The Green Mouse's two-way streets poll at the drive-thru window.

The Green Mouse posted himself at the MacDonald's drive-thru window and took a man-in-a-car poll.

How should city streets work?

Irv Stumler, Silver Hills

Bob Caesar, Silver Hills

Crane Padgett, Industrial Boulevard 

Jeff Gahan, Suburban City Hall

Back at the office, the Green Mouse asked me. Here's what I said.

Roger Baylor. Spring Street

Video Jeff: We hired a study, not an engineer named Speck, 'cuz we want to be, uh, "a great place to be safe" -- and there'll be announcements soon, so WATER PARK.

On Friday, we endured the pure verbal pain of the Genius of the Flood Plain, especially this amazing head-scratcher.

#Gahansafe: In which it is revealed that quality of life is experience of living.

"We started down the road of talking about quality of life, but what we're really talking about, uh, is the quality of ... of ... of the experience of living in New Albany."

Winston Churchill he ain't, but let's look a bit more closely at Jeff Gahan's street grid remarks, beginning at the 2:05 mark of his monthly propaganda video: New Albany Now January 2016.

“The residential experience is really important. Those folks that want to live downtown and walk downtown and feel safe, you’ll see us begin to make those changes to make New Albany, again, a great place to be safe and to walk and more pedestrian friendly. You’ll also see, uh, some opportunities for bike, bicycling downtown that you haven’t seen before, so it’ll be more bike lanes. We’ve been talking about a conversion from one way to two-way streets – hired a, a study to kind of give us some recommendations on what we should do with the one way and two way streets. I expect we’ll that have some announcements soon on some changes that we’ll be making on the grid system.”

Is your two-way confidence inspired yet?

Those among us who walk understand that Team Gahan does nothing on a daily basis to indicate any comprehension of urban walkability, although at some point, he'll snap his fingers, pull a few design component s out of context, spend too much on builders so as to guarantee a fresh round of campaign donations, erect a flaccid plaque, slap an anchor seal on it, and declare heroic victory -- whether any of the fundamental conditions necessary for genuine success change, or not.

It's what happens when the imaginary world of Walt Disney collides with our nation's C-minus (or worse) student "leaders."

Speck's plan is entirely doomed, isn't it? Recall that far from providing a few stray recommendations, it offered a comprehensive, inter-connected playbook. What are the odds that Warren Nash hasn't read it all the way through, a full year after publication?

As the late Glenn Frey once noted, you can't hide those lying eyes -- even behind mangled syntax.

REWIND: "Gahan now 'open' to street changes in Speck study initiated by ... Gahan."

Jeff Gahan's failures as mayor are profuse and myriad, but none quite capture the epic quality of his term's sheer cost in opportunity to the city as his mishandling of the two-way streets issues. 

From December 30, 2014, just a taste of how incomprehensibly awful it has been. 

---


Just let it sink in.

The City Hall team that brought Jeff Speck to New Albany, initiated his study of the street grid and then went into hiding for eight months now has signalled an openness to the results of the very same study.

You know: Their own study.

This coy, tepid and trembling message presumably has been transmitted by a series of sputtering flares, emanating from the down-low bunker where Gahan and associates have been huddling throughout 2014.

The fact of the matter is this: NAC and associates have been leading the fight and calling the tunes on the street grid reform issue from the start, and these latest revelations merely reconfirm that ideas in this town are not emanating from the third floor ... at least yet.

Let's examine these emergency flares, point by point.

Completion of Speck street study in New Albany imminent; Gahan “open” to changes in street grid, converting one-way to two-way, by Daniel Suddeath (News and Tribune)

NEW ALBANY — The city's administration was hoping to have a completed plan by the end of the year, but still expects Jeff Speck’s street study to be finalized within the next month.

Based on the planner’s presentation at the New Albany-Floyd County Public Library in January, and his outlook on street grids discussed in his books, Mayor Jeff Gahan anticipates Speck will suggest converting one-way streets to two-way traffic downtown.

The administration also expects Speck to recommend removing some traffic lights to replace them with all-way stop signs, as well as the addition of more bicycle lanes.

For Gahan to "anticipate" Speck's suggestions is tantamount to his attending a Reds game and telling friends that he's hopeful they'll use some bats and balls this time. But, as has been the case all year, Gahan lacks the intestinal fortitude to take ownership of street grid reality -- and so he embraces the art of the demure politico.

But regardless of what is included in the report, Gahan and the New Albany Board of Public Works and Safety have the final say over the city’s public infrastructure.

That's reassuring, given that these same two entities have spend 2014 (a) implementing the dunderheaded Main Street "improvement" project, and (b) denying the deleterious ripple effect it has created on other downtown streets.

No official announcements are expected until after the report is released, public hearings are held and input garnered from officials, residents and business owners, but Gahan hinted last week that he may support changing some of the city’s traffic grid.

Gahan, who has suggested that the Speck report will come to us as a rigorously factual, irrefutable and well nigh Biblical pronouncement, suitable not only for a principled course of action, but also providing maximum political coverage, now cautiously reveals that only "some" of it may be implemented, as though Jehovah permits believers to pick and choose among the Ten Commandments if a Dixiecratic donor doesn't like one or two of them.

“We’re prepared to take steps to avoid gridlock in our downtown,” Gahan said, as the study was commissioned in part to prepare the city for the completion of the Ohio River Bridges Project. The Sherman Minton Bridge won’t be tolled, so officials are anticipating a rise in the amount of traffic downtown as motorists attempt to avoid paying fees to cross the Ohio River.

Note that steps will be taken only after the current neglect-inspired gridlock caused by pass-through and diverted trucks.

Gahan said Speck was also hired because transportation is a quality-of-life issue as it pertains to residency. “The study reflects our commitment to creating an environment where people want to live in,” he said.

No shit, Sherlock. Readers, ask yourselves this simple question: Who's been saying precisely THIS, aloud and for attribution, for months -- NA Confidential, or Jeff Gahan and his team?

That's a slam dunk, and not in the incumbent's favor, as those rumbling semi trailers continue to make clear, each and every day.

Busy downtown roads such as Spring Street and Elm Street are one-way beginning at Vincennes Street to the Interstate 64 interchange. When asked specifically about those streets, Gahan again acknowledged he would be “open” to converting them to two-way traffic.

Just "open." Without them being retrofitted, the entire discussion is meaningless, but "open" is as much as a terrified politician like this can manage.

But he emphasized the city will follow a detailed process before making any adjustments.

“It’s also important that people know that none of these changes are going to happen overnight, if they do,” Gahan said.

Once the report is finished, the administration will review it internally, provide an overview to the board of works and schedule at least two public meetings to garner input, he continued.

“Obviously, we’ll make sure that everybody understands what the report is,” Gahan said.

Don't worry, Dixiecrats: Gahan will institute a tangle of bureaucratic obstacles meant to divert speedy action just as surely as the Main Street medians send Tiger trucks down tiny 13th Street, where Warren lies snoring in a hammock as the roadway is chewed up and spit out by extractors -- but what, the Board of Works worry?

Yo: Gahan will protect you Dixiecrats from modernity even as he whispers in modernity's favor to those petitioners of whom he believes there are not sufficient numbers to justify novel approaches like honesty.

