GREEN MOUSE SAYS: Main and Bank work to begin on Monday the 13th -- or was that Friday the 16th?

On Thursday, it became apparent that Slick Jeffie's $500,000 stop light project at the intersection of Main and Bank, the urgent need for which has been apparent for at least six years, but which has been delayed until right NOW because of the mayor's self-glorification imperatives elsewhere, is coming to fruition only because of election year politics.

GREEN MOUSE SAYS: The shenanigans and ass-hattery of Deaf Gahan's last-minute Main and Bank stop light project have commenced.

 ... The foreman seemed to be in a blind panic. He said the Bank/Main project had been labeled "emergency" election year status and therefore would be fast tracked, adding that the amount of work they have to get done would typically require three months -- ah, but Deaf Gahan has demanded that work be completed in 27 days.

Gahan's insistent it be finished before Harvest Homecoming even though this foreman admitted he had never had a project this size proceed that quickly and didn't know how they were going to get it done.

One might say okay, but at least it's finally being done -- except it should be a four-way stop project from the get-go, albeit inflated to fiscal grandiosity in a vacuum owing to the usual dictates of fluffery, and as oft times before, the independent businesspersons nearest the project, whose routines are to be interrupted most profoundly BEFORE Harvest Homecoming renders them inaccessible for a whole week, HADN'T BEEN TOLD ANYTHING AT ALL BY THE CITY ABOUT THE PROJECT.

Of course, this is standard dysfunctional procedure, and the way it works almost every time. If a mayoral flunky or visiting engineer tells the Bored of Works that stakeholders have been notified, it means none have been notified. Team Gahan's obligations tend to be toward self-perpetuation, not timely notification.

But on Thursday afternoon, September 12 ... with 27 days of compressed destruction about to commence on Monday, September 16, at long last Gahan got around to letting shopkeepers in on the program.

By proxy, of course.

Look what showed up at the end if the day yesterday. Delivered by the construction foreman, not a member of the administration. Charmingly vague, eh?

This is what "work starting Monday" looks like.

I don't blame the construction company for getting started right away, but Gahan's office needs to get it's head out of its ass and be up front about the impact this is going to have on businesses. Work starting today is fine, just SAY that work is starting today.

Like, that's not even a lie worth telling.

Construction slated to begin on the 16th actually began on Friday the 13th, so apparently it must be a lie worth telling because Gahan tells it every single time -- and still the sycophants sing the praises of a mayor whose only noteworthy skill is using an abacus to count the money given to him by no-bid contract seekers.

We can do something about this, you know.

#FireGahan2019
#DrainTheGahanSwamp

GREEN MOUSE SAYS: The shenanigans and ass-hattery of Deaf Gahan's last-minute Main and Bank stop light project have commenced.

The shenanigans and ass-hattery of Deaf Gahan's last-minute Main and Bank stop light project have commenced, and once again merchants at and near Underground Station are in for a hell of a ride.

But first, let's have a look at the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of Gahan's political patronage, as performed by our Bored of Works on September 3. Note again that "over time" as cited here by city engineer Larry Summers must be translated for ordinary citizens to understand:

"We didn't bother with this intersection for years on end until just recently, when instead of posting a pre-schooler to stand there, watch, and view the idiocy, we awarded an $80,000 contract for research to one of the mayor's donors."

Now, having waited years on end to do what was obvious all along, Gahan is showing his horses the whip.

The Green Mouse reports ...

---

I was walking down Main Street yesterday between 5th Street and Bank, when a semi-trailer as big as Gahan's ego flew past me on Main doing about 45 mph, reminding us that when the mayor threw all that money at the tall native weed medians where the rich folks live, there wasn't any money left to actually take a stab at slowing traffic elsewhere.

There was a commotion. Cones started going down on Bank Street, and then surveyors, Duke Energy people, Larry Summers and Mickey Thompson from the Street Department gathered.

A very harried looking man arrived and introduced himself as the foreman on the project and proceeded to outline what was about to happen to merchants in Underground Station and facing Main. 

Starting Monday the 16th, Bank Street on the south side of Main will be shut down and dug down to the depth of two feet. The entire intersection of Main and Bank will be milled as all the new light and anchor-festooned crosswalk infrastructure goes in. 

