Hall plainly wishes to pretend it is lowering traffic speeds on streets like Spring, while actually doing little to facilitate this desired outcome apart from the two-way direction change itself.

Merely observe that once the two-way directional change has been made, there'll still be nothing to calm traffic from 15th Street all the way to 7th Street ... with the dog leg right in the middle of this race course at 10th Street ... where there'll be some sort of motion-activated warning light that all by itself will convince drivers to slow down for sitting duck pedestrians.

I submit that nothing better illustrates the cowardly legacy of Jeff Gahan's pocket-stuffing paving plan, ineptly masquerading as revolutionary street grid modernization, with loads and loads of "radical" change described in badly written press releases, though of course all of it existing apart from the fact that as little as humanly possible actually is being changed.

The dogmatically auto-centric suburban satrap Gahan and his minions first stripped the grid plan of its genuinely transformative bicycling infrastructure, and subsequently has rigged the two-way plan to ensure the fundamental "pass-through-NA-at-unsafe-high speeds" dynamic remains as it is, prior to all those beaks being wetted on paving slush.  

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Two other asides from yesterday's BoW meeting:

HWC Engineering's Paul Lincks says he has spoken again and again with churches and businesses throughout downtown in an effort to resolve the "bus stops now taking up entire city blocks" problem, especially as it pertains to churches.

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

And, there is a good news/bad news item to report. Many of the pedestrian crossings within the boundaries of the grid modernization project area now are timer-based, meaning one needn't push the "beg button" to cross.

I privately asked Lincks whether these timed intersections, as well as the "high visibility" crosswalks being installed within the grid project work area, would also provide connectivity by spanning Main Street to the south (for instance, to Underground Station and the YMCA) and State Street west, toward The Exchange and La Tiendita, to name just two walking destinations.

Lincks answered that no, such critically important, pedestrian-friendly reforms were never a part of the project from HWC's design perspective.

In short, instead of pushing "beg buttons," we'll be begging city officials for relief, as was required at Main & W. 1st after these same city officials assured us it was impossible.

Naturally, the city might be pro-active by telling us what it plans to do to extend the walkable street grid past the boundaries of the current project area, though this would require a commitment to the timely dissemination of information.

The newspaper (and, for that matter, DNA) could help in all this, but unfortunately, fluff takes precedence.

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Previously:

Grid Control, Vol. 17: Judging by the misdirection of this "CROSS TRAFFIC DOES NOT STOP" sign, we now reside in the British Empire.

Grid Control, Vol. 16: What about HWC's cross hatching correction? Will this be finished before or after Team Gahan declares victory?

Grid Control, Vol. 15: Dooring enhancement perfectly epitomizes Deaf Gahan's "biking last" approach to grid modernization.

Grid Control, Vol. 14: Yes, you can still park on the south side of Spring Street during the stalled two-way grid project.

Grid Control, Vol. 13: "Dear Deaf Gahan and minions: FOR THE LOVE OF PETE, STOP TRYING TO BE COOL AND DESIGNER-ISH. YOU'RE NOT, AND IT'S EMBARRASSING ALL OF US."

Grid Control, Vol. 12: Meet the artistic crosswalk design equivalent of dogs playing poker.

Grid Control, Vol. 11: HWC Engineering meets with St. Marks, city officials nowhere to be found.

Grid Control, Vol. 10: City officials predictably AWOL as HWC Engineering falls on its sword over striping errors.

Grid Control, Vol. 9: "This was supposed to be discussed with us," but Dear Leader doesn't ever discuss, does he?

Grid Control, Vol. 8: City Hall characteristically mum as HWC Engineering at least tries to answer the cross-hatching question.

Grid Control, Vol. 7: What will the Board of Works do to rectify HWC's striping errors on the north side of Spring Street, apart from microwaving another round of sausage biscuits?

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

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.

ASK THE BORED: BoW's fantasy world? Talk is cheap, and pedestrians likely will be sitting ducks at intersections that aren't "stop controlled."

Bored minutes from July 25 are hot off the presses. Let's begin with the city engineer's testimony about high-visibility crosswalks.

"At intersections that aren't stop controlled," there'll be "high-visibility crosswalks," rather than a fruitful discussion of why an intersection that merits this extra expense, one undertaken primarily to fool pedestrians into believing they're being protected, isn't being subjected to the logical step ... of being stop controlled.  

Be still my throbbing ticker, because someone mentioned the future bicycle/pedestrian meat grinder at Spring & 10th. Wait ... here comes a truck now!

See how the driver of this improperly speeding heavy truck blithely cuts off the bike lane, and has very nearly strayed into the weird detached parking space? At 40 m.p.h., this driver might strike a walker, biker and parked car, all at once.

Given that the cone is marking the spot where a pedestrian pedestal probably will be erected to (a) block handicapped access, because that's what the city routinely does, and (b) contribute to a false sense of security for pedestrians at a crosswalk that isn't stop controlled ... alas, I suspect Lincks refers merely to the task of implementing whatever smoke and mirrors atop pedestals are available to make this intersection somehow seem safe, when the logical solution ... is to make it stop controlled.

Baseball Hall of Famer Jim Rice of HWC Engineering (dude -- the cross hatching fix?) once stated to me that INDOT simply won't allow 4-way stops and stop lights to be planted for the purpose of slowing traffic.

That's a shame, Jim, because the intersection of Spring & 10th is so potentially dangerous that someone probably will be hurt, and soon, and this injury will then be used to justify the logical and belated fix ... you know, making it stop controlled.

Because, my dear Jim, it's about safety, eh? Wouldn't you rather be pro-active than reactive, or does this require an extra campaign contribution?

Meanwhile, chairman of the bored Warren Nash -- still struggling to keep his story straight about the University of Michigan door-to-door canvassing, which he's convinced is somehow connected to fluoridated water and street pianos -- indulges in a bit of surreal and self-congratulatory reasoning.

Really? Allow me to walk you through it, Warren.

But of course you knew how long the project was going to take. You're the consummate insider, who knows everything so that you can conceal it.

Perhaps the reason you're hearing confusion from the public about the duration of the McDonald Lane project is that Team Gahan does an exceedingly poor job of telling others what it intends to do -- and by others, I refer to those folks who work days and cannot attend your BoW meetings at 10:00 a.m.

It comes as no surprise that something like this would even be said aloud.

Okay, kids -- the Green Mouse is "bored" to tears, so join us again next week as we sift the wreckage of Gahanism for a few ephemeral nuggets of entertainment.