Or, in plain English:

"We'll make sure nothing happens until after the election in 2015."

Now THAT's the real New Albany, sadly enough.

Officer, you've got the wrong man. It wasn't me who got all symbolic with that one-way street sign.

Friday night or Saturday morning.

On second thought, maybe we're expecting rain, and there are no more stop signs to use as drain covers.

But seriously: Let's never forget that in 2011, then-candidate Jeff Gahan expressed support for two-way streets, only to spend his entire four-year term doing nothing to bring it about save the commissioning of a study by Jeff Speck, one currently collecting dust on a shelf adjacent to vintage unread Readers Digest Condensed Books.

From July, 2013 (two years ago) comes this post. It was a time when I still thought Gahan might follow through and do something.

The opportunity costs of Gahan's inaction are staggering, but it's okay. We'll get it done once I'm elected, beginning on January 1, 2016.

---

Mr. Mayor, tear down these signs. Perhaps the council will help you?

I'm the first to admit that during this busy (and at least not yet overbearingly hot) summer, I've been distracted by second-rate county health bureaucrats, to the exclusion of other perennial blog themes ... like getting to work right now on the task of rationalizing New Albany's street grid prior to the bridges project's dislocation/construction/destruction madness.

The essence of what we keep saying is to study principles elucidated and summarized (as a recent example) by Jeff Speck in his book, “Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time,” and fit them into a program of action here in New Albany, because achieving a desired aim of walkability and garnering the benefits is brings to our ongoing revitalization requires making the same street grid changes needed to mitigate the onslaught of drivers seeking to escape the mess in Clark County by speeding through New Albany on one-way streets.

NASCAR is an entertainment option usually confined to racetracks, not streets in neighborhoods where people live and small businesses operate. It's way past time to correct the situation and to take possession of the city's streets for the benefit of humans, not solely their cars.

It's a city council meeting night, and there's a light agenda. It's been almost a month since the council's street grid committee (Diane Benedetti, Shirley Baird, John Gonder and Greg Phipps) met with John Rosenbarger to discuss this issue.

I am told the committee favors funding a feasibility study, enabling the city to "tap into 80/20 match funds from the Feds." One of the committee members was supposed to have met with Mayor Gahan, and a feasibility funding resolution was said to be forthcoming.

Baby steps are good, and perhaps necessary when it comes to politics, but this municipality needs to openly grasp forthwith that bridges chaos is happening now. The oligarchs' idiocy has started. Those who supported Eisenhower-era transportation boondoggles for future problems can have their show trials later, when there's time enough for scourging, but in the meantime, we must prepare the city's streets: First, to meet the coming traffic challenges, and second, to gain as much benefit as possible for New Albany from these years of lunacy to come.

Today's dollop of intellectual reinforcement is from California.

Simple Fix: turn downtown one-way streets into two-ways, by David Garcia (Stockton City Limits)

... To understand why one-way streets are such a bad idea, it’s important to reflect on why they are there in the first place. Some 50 to 60 years ago, cities began converting several two-way streets into one-ways in order to help commuters get into and out of downtown as quickly as possible. The proliferation of highways made it easy to live in the suburbs and work downtown, and one-way streets made it easier to funnel cars from off ramps to their offices, and vice versa. This change proved to be a boon for commuters who could speed through downtown without any of the inconveniences of a normal street grid layout. However, this trend also had unintended consequences, namely the demise of downtown retail areas ...

... It’s not just Speck who sings the praises of two-way streets, either. The National Trust for Historic Preservation is also a two-way street advocate, citing the findings of a 25-city survey where the elimination of one-ways lead to a decrease in vacancy rates. A Portland real estate consulting group concluded in 2007 that “In the case of a revitalizing urban corridor, the most important benefit afforded by the two-way street is the priority given to the pedestrian. Two-way streets tend to promote a sense of pedestrian dominance that contributes to the tax base, creates an environment that encourages urban residential development and contributes to a compact city form.”

What I'm saying: Sorry, Brad Bell, but I cannot support your at-large candidacy.

And I feel bad about it. But I simply will not cast a vote in favor of any candidate failing to grasp the efficacy and sheer transformative potential of complete streets in New Albany, of which two-way traffic is an important core component, and yet not the only one.

ON THE AVENUES: Leadership? It depends on the entity Jeff Gahan is pretending to lead.

ON THE AVENUES: Leadership? It depends on the entity Jeff Gahan is pretending to lead.

A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.

I met with a journalist yesterday to be interviewed for a forthcoming article about civic affairs, and eventually the conversation turned to Jeff Speck’s Downtown Street Network Proposal for New Albany, and a good question followed:

“So, what does the mayor think about it?”

Well, Jeff Gahan doesn’t think much about Speck, at least as we are left to guess from sparse, cautious public pronouncements that might be mistaken for the oracle of Delphi’s vapor-induced gibberish, except that the latter had a far better feel for genuine poetry.

As I write, tea leaves will magically reconstitute the Gettysburg Address before Gahan emerges from the Down Low Bunker to lead on this issue. The candidate who once promised vigorous action for street change – privately, of course – now has adopted the pose of elderly, buzz-kill, petty-local-bureaucrat-in-chief:

“You can rest assured that we won’t do anything to let those anti-establishment inmates run your asylum.”

Of course, as remains plainly evident, the asylum itself is to be taken for granted, and the founding principle of any local political party is immutable: Our inmates, not yours. It may be the only promise a local DemoDisneyDixiecrat ever kept – and that’s the problem.

Especially in an election year.

---

In fact, the current governing cabal may well comprise the most uniformly anti-intellectual grouping witnessed hereabouts since the 1990s milieu of England Doug, Guido and His Angry Inch, but even then, there was Carl Malysz, who while often bizarrely mistaken in terms of job performance, could converse quite fluently about the history of Poland and Central Europe, areas that lie to the east, somewhat beyond Silver Creek, and must be feared as a result.

Thus, it is quite possible that what we have here is a failure to recall vocabulary lessons from halcyon days of ScribnerWood. I’m happy to be of assistance.

LEAD

lēd/

verb

1. cause (a person or animal) to go with one by holding them by the hand, a halter, a rope, etc., while moving forward.

2. be in charge or command of.
"a military delegation was led by the Chief of Staff"
synonyms: be the leader of, be the head of, preside over, head, command,govern, rule, be in charge of, be in command of, be in control of, run,control, direct, be at the helm of

noun

1. the initiative in an action; an example for others to follow.
"The US is now taking the environmental lead"
synonyms: first position, forefront, primacy, dominance, superiority, ascendancy

2. a position of advantage in a contest; first place.
"they were beaten 5-3 after twice being in the lead"
synonyms: the leading position, first place, the van, the vanguard

There you have it.

Clearly, Mayor Gahan stopped reading after the first definition. He intends to lead, and desires us to be led, not unlike a tethered animal – perhaps a burro, alpaca or camel. Naturally, as an authoritarian, he must be in charge, but in the sense of taking the initiative, providing an example and occupying the vanguard, not so much.

