Urgent note to Deaf Gahan: More evidence that street design = street safety = social justice, even more so than a doggie fun park.

At this late date, it can't be denied that street safety in New Albany relies on one factor, and one factor alone, to the exclusion of all others.

In short, someone in a position of municipal authority just might consider street safety for all users beyond the same old auto-centric boilerplate, naturally doing so piecemeal for one singular stretch of roadway, though never as an organic citywide whole, so long as the 80-20 federal matching funds come through.

Until then, we cross our fingers and wade into the interstate-rated traffic lanes, as pedestrians have been doing along Grant Line Road for the past 30 years.

Grant Line Pedway Project in New Albany moving forward (Beilman; N and T)

It has taken five years and a second Gahan administration for the ruling City Hall junta to even begin making faint, barely detectable gurgling sounds about public safety in this context.

Consequently, we must not ever forget that in New Albany, public safety has consistently come second or worse, forever submerged behind Gahan's bright, shiny baubles.

New parks and recreation facilities were prioritized, and came first. Doggie exercise was prioritized, and came first. The Farmers Market was prioritized, and came first. Subsidized luxury housing and initiatives to demolish public (read: affordable) housing units were prioritized, and came or is coming first.

In fact, the word "oblivious" has met its match in Gahan. Oblivious surrenders, and says go ahead, shoot me now. Never has a New Albany mayor remained so stubbornly aloof from the reality of everyday life in this city. Agoraphobia is a crippling affliction; too bad the rest of us must pay for it.

ON THE AVENUES: For New Albany’s Person of the Year, the timeless words of Mother Jones: “Pray for the dead, and fight like hell for the living.”

Gahan’s grandiosely termed Downtown Street Grid Improvement Project might yield a bare minimum return on investment by restoring two-way streets, but otherwise it’s just another of his mock Potemkin façades, dedicated to garnering as much campaign finance lubrication as possible from the usual suspects in engineering and construction without making truly transformative changes to the grid.

It’s why the forever uncomprehending Gahan stripped Jeff Speck’s plan of its most potentially useful recommendations, and it’s why we’ll have to add them back as we’re able, with or without City Hall’s permission.

Street safety?

Clearly it's a social justice issue, not a campaign finance issue. Unfortunately for New Albanians, if "bad street design is disproportionately impacting historically marginalized groups in America," then Gahan's instinctive response is to ship the marginalized elsewhere, not fix the problem.

But there's a funny part to all this.

Gahan thinks he's a Democrat. Cue the laugh track, at least until you try to cross the street outside.

The Hidden Inequality Of America's Street Design, by Diana Budds (Co.Design)

New data shows that pedestrians in the U.S. are more likely to die if they're poor, a person of color, uninsured, or old.

Urban design has a long history of perpetuating racial and economic inequality, and the burden of bad streets is still being disproportionately borne by underserved populations. According to a new report, pedestrians in the United States have a higher risk of being killed by cars if they're people of color, aged 65 or older, uninsured, or from a low-income household.

The report, called "Dangerous by Design 2016," is authored by the National Complete Streets Coalition, a working group within the nonprofit Smart Growth America, which supports socially equitable, environmentally responsible, and economically healthy urban design strategies. The report focuses on designing streets for multi-modal transportation, and ranks every state and more than 100 major metropolitan areas by what it calls the Pedestrian Danger Index, or PDI, which assesses the likelihood of a car hitting a pedestrian by comparing the rate of pedestrian deaths in an area to the rate of people who walk to work. (SGA calls this the best available measure of how many people are likely to be out walking every day.)

"The leading goal is equity in implementation for all avenues of transportation," says Emiko Atherton, director of the National Complete Streets Coalition. "It really is about not only treating everyone equitably, but also encouraging departments of transportation to focus on the most underserved."

Put simply: Bad street design is disproportionately impacting historically marginalized groups in America.

Indianapolis: "Their deaths not only raise questions about whether the city is doing enough to protect its residents, but also call into question the city’s spending priorities over the years."

In New Albany, how many millions have been spent on showplace park projects?

Left in the dark: Indy's deadly streets, by John Tuohy and Tony Cook (Indy Star)

... In other cities, the motorist might have noticed a pedestrian walking along a busy, high-speed street such as Georgetown Road because it likely would have been illuminated by the most basic of city services — a streetlight.