The foreman seemed to be in a blind panic. He said the Bank/Main project had been labeled "emergency" election year status and therefore would be fast tracked, adding that the amount of work they have to get done would typically require three months -- ah, but Deaf Gahan has demanded that work be completed in 27 days. 

Gahan's insistent it be finished before Harvest Homecoming even though this foreman admitted he had never had a project this size proceed that quickly and didn't know how they were going to get it done

I offered him a loaded Rice Krispies Treat and some Kool-Aid, and this seemed to calm him. Subsequently it transpired that yet again, the city hadn't bothered dispensing information to stakeholders, perhaps because of the election-year emergency. 

For instance Dr. Gradel at StoneWater Acupuncture & Chiropractic, whose office already is barely accessible due to the Reisz Mahal nonsense, had not been informed of what was going to happen. I watched as she chased down Thompson to ask for temporary loading zone signage in the hopes that her clients, who are coming to her for medical care, MIGHT be able to actually get to her office.

One of the merchants texted their landlord to ask if anyone from the city had contacted him, but he hadn't heard anything from them and only just saw the newspaper article.

The Underground Station courtyard will be restricted in terms of accessibility, and customers will have to park in the back and then hoof it around to Pearl Street and up to get to any of the Main Street businesses.

Is Gahan ever going to allow New Albany merchants to transact business in peace? It just goes to show that people who've never run a business themselves have no idea what it's really like.

Right, Adam?

---

Slick Jeffie's wasteful masterpiece: $85,000 + $406,522 = the price for traffic lights at a downtown intersection where a four-way stop would work just fine.

GREEN MOUSE SAYS: Did Team Gahan really eject former mayor James Garner from its campaign kickoff love-in last Saturday?

Slick Jeffie's wasteful masterpiece: $85,000 + $406,522 = the price for traffic lights at a downtown intersection where a four-way stop would work just fine.

Ladies and gentlemen, give it up for the unquestioning, cursory coverage of the Tom May Gazette's Chris "Am I retired yet?" Morris.

Stop light coming to busy New Albany intersection

The New Albany Board of Public Works & Safety approved a bid from Ragle, Inc. Tuesday to install a light at the intersection of Bank and Main streets. Merchants in the area have been critical of the intersection for being too dangerous for both pedestrians and drivers. And with the new city hall expected to open in the next six months near the intersection will just add to the problem.

Ragle, Inc. was the only company to submit a bid for $406,522. The city's legal department will review the bid and give final approval and work will begin soon after. The bid also includes repaving the portion of Bank near the floodwall.

"We have looked at this extensively," city engineer Larry Summers said. "We feel like there is an immediate need."

One of the reasons why the intersection of Bank and Main has been so dangerous for so long is the city's refusal to address driver behavior on Main between State and 5th. Of course, having wasted every last penny of the state's perpetual maintenance endowment on the Main Street Beautification and High Weeds project, there's been no pile of cash for Team Gahan to pillage for piddling factors like safety.

This said, the intersection of Bank and Main could be easily calmed and regulated by the installation of a four-way stop, with a few stop signs and red flashers like the ones recently installed at the intersection of 13th and Elm -- itself a stupidly hazardous place that the city's "brain trust" insisted for years wasn't an issue, but finally became necessary to "fix" so that Greg Phipps could have something to campaign on.

Stop signs at the intersection of Bank and Main might cost a couple thousand dollars. So, how do we do it in Jeff Pay-to-PlayHan's Anchor City?

1. Ignore the problem for at least five years (see links below), and whenever  asked, about it, just push "play" as the city engineer makes another rote explanation of how it's utterly impossible to rectify -- right up until the moment when political expediency makes it absolutely critical to do RIGHT now, at whatever the cost.

2. Thus, with an election about to occur and a crescendo of dissatisfaction with five or more years of cowardly denial, it's time to select a frequent Gahan4Life campaign finance donor for yet another hocus-pocus $85k study -- in other words, post a minimum wage employee to stand there for a few hours and observe what any pre-schooler could plainly see with his or her own two eyes.

3. Award a $406,522 contract to install lights, anchor-seal-gizmo crosswalks and ubiquitous "Have a Good Gahan" yellow smiley faces, all the while doing absolutely nothing to calm traffic on any side of the intersection.