My view is that the animal should break into a trot. This would illustrate an important lesson about ropes, bridles, leashes, and the proper identification of the real parties responsible for leading the issue of street network reform from the very start.

---

Hence the most telling reflex of Gahan’s hermetic politburo, which is a profoundly passive-aggressive daily exercise in “divide and conquer” politics.

There are New Albanians favoring Speck, and others opposed, and all of them will be reassured privately that the forever “principled” mayor and his minions are in complete agreement with the public, whatever the public’s proclivities.

But aloud and for attribution, a pose of lofty and vacuous mayoral distance will be maintained as the respective camps are encouraged to compete with each other to curry Lord Gahan’s favor by bestowing kisses, showering flattery, reaffirming fealty – and most important of all – ensuring the big guy’s re-election in 2015.

In short, Gahan will not “lead” in any coherent sense of leadership.

In effect, having all but ceded the possibility of substantive action on street network reform until 2016, the mayor instead is demanding to be rewarded first, with another term. Only then can anything happen, and if anything happens at all, it will do so owing to the bare, stated minimum of traffic alterations aimed at preparing for a changed dynamic when Ohio River bridge tolls come on line.

As for the second and far more transformational aspect of Speck’s proposals, altering social conditions and facilitating a civic lifestyle change, Gahan’s silence speaks volumes.

It would be easy for rational observers to formulate the situation like this: Gahan does not understand the sweeping potential impact of such a social transformation, because if he did, he would not press forward with fluffy and unnecessary enemas like the farmers market debacle on the corner of Bank and Market.

But that formulation is incorrect. You see, Gahan actually does understand the transformational stakes, and he cannot allow them to occur, because his only guiding principle as a political party-bound mayor is to maintain the continued dominance of the DemoDisneyDixiecrat local power and patronage machine.

And the DemoDisneyDixiecrat local power and patronage machine simply cannot survive a sweeping civic lifestyle change. To implement Jeff Speck’s Downtown Street Network Proposal on any basis of its lifestyle component, however slight, is tantamount to glasnost, perestroika and the French revolution rolled into one, or put more succinctly: A swift and painful demise for the local DemoDisneyDixiecrats.

To do so would be to reward the party’s critics, not its Luddites.

To do so would be to concede that the best-ever idea for reality-based economic development in New Albany originated so far outside the DemoDisneyDixiecratic Party’s wheelhouse that it might have been mailed to us from … Poland and Central Europe.

However, Speck's from the East Coast, and there is a serious flaw in Gahan’s brutally deceptive “Me or Nothing in 2016.”

We need not play along … politically.

Ongoing efforts on the part of the citizenry to advance the cause of Speck’s street network proposals and to advocate their immediate implementation, are fitting and proper. They must and will continue, but they are utterly separate from the politicized blackmail being practiced at present.

Since Gahan has determined to do nothing in 2015, it follows that nothing will happen in 2015. That’s regrettable, but doing something in 2016, beginning on the first of January, is not reliant on Gahan’s presence. Rather, it relies on the disposition of his replacement. If the replacement is not beholden to a political patronage machine, all the better.

Select the correct replacement, and we’re one step closer to rational streets … and rational politics.

ON THE AVENUES: Jeff Gahan, the Speck proposals, and City Hall's $75,000 roll of toilet paper.

ON THE AVENUES: Jeff Gahan, the Speck proposals, and City Hall's $75,000 roll of toilet paper.

A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.

We should be talking about Pillsbury, and how generations of local elected officials took the doughboy's plant for granted until the moment the division’s corporate office announced a closure, one that in all likelihood has been on the drawing board for years, with maybe – just maybe – a respite but only if the union happily eviscerates itself.

We should be talking about how our business-as-usual “fluff ‘n’ abate” economic development strategies are due for depositing atop the ash heap of history, so we can become more self-reliant and less beholden to far-off multinationals.

However, Jeff Speck’s Downtown Street Network Proposal arrived last week, so let’s talk about how Jeff Gahan’s hermetic City Hall is going to butcher it.

As expected, Speck’s proposals are two-pronged, with both thrusts closely linked and mutually reinforcing.

He offers a unified, comprehensive way of reorganizing downtown New Albany’s fundamental daily approach to streets and traffic so as to (a) best prepare us for the changed traffic dynamic when the Ohio River toll bridges come on line, and (b) facilitate what might be referred to as a civic lifestyle change, taking into consideration the multiple social impacts of street design.

Naturally, the proposals are far more detailed than this brief simplification, but I’m not doing Speck an injustice by reducing it. If you are reading my words today, and have not yet looked at the study itself, please do so. Details are exhaustive, and overall, the plan developed therein is masterful.

Unfortunately, it’s a beautiful blueprint likely to land on the trash pile far faster than our array of inflatable industrial park incentives. That’s because apart from the city engineer, and perhaps John “Machiavelli” Rosenbarger himself in rare and fleeting moments, when he’s on his meds … there isn’t a soul in the inner municipal circle able or willing to understand it. They don’t live it. Words on a page don’t make their hearts sing, but Dixiecrat voters do, and that’s why street reform backers will be sold downriver.

---

Although some of us have been discussing the issue of pro-actively reforming the city’s streets for a decade or more, and in spite of periodically polite pats on the head by city officials aimed primarily at silencing advocates, City Hall’s interest in the Speck milieu goes back to mid-2013. Although the 2011 mayoral candidate Gahan told many of us in private that he backed street reform, he did nothing in 2012 and through most of 2013.

I believe that when Gahan at long last took an interest in downtown streets – having already decided to implement a plaque-ready Main Street redesign largely running counter to numerous of the principles explained in the present Speck proposal package, and thus poisoning the well prior to digging it – he did so only because he could no longer procrastinate as to the impact of future bridge tolls.

For the past year and a half, the nature of the relationship between proponents of reform and the mayor has been tantamount to extractive dentistry. We communicate publicly, while he transmits signals through underlings, gestural patterns and the occasional turn of scripted phrase.

We’re in a position similar to that of an earlier generation of Kremlinologists; lacking openness in Soviet regimes, analysts learned to look for clues to political behavior elsewhere. Gahan is the most secretive mayor in living memory, and we’ve been compelled to gaze at impervious 3rd Floor walls and infer the thought bubbles behind them – assuming there is discernible thought behind the bubbles.

I believe that most of the dissonance between well-informed proponents and Gahan’s unexcited and indifferent handling of a report he claims (privately, of course) to support, owes to the two-pronged nature of the proposals. To be blunt, Gahan is interested in Speck solely as the suggestions pertain to the minimum action required to address pass-through traffic cause by toll evasion, and no more.

I believe that the “walkability” component of Speck’s argument – economic, epidemiological and environmental – mean as much to Gahan and his merry band of unrepentant suburbanites as it would had I undertaken to explain them to my house cats.

I believe that if we reduce Speck’s 100+ plus pages to this one statement …

Against this backdrop, New Albany has the opportunity to encourage more healthy lifestyles by embracing national trends towards downtown living, walkability, and cycling.

… we’d be hard pressed to find a half dozen elected or appointed officials in the entire city of New Albany capable (read: willing) of understanding it, and if we were to locate a few, none of them occupy a place in the mayor’s inner advisory circle.