But not in Indianapolis.

Here, city officials stopped adding streetlights more than 35 years ago to save money on the city’s $2.9 million annual electric bill. Compounding the problem, they also failed to build any new sidewalks for 20 years during that time.

It has made for a lethal combination.

An IndyStar investigation found that 585 pedestrians have been killed in Marion County since the streetlight ban in 1980. Last year, 27 pedestrians were run down, more than in any year since the moratorium started.

I don't even swim, so brother, can you spare a dime to fix this neglected school crosswalk?

Yesterday, as the Bored of Works was meeting, a reader wrote:

"Called street department this morning about red flashing lights, out of order at East 10th and Oak Street by S. Ellen Jones school. Been out over a year. No money to fix it, they said."

By the way, city government's "Re-Elect the Mayor" social media feed informs us that the $9 million aquatic center build-out is going swimmingly.

Fundamentally better?

Uncertain Slate Run improvements merely a symptom of the street grid malaise.

I walked home from work today, east on Spring Street against traffic.

Three times I came to an intersection with a vehicle traveling southbound. Not one time out of the three did the driver so much look right (west) before rolling forward -- twice slowly, once without stopping at the stop sign.

How may times must this point be made?

One way streets are a tremendous impediment to walker safety.

And yet by almost all reputable indices, walking is what we need to encourage in order to make good on the downtown revitalization we've achieved to date. Everyone involved with city government claims to grasp this ... and we can do nothing save reach for the low-hanging fruit on Main Street (read: state money).

Meanwhile, just a bit further from downtown, but still inside the beltway, we're playing political games with the Slate Run corridor. Read the comments below, and ask yourself this question: Apart from our cars, how the hell are we going to get to $19 million worth of new parks?

One more: Wouldn't it be better if we could use or legs or our bicycles to get to these facilities?

And to conclude: But if the city's street grid was navigable by residents on foot or riding, and not in their cars, wouldn't it make the whole city a recreational facility?

The state of Slate Run Road; Residents vocal about project, but status of Slate Run improvements uncertain, by Daniel Suddeath (News and Tribune)

A SAFETY ISSUE

Around this time each year, hundreds of children begin their classes at Slate Run Elementary School.

Kate Caufield and her husband hoped their children would be able to walk to Slate Run Elementary when they moved to a street near the school.

But after realizing sidewalks are scarce along Slate Run Road, they quickly changed their plans.

“I can hear the kids playing on the playground at recess from my house, but I have no way to get [my children] there except to drive them,” Caufield said.

Webb raised her children in her house off Slate Run Road, and they also attended Slate Run Elementary.

“Of course I could never let them walk to school,” she said.

An avid jogger, Caufield finds herself driving to adjoining neighborhoods in order to find sidewalks where she can safely run.

“You’re kind of at the mercy of people letting you run through their yards” on Slate Run Road, she said.

Amerson’s wife also regularly walks for exercise, and like Caufield, she drives to another neighborhood where there are sidewalks to use.

Caufield has run in the street a few times, and said some motorists on Slate Run Road expressed their displeasure with having a pedestrian in the street.

“It’s frustrating and it’s dangerous,” she said.

Pedestrians and cyclists have little safe haven along Slate Run without using private properties or diving into a ditch when a car speeds by, residents said.

However, the safety concerns aren’t just limited to pedestrian use. Webb said she regularly sees vehicles speeding up and down the road, as she estimated some of the cars, trucks and motorcycles were traveling 50 to 60 mph, well above the 30 mph speed limit.

Whether it’s more stop signs, speed bumps or even a roundabout, Benedetti said more traffic-calming measures need to be added on the road.

The administration has projects planned to improve Main Street, Mount Tabor Road and another segment of Grant Line Road.

Amerson conceded he doesn’t know the traffic count for Slate Run Road, and can’t insist that a project for the street would be more important than upgrading other thoroughfares in the city.

But he added that Slate Run is a busy road that needs attention, and he credited Benedetti for raising the issue before the redevelopment commission last month.

“I would just hope the Slate Run Road project would not go to the back of the agenda,” Amerson said.

Source says: A solitary public hearing later, it's time to vote on a smoking ban.

According to a reliable source, New Albany's proposed smoking ban ordinance will be comprehensive, just like Louisville's, and will be voted on at Monday's meeting.