4. Have the same engineer who kept saying it was impossible to make fresh new gurgling sounds about the desperate need to rectify something he'd been commanded to ignore for five or more years, because after all, in New Gahania, Job One = Job Retention. Naturally we can't entirely blame the minions, who must bear the brunt of Gahan's incessant hypocrisy so that Dear Leader can reign forever.

5. At long last ProMedia assembles the area's pliant newspapers and television stations for the ceremonial motorized convoy, traveling a whole 30 yards between the shambolic delayed edifice of the $12 million Reisz Mahal and the brand new bells-and-whistles intersection, at a cost of only $491,522 instead of a few stop signs and flashing red lights.

As the ribbon is cut and contractors dump boots filled with cash into fish tanks, Adam Dickey is seen slouching in a doorway, tears gushing from his eyes, his poor hankie dripping with snot, owing to his good fortune in being alive to serve Deaf Gahan's every need.

A poem about love comes to Dickey's mind.

Two men are joined as one in you:
One seems cold and hard,
One who achieves his goals.
Another is tender and kind,
He forgets not even the poorest.
He feels for the least of us.

Two streams owe their strength to you.
You are the sap rising from each root,
The seed that gives them birth —
A new spirit rose from you,
That forged us together as a city-state
And dwells in us forever!

Hmm. Dude's no better of a poet than a party chairman, is he?

---

Previously at the only New Albany blog that really matters:

October 22, 2014
Which downtown New Albany intersections are the very worst for walkers?

October 29, 2017
Main Street intersections at Bank and 4th are hazardous for pedestrians. Where's City Hall, apart from a state of denial?

April 2, 2019
Institutional cowardice might explain why the Board of Works has routinely ignored complaints about the dangerous intersection of Main and Bank Streets ... since at least 2015.

June 27, 2019
ASK THE BORED: BOW says it might do what it said it couldn't, but only after a Gahan campaign donor gets a fat no-bid contract for another $85k "study."

Hemorrhaging votes, an increasingly disoriented Deaf Gahan sidesteps Mt. Tabor-Klerner intersection ... for now.

In a stunning roundabout turnabout, Deaf Gahan dispatched his Minister of Engineering to this morning's meeting of the Board of Public Works and Safety, and with little fanfare, erased his previous line in the sand -- and drew a new one to the west of the intersection of Mt. Tabor Road and Klerner Lane.

In the aftermath, City Hall's patented Tilt-A-Whirl propaganda wheel was utterly predictable: Don't you see, peasants? Dear Leader listened to your comments at the most recent public meeting.

Are your hip boots on?

On January 2nd, the City of New Albany held the third public information meeting for the Mt. Tabor Road Project. After receiving feedback and comments from residents and engineers, the City of New Albany has removed plans to modify the intersection at Mt. Tabor Road and Klerner Lane. As part of this federally-funded project, the four-way stop will remain ...

... “We will keep working to improve the roadway and infrastructure at Mt. Tabor Road,” stated Mayor Jeff Gahan. “We welcome and appreciate the input and feedback from our neighbors and business owners. Please stay connected by reading the News and Tribune and by visiting our website.”

Ah, but lest we forget, Team Gahan didn't want this meeting to occur in the first place. John Rosenbarger, Larry Summers, et al -- they publicly sulked and pouted when INDOT reminded them of their legal obligations v.v. the intersection's change in configuration, and as Gahan babbled incoherently ("that's why we're here") ...

 ... the functionaries smirked.

The Jeffersonville chain newspaper's Morris properly waited a bit to acquire quotes from the Taborite objectors, who did their homework.

It was worth it.

Plan for Mt. Tabor Road-Klerner Lane intersection on hold

NEW ALBANY — Bidding for phase one of the Mount Tabor Road project begins Feb. 7 and work is slated to start in April or May. But there will be one major change moving forward. Phase one won't include the intersection of Mount Tabor Road and Klerner Lane ...

... One of those residents, Scott Whalen, said he was happy to hear the city is taking a second look at its plans for the intersection.

"It is great news that the city has chosen to take another look at the traffic conditions at the intersection while they address the primary reason for the project — the hillside leading to Slate Run Creek," Whalen said via email. "As not only a stakeholder in the project, but also as an engineer, it is important to ensure the measured conditions represent the typical use. Performing the traffic counts for only 24 hours and while the intersection was the detour for McDonald Lane did not meet this criteria. The re-evaluation is what we at the corner have been asking for" ...