How can they implement a plan, which embodies a worldview that they’ve shown no aptitude in comprehending?

Consider the mayor’s most trusted sidekicks, and think: Would any of them walk three blocks to lunch, or would they drive? Have you ever seen them on a bicycle? Aren’t they the ones who visit a walkable city on holiday, then spend their time grousing about the absence of parking spaces, never noticing the net effect of reduced auto-centrism on the overall urban experience?

Aren’t they the ones reading these words right now, as they’ll hotly deny they did later, and feeling a mounting anger because I’m using big words they never bothered learning in school?

But it’s okay, now that they have a Twitter parody to speak for them, probably because city employees have too much time on their hands while at work.

---

Those of us advocating Speck’s proposals need to understand City Hall’s coming strategy.

First and foremost, time is being measured not by Rolex, but by the political calendar. Gahan has no intention of revealing anything until the May primary is concluded. If David White defeats the incumbent, the city returns abruptly to Year Zero, for Gahan will do nothing during the remainder of a lame duck term.

If the mayor wins in May, he will survey the percentages in November. If they are favorable, he’ll stay the course ... and do nothing. After all, it he’s winning, then it ain’t broke. Why fix it until you have to?

If the harbingers are unfavorable in November, he’ll also do nothing.

Why bother?

His message to Speck proponents, whether stated overtly or more likely subliminally through backhanded code phrases inserted into the back forty of last month’s Redevelopment minutes, will be this: Me, or nothing -- and it's fealty time in Come to City.

Second, insofar as public “comment” on Speck is concerned, proponents will be pitted against opponents in what amounts to three stage-managed, reality-TV-caliber spectacles, the sole purpose of which is to create an atmosphere of “house divided” rancor, such that Gahan can finally come forward for the magisterial, straight-to-social media photo op, and intervene to resolve the dispute of his own creation by backpedaling on all social impacts of street design – the same ones advocated by so many people like us, long prior to bridge tolls being a factor in the equation.

Rather, Gahan will restrict implementation to minimum alterations that can be explained as necessary to combat pass-throughs. These will be terribly delayed and wholly inadequate, at which point David “Sancho Panza” Duggins will be dispatched to make the talk show rounds and blame escalating downtown merchant failure on the inadequacies of downtown merchants – as he already has done, openly and for attribution, in the past.

For those just tuning in, he’s the “economic development” director, by the way.

---

Am I being overly pessimistic?

Perhaps, but in the absence of principle, visibility and transparency on the part of Jeff Gahan’s hermetic City Hall, we’re all looking at the same permutation of tea leaves. In my experience, silk purses seldom are seen emanating from sow’s ears.

But we all like bacon, don’t we ... and I'll be damned if I'm going to let the pointy-heads tell me how to avoid cardiovascular disease.

Gahan now "open" to street changes in Speck study initiated by Gahan.

Just let it sink in.

The City Hall team that brought Jeff Speck to New Albany, initiated his study of the street grid and then went into hiding for eight months now has signalled an openness to the results of the very same study.

You know: Their own study.

This coy, tepid and trembling message presumably has been transmitted by a series of sputtering flares, emanating from the down-low bunker where Gahan and associates have been huddling throughout 2014.

The fact of the matter is this: NAC and associates have been leading the fight and calling the tunes on the street grid reform issue from the start, and these latest revelations merely reconfirm that ideas in this town are not emanating from the third floor ... at least yet.

Let's examine these emergency flares, point by point.

Completion of Speck street study in New Albany imminent; Gahan “open” to changes in street grid, converting one-way to two-way, by Daniel Suddeath (News and Tribune)

NEW ALBANY — The city's administration was hoping to have a completed plan by the end of the year, but still expects Jeff Speck’s street study to be finalized within the next month.

Based on the planner’s presentation at the New Albany-Floyd County Public Library in January, and his outlook on street grids discussed in his books, Mayor Jeff Gahan anticipates Speck will suggest converting one-way streets to two-way traffic downtown.

The administration also expects Speck to recommend removing some traffic lights to replace them with all-way stop signs, as well as the addition of more bicycle lanes.

For Gahan to "anticipate" Speck's suggestions is tantamount to his attending a Reds game and telling friends that he's hopeful they'll use some bats and balls this time. But, as has been the case all year, Gahan lacks the intestinal fortitude to take ownership of street grid reality -- and so he embraces the art of the demure politico.

But regardless of what is included in the report, Gahan and the New Albany Board of Public Works and Safety have the final say over the city’s public infrastructure.

That's reassuring, given that these same two entities have spend 2014 (a) implementing the dunderheaded Main Street "improvement" project, and (b) denying the deleterious ripple effect it has created on other downtown streets.

No official announcements are expected until after the report is released, public hearings are held and input garnered from officials, residents and business owners, but Gahan hinted last week that he may support changing some of the city’s traffic grid.

Gahan, who has suggested that the Speck report will come to us as a rigorously factual, irrefutable and well nigh Biblical pronouncement, suitable not only for a principled course of action, but also providing maximum political coverage, now cautiously reveals that only "some" of it may be implemented, as though Jehovah permits believers to pick and choose among the Ten Commandments if a Dixiecratic donor doesn't like one or two of them.

“We’re prepared to take steps to avoid gridlock in our downtown,” Gahan said, as the study was commissioned in part to prepare the city for the completion of the Ohio River Bridges Project. The Sherman Minton Bridge won’t be tolled, so officials are anticipating a rise in the amount of traffic downtown as motorists attempt to avoid paying fees to cross the Ohio River.

Note that steps will be taken only after the current neglect-inspired gridlock caused by pass-through and diverted trucks.

Gahan said Speck was also hired because transportation is a quality-of-life issue as it pertains to residency. “The study reflects our commitment to creating an environment where people want to live in,” he said.

No shit, Sherlock. Readers, ask yourselves this simple question: Who's been saying precisely THIS, aloud and for attribution, for months -- NA Confidential, or Jeff Gahan and his team?

That's a slam dunk, and not in the incumbent's favor, as those rumbling semi trailers continue to make clear, each and every day.

Busy downtown roads such as Spring Street and Elm Street are one-way beginning at Vincennes Street to the Interstate 64 interchange. When asked specifically about those streets, Gahan again acknowledged he would be “open” to converting them to two-way traffic.

Just "open." Without them being retrofitted, the entire discussion is meaningless, but "open" is as much as a terrified politician like this can manage.

But he emphasized the city will follow a detailed process before making any adjustments.

“It’s also important that people know that none of these changes are going to happen overnight, if they do,” Gahan said.

Once the report is finished, the administration will review it internally, provide an overview to the board of works and schedule at least two public meetings to garner input, he continued.

“Obviously, we’ll make sure that everybody understands what the report is,” Gahan said.

Don't worry, Dixiecrats: Gahan will institute a tangle of bureaucratic obstacles meant to divert speedy action just as surely as the Main Street medians send Tiger trucks down tiny 13th Street, where Warren lies snoring in a hammock as the roadway is chewed up and spit out by extractors -- but what, the Board of Works worry?

Yo: Gahan will protect you Dixiecrats from modernity even as he whispers in modernity's favor to those petitioners of whom he believes there are not sufficient numbers to justify novel approaches like honesty.

Or, in plain English:

"We'll make sure nothing happens until after the election in 2015."

Now THAT's the real New Albany, sadly enough.

And you thought those Jehovah's Witnesses were annoying.

We're sorry to see Endris Jewelers go ... and just as sorry to see Bob Caesar remain (in politics). C'mon, 2nd District voters -- you can do better in 2015.

But what if "outdated mentalities" are the best-selling locally-produced item in New Albany?

Hammer, meet nail.

"Policies are changing and new ideas are emerging, yet there is still a significant obstacle ahead of us: challenging outdated mentalities."

It occurs to me that as a lifelong resident of "hereabouts," this daily task of "challenging outdated mentalities" largely has been my life's work. We're still filled to the brim with them, which means there is much more work ahead, and when it comes right down to it, the process of prodding, pushing, taunting and ridiculing outdated mentalities is what gets me out of bed in the morning.

The following commentary comes courtesy of Bluegill, who posted it on Facebook. It applies every bit as much to New Albany as Baltimore.

Two ways about it [Commentary]: Converting city streets St. Paul and Calvert would calm traffic and improve property values, by Charlie Duff (Baltimore Sun)

If we are serious about adding 10,000 new families to the city, then it is time to recognize that there is a lot between the suburbs and downtown. A lot of residents, a lot of houses, a lot of businesses — a whole lot of potential. High-speed through traffic damages this potential. It devalues the neighborhood as a destination, a place we go to and from, a place where bicyclists do not fear for their lives and engines do not roar so loud you can't have a conversation on your stoop.

When Henry A. Barnes decided in 1954 that these streets should be one-way, his only concern was to make sure that members of the middle class moving out of the inner-city could still access it easily. But why should the neighborhoods of Charles Village, Barclay, Old Goucher, Charles North, Greenmount West and Mount Vernon still pay the price for decisions made at a time when TVs were black and white and cars were considered the ultimate marker of social progress? Sixty years later, it's about time we change our approach to transportation planning.

ON THE AVENUES REWOUND, PART ONE: Yellow lines, and what comes due.

ON THE AVENUES REWOUND, PART ONE: Yellow lines, and what comes due.
ON THE AVENUES REWOUND, PART TWO: You actually can get something for nothing.
ON THE AVENUES REWOUND, PART THREE: Anatomy of a red herring.

Since this was written last fall, I've decided that Wile E. Rosenbarger is anything but benign. He's taken credit for bringing the world leader in street sense, Jeff Speck, to New Albany, after which Speck was hired to study our Miller Lite of a street grid and recommend modernity. Now Rosenbarger will fight behind the scenes against whatever Speck recommends, and when the whole project collapses, he'll blame either the stupidity of Joe Sixpack, the cowardice of politicians, or both, and intimate that the only way for us to weather the ensuing nastiness is continue paying him to pretend he's Gail Wynand.

Apart from that, I stick with the following. Thus far, entrepreneurial capital has made the difference in New Albany. The rest is sophistry (see Part Three).

---

ON THE AVENUES: Yellow lines, and what comes due.

A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor ... originally published on September 9, 2013

On Tuesday I visited an old pal to do some catching up.

He’s a Louisville restaurateur whose business is located in the epicenter of Frankfort Avenue. As we spoke over a cool adult libation, a steady stream of walkers, joggers and cyclists traveled past. It’s a thriving area with a strong indie ethos. There are a handful of retail vacancies, but not many. The neighborhood around my buddy’s place is filled with homes worth double or greater the value of equivalent structures in New Albany.

In short, Frankfort Avenue is fun and livable, and it’s the same milieu once publicly shunned by a New Albany city councilman, who feared our town might become too much like it. Yogi Berra couldn’t have said it any better than L’il Stevie: No one goes there anymore because it’s way too crowded.

Granted, my friend’s business always has been difficult to reach in peak periods – and the parking at times is gruesome. But even now, when me and the wife spend so much of our own free time in downtown New Albany, we still make the transit over to the Frankfort Avenue area every other week. Yes, there are lots of people therein. Travel can be quite slow, and parking often is a pain – and yet, precisely owing to these factors and others that flow from urban density, there is abundant life on every corner.

It’s a worthwhile destination, and so we seek it out.

So there I was on Tuesday afternoon, ensconced a stone’s throw from Frankfort Avenue -- and all my friend wanted to talk about was my town, not his. He said that recently his family was in New Albany for an entire day, just exploring, shopping, eating and drinking. He professed fascination with the atmosphere and history, and conceded that there’s enough to do in New Albany to occupy a whole weekend without once venturing into Louisville.

He asked me: How are you guys managing to do this?

My answer: Pretty much all on our own, as entrepreneurs, volunteers and chief bottle washers.

“But what about local government? What has it done?”

Crickets chirped. Pins dropped.

Somewhere, a skateboarder barked at a dog.

---

The single most important step toward New Albany’s revitalization ever taken by any portion of city government was the council’s approval in 2006 of the riverfront development area, and the subsequent availability of non-quota 3-way alcoholic beverage permits.

It’s true that the Urban Enterprise Association’s façade grants have been helpful, as has Develop New Albany’s networking. While I’ve not always agreed with Clean and Green’s program of beautification, at least the work has come from private donations. The Horseshoe Foundation’s revolving loans have been useful, too.

Other than these entities, and with One Southern Indiana abjectly negligible, most of the entire record of revitalization has been written by entrepreneurs, ranging from business owners through developers and facilitators like Steve Resch. There are too many names of over-achieving, life-savings-grade investors to mention all of them here, but it should suffice to say that apart from a perpetually well-intentioned bully pulpit, local New Albany government largely has been AWOL – chronically under-funded, often paying more attention (and granting very real tax abatements) to larger companies in industrial parks, or just uninformed, disorganized and obsessed with political irrelevancies.

It isn’t that I’m not thankful for their moral support. It isn’t that the politician types aren’t trying the best they know how, with the tools at their disposal. It’s just that the haphazard, uncoordinated and plainly strange way we’re now approaching street grid reform has me fearing the worst.

And those fears have a history of being realized.

---

This blog began in 2004. In 2005, the Garner administration publicly (and with exaggerated and paranoid caution) casually mentioned the concept of impending two-way street conversions.

Nothing happened.

Garner’s successor, King England III, talked quite a lot about the topic. In truth, there may never again be a mayor who talked as much.

By the way, nothing happened then, either.

Now, a full eight years after the first muffled and muted Hauss Square mutterings somehow leaked into the newspaper of record, we’re told that when it comes to two-way traffic, the current Mayor Jeff Gahan is said to be “for it” – so much so that City Hall has yet to make an official statement supporting two-way streets ... and David Duggins, Gahan’s economic development adjutant, has offered no public utterances on the topic to date.

Now, I believe what I’ve heard through the grapevine, but at this juncture, the administration’s only real comments on the matter have been made at council meetings by city planner John Rosenbarger, and I’m sorry: This is rather like President Barack Obama trotting out the head of the Postal Service to reveal bombing plans for Syria.