... INDOT told the city that it should complete an additional information document and involve the public with its plans again to become NEPA complaint, which is a requirement for federally funded projects.

"Although I’m relieved to learn somebody finally heard the residents, it’s disheartening to know that all parties involved have already spent thousands of dollars on legal fees. Why did we (the local residents) have to reach out to the top state politicians and INDOT management for our own city to listen to us," resident Kelly Feiock said in an email. "We’re not shy and we’re willing to talk. All of this wasted time and money could have been avoided five years ago with open communication."

So, really -- why the change of heart? Politics -- first, last and always.

It isn't so much about disappearing votes in the 6th district, Gahan's traditional home field. The 6th already is lost to Democrats, probably for a generation. Rather, it's about panicked quarantine.

No one's buying City Hall's limp palaver about the housing authority putsch, and with each passing day, more Democrats are looking at the dynamism of Dan Canon and Liz Watson, contrasting them with Gahan's agoraphobic, bunker-confined DINO disguise, and scratching their heads in bewilderment.

Dan's and Liz's direction is incompatible with Jeffrey's, and it's likely that DemoDisneyDixiecratic party chairman Adam Dickey has been cooing seductively in Gahan's ear, but the irony remains, because apart from his own self-generated mythology, the mayor is far more of a liability to the party than an asset.

And that's fine by the resistance. Don't forget: #FireGahan2019

Watch this moving video from the late Chloe Allen's friend: "If anything good can come of this, it'll be that this intersection is made safer."

Lori Kay Sympson posted this video to the Walkable New Albany page at Facebook.

She says exactly what needs to be said.

Do we have a politician in this city capable of doing the same?

As Team Gahan snoozes, the intersection of West 1st and Main is an accident waiting to happen.

We've been asking this question for a while, and now that the Floyd County Brewing Company has opened for business, and the first tenant at New Albany Mercantile has been announced (Laurie Haag, owner of The Loft on Spring, will be leasing the entire second floor for wedding- and event-related shops), we'll ask it again.

Given that the intersection of West 1st and Main is becoming ever more heavily traveled by walkers, what is Team Gahan doing to make it safe for crossing, and walkable?

Remember the notion of walkability, Mayor Gahan? You briefly touted it once.

Can you afford to wait for yet another traffic study, when inaction in this  intersection quite likely is resulting in less walker safety in this area, as well as putting the lie to your claims of support for independent local business?

You'd do it for Kroger, wouldn't you?

Or is it only about nice shiny new sidewalks, and walkers can just go another block down to cross?

Oct 17, 2014: Must we wait for a traffic study to slow traffic and put crosswalks at the corner of Main and W. 1st?

June 17, 2015: Walkability might as well begin with the intersection of Main and West 1st, so can it begin now?

Walkability might as well begin with the intersection of Main and West 1st, so can it begin now?

At yesterday's downtown merchant meeting, a representative of the YMCA observed that it can be very difficult for cars coming from Y's side of West 1st Street to see eastbound oncoming traffic on Main, owing to cars parked in front of what will soon be the Floyd County Brewing Company.

She asked David Duggins, the city's economic development director. if something might be done about the parked cars.

Granted, it's a question for the Board of Public Works and Safety, but as we've seen, the board doesn't emerge from its Tuesday morning lair, and naturally it is fitting and proper for city official like Duggins to attend meetings like the merchant mixer.

Listening to this exchange, it immediately occurred to me that (a) the true danger lies with the speed of traffic and the concurrent absence of four-way stop at the intersection, and (b) it's an inexcusable state of affairs not only for drivers of cars, but more importantly, for people walking.

When FCBC opens, there will be heavily patronized businesses (and the non-profit YMCA) on all four corners. Already we've noted the dangers for people trying to cross these streets. In fact, it's been eight months since I pointed to this (see the links below). Pins drop, crickets chirp.

So, yesterday morning, taking all this into consideration, and understanding that my question is better directed to Warren Nash than David Duggins, I decided to ask it, anyway.

Given the hazards for walkers at this uncontrolled intersection, does the city have any plans to calm traffic and/or install crosswalks (and, as Ian Hall subsequently noted, improve lighting for nighttime walkers)?

Duggins' answer: Well, uh, no.

It's the perfect example of a city potentially using the infrastructure (streets and sidewalks) it already owns and manages to help local businesses without directly awarding them grants, abatements and other direct subsidies.