All Rosenbarger can do is speak nuts and bolts to engineering wonks. The political side of this – and yes, so long as Bob Caesar seeks to hold back the evil forces of modernity, there is a political side – falls to officials quite apart from the planner. They’re not putting enough skin into this game, at least for my taste.

Consequently, and mostly because no one else seems willing to say it aloud, please allow me to be the bringer of truth:

Dear New Albany politicians in the executive and legislative branches of government,

Hi. You know this whole two-way street conversion thing we’ve been talking about since the House of Bread was still open? Well, here’s the way it needs to work.

Do it. 

Now.

You owe us.

That’s right: You owe us.

In fact, it’s all quite easy to understand, so let me help you out.

Just take every one of those “no-brainer,” “quality of life,” and “economic development” arguments made by those in favor of $20 million worth of new city parks, and grasp that these exact same arguments apply just as strongly to two-way streets, traffic calming and complete streets – at least insofar as the new cadre of independent business owners are concerned. 

Remember us? 

We’re the ones who actually have been investing downtown.

Then add the needs and interests of present and future inhabitants in those neighborhoods making up the city’s historic core. They’re not feeling arterial – no, not at all. 

While you’re at it, take the case for Main Street’s makeover (you can keep the excessive expense, but that’s another story), and understand that the Main Street rationale (i.e., we all need nice things) applies to Elm and Spring Streets, too – as much, and probably more so, because unlike Main Street, those other neighborhoods still hang in the balance. The NSP was nice … but it was mostly Federal stimulus money, wasn’t it?

You see, you owe us a modern street grid, because so far, most of the heavy lifting in the historic core has been on someone else’s dime, whether from local investors, state highway pay-outs or Obama funds. Now, with this much needed two-way street conversion and other related measures to enhance New Albany’s prospects, it’s time at last for you to go all in and show us that you really get it, and that River Ridge envy shall not be the dominant economic development motif hereabouts.

Just remember: You owe us.

Pay us all back, all at once. Give us a street grid that facilitates revitalization, not one that actively hampers it. 

Hell, if you buy the paint, we might even roll a few kegs out some afternoon and paint the stripes for you.

If you decline to act – well, we might just paint the stripes ourselves, anyway. Maybe Clean and Green can fund it. A little civil disobedience never harmed anyone.

Thank you for your attention to this matter. We're watching.

Roger

Why must the city of New Albany wait to take control of its own lawless street grid?

Over at The 'Ville Voice, Jake makes a comment quite applicable to New Albany's seemingly unreformable one-way street grid. It begins innocuously ...

Hoping to slow traffic and make the ride easier and safer for bicyclists and pedestrians, city officials are putting a handful of local streets on a “road diet.” 

 ... before honing in for the kill:

Since these streets aren’t used by East Enders trying to speed through what they perceive as the ghetto, it shouldn’t be too big of a deal. [C-J/AKN]

That's the essence of it: Those who don't actually live there, complaining vociferously because they've been slightly inconvenienced during the daily speed-through.

And yet, even as we await the forthcoming Jeff Speck street study, the city of New Albany is unable (read: unwilling) to so much as attempt enforcement when it comes to daily ordeal of phenomenons such as the escalating heavy truck traffic on Spring Street.

Granted, an attitude of "let's wait for Speck" is reasonable if (a) the study he produces will be taken seriously, apart from the sniffing of Democratic Party grandees -- by no means assured given the terrified timidity of the ruling elite -- and (b) if it means waiting just a bit on political patronage projects like the farmers market payback.

But the current daily situation on Spring Street is patently unsafe, and getting more so by the day ... so, must the city "wait for Speck" to discharge its bare minimum obligation to ensure that its citizenry isn't squashed like bugs on an unregulated arterial street?

Or must we wait ... again ... for uncounted years? The city can take control of the streets as they are, right now, anytime it chooses. It does not choose.

Why is that?

Just your basic everyday "planned" occurrence on Spring Street -- right, John?

As the East Main Street Deforestation Project progresses, we're seeing more and more of these.

The truck was moving so quickly that even after spotting it a block away, I almost was unable to squeeze off an iPhone image before it passed. Contrast the hurtling steel overkill on a residential streets with the quaint poignancy of that bike lane in the foreground, of which John "My Way IS the Highway, So Long As It Is Your Street and Not Mine" Rosenbarger was so inordinately proud when recounting his many lifetime planning achievements at the FAN Fair earlier this year.

Of course, it's the second of two bike lanes, both pointed in exactly the same direction on opposite sides of a one-way arterial street intended to enable this truck's excessive speed, and to utterly defeat livability in a neighborhood in desperate need of federal stabilization funding -- bike lanes leading from nothing, to nothing, as enabled by the nothingness of the third England Doug regime.

Think of this truck at 50 mph on an unenforced street as the cascading storm water eroding one's nice garden plot, and thus washing away any megabuck efforts at stabilization, and then ask yourself this question: Is it really the sort of photo you'd point to as evidence of your career achievement?

Ah, the blessings of one-party rule.

By the way, are there any?

ON THE AVENUES: One-keg parties rarely work, either.

ON THE AVENUES: One-keg parties rarely work, either.

A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.

Recently I’ve been fascinated anew by the concept of the one-party state.

A single-party state, one-party state, one-party system or single-party system is a type of state in which a single political party has the right to form the government, usually based on the existing constitution. All other parties are either outlawed or allowed to take only a limited and controlled participation in elections. Sometimes the term de facto single-party state is used to describe a dominant-party system that, unlike the single-party state, allows (at least nominally) democratic multiparty elections, but the existing practices or balance of political power effectively prevent the opposition from winning the elections.

To American ears, “one-party states” and “Communist countries” are synonymous, but non-leftist regimes of fascistic and theocratic bents certainly have managed them, too. I never went to Spain under Franco (he remains dead, you know) or Iran when the Islamic Republican Party held sway, but my youthful travels included the USSR and most of the countries of the Warsaw Pact when they were one-party, or de facto single-party, entities.

The fact that I was drunk much of the time during these visits does not change the fact that on balance, they were sobering experiences.

Obviously, the very notion of a one-party state embraces the concentration of power within one sphere, according to a single set of guidelines, and with avenues of political participation effectively closed apart from reigning orthodoxy. In the absence of palpable opposition, the sole party devotes itself to maintaining its own entrenched bureaucracy, safe in the knowledge that governmental institutions merely mimic the party’s own time-honored levers, and cannot be detached either physically or metaphorically from the entrenched patronage of the party itself.

Or, in other words, much like political life in New Albany.

---

Okay, okay.

I won’t contest for a single moment that my analogy is strained, because comparing a totalitarian system like North Korea’s to New Albany’s Demo-Dixiecratic stranglehold makes little sense apart from the unquestioned superiority of Kim Jong-un’s haircut.

In New Albany, there is a legal opposition party, even if a powerful microscope is required to find it, although as recently as Bill Clinton’s second term, the Republican Party actually managed to secure the mayor’s chair. Since Regina Overton’s rule-by date expired, the GOP’s invisibility in New Albany has made the word “nominal” appear almost superhuman by comparison.

Mental exhaustion might explain the urban Republican malaise. One fine night you’re having sweet, patriotically tumescent dreams of the heyday of the Gipper, only to awake and find that Dave Matthews is still the party chairman. Consequently, new ideas emanating from local Republicans are so exceedingly rare that we may have to erect a historical marker to commemorate the most recent one, assuming anyone is alive who remembers it.

My point is simple: While seemingly extinct in New Albany, ideas genuinely matter. As abysmally and resolutely stupid as humans are capable of being, we’re nothing without the primacy of ideas. Accordingly, in the one-horse, one-party Demo-Dixiecrat city that New Albany somehow has become, the disintegration of the GOP as electorally credible opposition has produced bitter irony: Both Republicans and their counterparts are plainly eviscerated when it comes to the health and vigor of ideas, perhaps because ideas are like muscles, and atrophy when unused.

What do you have for us, GOP?

(crickets chirp, pins drop)

Gads. All right, what about you, Demo-Dixiecrats?

(somewhere, a dog barks)

Is there a principled independent in the house? Please?

---

It isn’t that individual Democrats can’t be fine people. Many are. It isn’t that they don’t have ideas. Some do. It’s just that their long-standing, one-party political culture invariably acts to portray the very act of thinking as subversive, pornographic and unnecessary for the task at hand: Urban decay management.

Recently, when at-large councilman John Gonder made yet another doomed attempt to publicly think outside the box, this time about possible future locations for the farmers market, a veritable mob of his fellow party members grabbed their Louisville Sluggers and aimed straight for his groin. Whatever merits there may or may not have been in his parking garage proposal, he was tarred and pilloried for having the temerity to think aloud.

How dare he question a payback already budgeted!

Inside this town’s city limits, it’s a revolutionary act to think at all, silently or aloud, but Gonder persists in trying; yet surely he knows that his party’s unassailable political hegemony precludes a marketplace of ideas, which always must remain safely behind closed doors, carefully guarded against unmanageable mutation, until they’ve been vigorously scrubbed clean of meaningful content, and can at long last be released in fully non-realized, formless dimension, shovel- and ordinance-ready, without the messy necessity of evolving in an open, transparent forum.

In due time, the Jeff Speck street study will become the greatest of all litmus tests of what I’m writing here today. I hope, pray, wish and yearn that Speck gets it dead right, the city energetically complies, and streets are calmed, completed and re-directed at long last – over a period of months, and not decades. It could happen, and if it does, it will be over the strenuous objections and self-immolations not of Republicans, but of the Demo-Dixiecrats themselves.

Speck’s fruition may well require a local Gorbachev. To put it mildly, one has yet to step forward, and so it remains axiomatic: If a one-party city can’t control the gestation of ideas and neuter the ones leaking through the cordon, then what good is it to have a monopoly on power in the first place?

---

The root problem – for the city, its residents and the current Democratic Party’s own vitality – is that forcing creativity through a single narrow channel of a self-interested, self-perpetuating hierarchy deadens the reproductive capacity of ideas. In fact, ideas are best encouraged to be promiscuous, and in this sense, leaden monogamy under the aegis of one party’s ages-old prophylactic power structure, helmed by one party’s enduring, mind-numbing, time-serving usual suspects, severely inhibits creativity’s proper procreation.

The result is a dominant one-party tub of goo, a morass virtually indistinguishable from the forlorn, bedraggled GOP “opposition.” But the same grimy spoils of small-potato patronage are duly apportioned, just as they were when Glenn Miller ruled the airwaves, and the one-party band plays on – unable to afford a dose of Auto-Tune, and unwilling to stop.

With new ideas, creative expressions and future hope in New Albany confined almost entirely to an entrepreneurial ghetto of outsiders investing and existing light years outside the one-party intellectual straitjacket, a revolution of rising expectations slowly percolates.

Will the one-party city permit progress to come to a boil in our lifetimes? I doubt it, but maybe, for once in a Bicentennial, they’ll prove me wrong.

Where are you, Mikhail? We need another keg ... and fast.

As local Democratic Party mounts bowl-a-thon, Dr. Gilderbloom marshalls impressive evidence: "Turn one-way streets to two-way."

Where have we heard of Dr. John Gilderbloom over the years?

Well, to name just two, here: CART in the news (2): Gilderbloom on Quasi-Possibility City.

Substitute "New Albany" for "Louisville," and it's the exact strategy best pursued by the current mayoral administration for the remainder of its turn -- assuming, of course, that conservatives in the local Democratic Party don't commit us to Romneyism in the interim.

And here: How One-Way Thinking is Hurting Historic Downtown Neighborhoods.

... One-way streets also lower property values. Identical historic homes are valued
less if they are located on busy one-way streets where traffic goes faster and lacks the
steady flow of a two-way street. Real estate 101 tells us location, location, location, or
more plainly don’t buy the house across from the X-rated movie house, the glue factory
or fast and furious one-way street.

Look, ma -- it's that man again.

Once more, substitute "New Albany" for "Louisville" in the opening passage quoted here, and ask yourself: Even without John Rosebarger yammering his selective planning commandments from a public toilet stall in the City-County Building, what exactly is it about a plainly counter-productive municipal street grid that renders otherwise sane adults into quivering masses of cautious status-quo fetishists, unwilling to trust either their own two eyes or steadily accumulating reams of evidence to the contrary?

In New Albany, we must ask: What are they so scared of, unless it's their own Democratic Party?

 Turn one-way streets to two-way, by John Gilderbloom (Special to The Courier-Journal)

Louisville’s multi-lane one-way streets are a disaster for neighborhoods resulting in greater crime, traffic accidents and abandonment. If Louisville really wants to improve the safety and quality of neighborhoods, it should start immediately by converting its multi-lane one-way streets back to two-way traffic that results in slower car speeds and encourages greater use by pedestrians and bikes. Neighborhoods become more livable, safer and prosperous when residential streets are calmer.

While 100 cities have rushed to convert multi-lane one-way streets, few rigorous studies have been done to look at traffic calming’s impacts. Under my supervision, my University of Louisville planning graduate students (Winston Mitchell and Samantha Alexis Smith) produced a rigorous study of just two streets (Brook and First) that were converted nearly three years ago from multi-lane freeway-like to slow and sane streets for everyone. We could actually look at before and after the conversion of Brook and First and compare the converted two-way with the unconverted multi-lane one-ways (Second and Third) next to them.

The results were stunning. Two-way conversion improves the livability of a neighborhood with a significant reduction in crime, accidents and an increase in property values, business profits, bike and pedestrian traffic. Million dollars spent on outside consultants never predicted this ...

ORBP antidotes: “The mayor has already made the case as to why these improvements are important."

It's a feature-length piece (1,400 words) by local newspaper standards, and presses most of the relevant buttons. Go read it, while considering a question I've asked before: What is the nature of the opposition to complete streets in New Albany?

By "opposition," I'm not referring to scattershot sniping from the briefly inconvenienced. Rather, I mean organized, coherent opposition. I can't seem to find any, although certain possibilities are obvious (Padgett, for instance, although there seems to be no record of the company's position either way). Proponents, including the East Spring Street Neighborhood Association, have been making a coherent and public case for a decade, and yet successive mayoral administrations seem constantly paralyzed.