It's the perfect example of complete streets as economic development drivers AND quality of life enhancers for non-automotive users -- and the drivers of cars would benefit, too.

It's the perfect example of an opportunity to promote public safety.

But in order to succeed, City Hall has to get a grip, have a pulse, and grasp what walkability really means. Currently it does not, and with each passing day, the odds of a tragedy occurring get better, not worse. It is inexcusable.

Let's transform this intersection into a human-friendly, safe conduit for patrons of these businesses and the YMCA to pass back and forth between them without fearing for the lives.

My links from last October:

Must we wait for a traffic study to slow traffic and put crosswalks at the corner of Main and W. 1st?

Which downtown New Albany intersections are the very worst for walkers?

10th and Elm: Another failure-by-design for walkability.

E. 10th Street crosses Elm one block away from S. Ellen Jones Elementary School. The satellite view tells the inexplicable tale: There are no crosswalks drawn across Elm, a one-way arterial street with lanes drawn for 18-wheelers, slicing like an interstate through a residential neighborhood. .

However, there is a lone, wide and profoundly weird line drawn across Elm on the west side. One simply has to ask: What were they thinking?

Answer: They weren't. Anyone who has spent five minutes observing this intersection knows that this line tends NOT to bring automotive traffic to anything approximating a complete stop -- a truth that eluded the NAPD under Chief Knight when the department spent all of an hour or two disproving the notion advanced by residents that cars move very fast on Elm.

Let's go over this again: Wide street, a school nearby, unenforced traffic, a residential area ... and nothing whatsoever to assist walkers crossing the street.

In a nutshell, this is the biggest extant red flag in the run-up to the Jeff Speck report. The record of this city toward walkers and bikers is one of blithe neglect (at best) and institutionalized hostility (at its worst). The current administration continues to insist that once it receives its report, it finally will begin to remedy this situation.

But if you know something needs fixing, why do you wait for the report? Why don't you exercise pro-activity in advance?

After all, the information's out there, and it has been for years.

The problem? You have to read it first.

Which downtown New Albany intersections are the very worst for walkers?

By which I mean to imply downtown/midtown and uptown.

Arguably the worst place for walkers in the entire city is Grant Line Road from Beechwood to Wal-mart, where recently I saw a man, woman and baby carriage walking with traffic (not against it) in the stretch where 45 m.p.h. automotive speeds are not uncommon.

Back to the historic core, where I nominate two. Please tell us yours.

First, the intersection of East Spring and Vincennes. There are two streets with big automotive traffic volumes and very little speed enforcement (we simply don't do that in New Albany), three corner businesses generating traffic and walkers (Walgreen's, White Castle and Rally's), a high school just down the way ... and a place where the signals aren't usually trustworthy alone for a safe crossing.

Second, the enduringly thought-provoking spot where West 1st crosses E. Spring to become Hauss (there is no) Square (there). Traffic barrels unimpeded toward the interstate from the Spring-State intersection, usually increasing speeds to make the light at Scribner Drive, past a spot where a dozen legal offices and the public library lie across the street from both local and federal government buildings. There is not even the pretense of a crosswalk, and some of the most amusing (as well as harrowing) spectacles I've ever seen are government employees -- up to and including city council members -- balancing their Big Gulps as they dodge flying cars and trucks to try to cross to the City County Building.

You can't help thinking: They see the problem, they experience the problem, years go past ... and absolutely nothing is done. Then, as we talk about walkability, the topic is greeted with blank faces.

If not for dysfunction, we'd have no function at all.

Two rapidly developing trouble spots are nearby, on Main Street. I've already hectored the somnolent Rosenbargerite "planning" cadres about the intersection of W. 1st and Main, by The Exchange, Seeds and Greens and the YMCA.

The next accident waiting to happen is the intersection of Bank and Main, where quite soon the new commercial buildings on the southwest side will be filled with tenants, while facing them across Main are Primo's and Bread & Breakfast, among others.

Throughout 2014, the mantra has been consistent: We cannot address what we see with our own eyes each and every day until the Speck study is completed. To me, this ongoing failure of vision is the best reason to doubt whether the Speck study will cure the willful blindness.

Which hazardous crossings for walkers are we leaving out?

Basically, sharrows suck, so naturally New Albany plans more of them, so we can be "bike friendly" on the cheap.

Back in May, we sneered at another of John Rosenbarger's signature megalomanical muddles.

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

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

The intersection reboot is complete, and last night I noticed that it includes a new, dramatic step to resolve the bicycle friendliness issue mentioned above. Previously nonsensical and disconnected bicycle lanes now are routed through the automotive cluster muck by means of a sharrows symbol painted on the street.

Like a nightmare, it all came back to me: The city official in August, whom I quite like as a human being, but have never even once seen riding a bicycle, assuring me that New Albany's way forward to status as a red hot, bike friendly town was to have sharrows everywhere instead of more costly measures to actually achieve something.

At their very best, sharrows are a component, as the excerpt below makes clear.

However, in the absence of other (better) street use reform measures, the sharrows notion is little more than propagandistic palaver. Main Street's freshly minted conceptual catastrophe is a fine example. On a street already sufficiently wide to incorporate bicycle paths amid narrowed traffic lanes, we've opted instead for a median and wider traffic lanes, which will speed traffic rather than calm it (speed limit reductions notwithstanding), thus rendering sharrows both useless and potentially dangerous to bicycling novices who don't yet share a general contempt for sharrows as a municipal cop-out.

So what do we intend to do with our opportunity? Talk crap, paint symbols on the asphalt, then move on to build a dog park.

That's the New Albany way, and it's dead wrong -- at some point, probably literally.

Want to Increase Cycling? Sharrows Won’t Cut It, by Angie Schmitt (Streetsblog)

Shared-lane stencils for bikes, a.k.a. “sharrows,” definitely have their place in a balanced and healthy street system. But these friendly reminders to drivers to share the road have their limits as a tool to boost safety and create more inviting streets for biking.

A study by the LA County Bicycle Coalition [PDF] showed that sharrows do little or nothing to encourage new people to take up cycling, the way bike lanes and cycle tracks do.

That’s why communities should not rely on sharrows when more effective interventions are called for. Unfortunately, Sam Ollinger at Bike San Diego says her city has fallen into this trap:

In the last year, San Diegans have seen the increasing number of shared-lane markings, also called “sharrows.” Sharrows are appearing everywhere: Adams Avenue, Park Boulevard, Broadway, El Cajon Boulevard, Grand Avenue, Voltaire Street, Chatsworth Boulevard, Hotel Circle South, Pacific Highway and more. However, these sharrows are being used as a cheap band-aid instead of implementing real change on our roadways that would increase the number of people riding their bicycle for transportation or recreation.

For starters, San Diego’s Bicycle Master Plan recommends sharrows on roadways that are too narrow for bike lanes. Sharrows are recommended on roads that have a minimum width of 14 feet. Bike lanes are recommended on roads that have a minimum of 15-17 feet. El Cajon Boulevard, for example, has three travel lanes in each direction – it has more than enough room for a bike lane.

So how can the City of San Diego increase the percentage of people who ride a bicycle? A recent report [pdf] from the Mineta Transportation Institute, an institute that was established by Congress to research “multimodal surface transportation policy and management issues,” concluded that in order to attract a wide segment of the population, a bicycle network’s “most fundamental attribute should be low-stress connectivity, that is, providing routes between people’s origins and destinations that do not require cyclists to use links that exceed their tolerance for traffic stress, and that do not involve an undue level of detour.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let's take a look at the aerial view.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let's recap.

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

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

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

Answer: Probably all of them.

Public Art Scene Upholstered Bucket List.

Say that again?

If we start removing upholstery and appliances from our porches, then what's to distinguish us from all the other cities our size?

Well, that's a good point. In fact, by doing so, we may be threatening the very basis of artistic expression.

You'll be happy to know that the NAC staff has collaborated for all of 45 seconds to produce this exciting public art proposal, one aimed at celebrating the bicentennial by honoring a long and purely artistic porch-front sofa display tradition. We've chosen the category of "Congenital Civic Dysfunction," and will submit this idea:

Placement at the intersection of Silver and Spring guarantees maximum visibility for visitors and prospective home buyers.

It also slows down traffic.

But lest anyone come away with the mistaken notion that we are leaving intersection solicitors for charity without any alternative, just relax, Scott.

Diane, have no more than two, and stay tuned for my creative response to the bucket list issue.