I'm not entirely sure Jeff Speck knows what he's in for.

New Albany alone might well comprise sufficient material for a whole new book, and while I'd like to think it would be because we elect to institute a bold, vibrant laboratory to promoting modernity and the merits of infrastructure adjustment to achieve desired ends ... well, I've lived here for too long. I know we can do it. The problem is whether we know we can do it.

BRIDGING THE FUTURE: Examining the Ohio River Bridges Project impact on New Albany, Daniel Suddeath (N and T)

... With the Ohio River Bridges Project underway, the (East Spring Street) neighborhood group is pushing for the city to address what they feel is a dangerous traffic grid before more motorists head to New Albany to avoid tolls which will be placed on downtown interstate bridges and the new east-end bridge.

Roads such as Spring, Elm and Market Streets are already sped through by motorists who show no concern for the neighborhood they’re endangering, Roberts and other members of the group said.

“They don’t live here and they don’t care about the people that live here every day,” Harshfield said.

Overwhelmingly, the residents and business owners interviewed by the News and Tribune for this story said they support two-way streets in downtown New Albany for safety and commerce reasons, and added that the bridges project should make that decision even more clear for city leaders ...

"Moving forward" in year-end interview, Mayor Jeff Gahan says absolutely nothing about two-way streets.

Nope. Zilch. Cerro. Not a word.

But there's this, as it pertains to the construction of a recreational complex at the old Hoosier Panel property:

“I feel really good about what that’s going to do to the property values in that area, and again it’s an improvement to the quality of life in New Albany,” Gahan said of the recreational center.

If you live on or near one of downtown New Albany's one-way arterial streets, which are not sufficiently important to be so much as mentioned in this interview, isn't about time you began using the Q(uality of Life) word and asking City Hall and various boards that dictate infrastructure:

But what about OUR quality of life and property values? 

It seems increasingly evident that they're not going to mention it to you, first. Why? Because is  question they wish not to here, much less reply to.

Read it and weep. Louisville's supposedly Possibility City. I believe this makes us Oblivious City.

STATE OF NEW ALBANY: Gahan reflects, looks ahead; Mayor reaches midway point of term, by Daniel Suddeath (News and Tribune)

MOVING FORWARD

The next two years will be busy in terms of projects and improvements to New Albany, Gahan said.

There’s a planned expansion of the downtown Farmers Market, the establishment of a dog park and a project slated for this summer to rebuild some of the city’s flood gates and controls for the first time in 60 years.

Gahan also hinted that the administration plans on working with the council to update zoning codes in 2014.

An estimated $1.8 million project to improve Main Street is also scheduled for this year. Gahan said the administration is also moving forward with design plans to upgrade McDonald Lane.

He credited city employees for being dedicated to their jobs, and thanked New Albany residents for giving him a chance to serve.

“New Albany is a really great place to live when you compare it to other communities,” Gahan said. “I think what really sets us apart is we have a strong mix of friendly people.”

Nice crowd you've got there, CeeSaw.

Made any progress figuring out exactly how you're a "Democrat"?

Traffic studies are bullshit. Just do it.

Why? Go here.

Last evening in the romper room, the entirely unnecessary downtown traffic study being sought by a bunker-bound City Hall as craven political cover for chronic two-way street grid timidity was promptly scotched by a wholly redundant city council, in part owing to the council’s chronic absenteeism this term, but mostly because elected and appointed officials in New Albany believe the only thing they have to fear is every last aspect of modernity that somehow managed to occur, in spite of their efforts, since their graduation from high school.

Welcome to New Albany, where we’re all here because we’re not all there, and so into this gaping, barren chasm of a leadership vacuum eagerly steps 2nd district council seat occupant Bob Caesar, who is to sheer cranium vacancy what Imelda Marcos was to shoes, and to an extent so egregious that he surely is the only so-called “Democrat” party member in the whole whacked-out United States who exalts the Thoreau Institute as reputable scholarship.

The Koch Brothers thank our own bejeweled blitzen, and so here’s Bob Caesar for attribution last night:

“(Two-way streets) are being driven by about a handful of people that want to be able to turn right onto Bank Street from Elm Street."

Ouch!

What was that twinge I just felt?

Wait – it was an intellectual pygmy gouging a toenail with the planet’s tiniest set of 1920s-era tweezers. Where the hell is Balso Snell when you need him most?

Of course, this is the same Antediluvian Bob who insisted to me that he be quoted thusly, back in 2011:

"Change every street to two way -- not Pearl Street. Pearl Street will NOT be two way."

Come to think of it, antediluvian might not be the best word. After all, in New Albany, two-way streets actually existed before “our” flood.

Two-way thinking in New Albany: Those who say they’re for them mostly do nothing apart from assuring us they agree. Those who are against them mostly don’t live here, except for Bob Caesar, whose head is somewhere in the vicinity of an 18th-century Mongolian yurt. For the sake of clarity, here’s a quick, informal, four-point list explaining why two-way streets matter.

Safety for the neighborhoods.
Economic development for local independent business.
A boost for walkability.
Protection against Kerry Stemler’s tolls-borne invasion.

Wham, bam, thank you Bob: When Caesar reduces the street grid discussion to accusing others of being just as myopic as himself, it may be amusing fodder for the retrograde elements who view our arterial one-way streets as so much Astroglide to facilitate their driving pleasure, but it insults and demeans every last resident of any city neighborhood not known by the moniker of Silver Hills.

The Democratic Party might choose to make Caesar pay for a slur this enormous, because as we've established, a walkable environment is a civil rights issue, but don't hold your breath waiting for it. You'll be blue by the time a worthwhile bicentennial event rolls around.

New Albany. It never ceases to amaze. Degraded and wasted for 30 years, and yet everyone in it is afflicted with Stockholm Syndrome, suitably terrified of efforts to alter a failed dynamic, and beholden to the superstitions that keep us down. It is breathtaking – and it distracts us from the vital task of devising ways to reforming, moving or outlawing Harvest Homecoming.

I wonder how many petition signatures the mayor needs to no longer be frightened of his own so-called "democratic" party?

It's simple. Either City Hall gives clear indication of its "plan" -- of what's to come -- or the guerrilla localism war starts immediately.

Too bad county government doesn’t come down hard against two-way street conversions.

We’d have them before the elephant ears get cold.

Our daily reality in New Albany? That'd be Bob Caesar waxing delusional.

Not that WDRB's report is any masterpiece. In fact, it's rather horrid.

Granted, Charlie Harshfield provides the two-way neighborhood perspective, which is sufficiently irrefutable that opposing voices aren't really necessary.

But then Bob Caesar purports to speak for all downtown business, which of course is flagrantly mistaken. Caesar speaks for downtown business in roughly the same way as I represent the interests of Somali warlords. Significantly, he's afforded the platform to blather about potential harm sans rebuttal. Hurting small business downtown and hurting Caesar's profoundly limited cognitive skills are two very different processes. His selfishness when it comes to neighborhood issues? Shameful.

WDRB essentially does nothing with this story, and that's too bad. A reporter might ask some questions, right?

Or am I asking too many myself?

New Albany debates turning one-way streets into two-way, by Lawrence Smith (WDRB)