Big Yellow Taxi.

A brilliant rant by Jeff Siegler, which should be read by every single person -- stakeholder or otherwise -- who claims to care about the future of downtown New Albany.

Isn't this what an organization like Develop New Albany is supposed to be doing with its time? Or, conversely, advocating for meaningful measure like THIS?

Click through to read all of it ... and learn something today.

THE REAL PARKING PROBLEM

For anyone that has worked in economic development, community development and especially, downtown revitalization, you have become all too familiar with the parking problem trope. It might be the single biggest frustration in the field, as no matter how much evidence there is to refute this notion, people simply don’t care. Let me sum up the thinking; people believe their downtown cannot be successful unless considerably more parking spaces are added. This sort of thinking is expensive, counterproductive and ignores the real problems the community might be dealing with. Now instead of writing 2000 words on the perceived problem, I am just going to list all the reasons why the perceived parking problem is just a bunch of bullshit and hopefully save you all countless hours of arguing about it.

• Parking is not an attraction. 
• Parking is a utility. 
• Parking does not drive business. 
• People will find a place to park. 
• Parking ruins places.
• People need less parking. 
• Abundant parking sucks. 

We have spent decades complaining about this, I still go into community meetings and have to argue about this. I am not doing it anymore. Nor should anyone in this field have to. If you are going to be willfully ignorant of the facts, we are not obligated to convince you of the truth.

Learning to "despise parking lots like the good-for-nothing, colossal wastes of space they are."

All that empty, unused space.

The Revenge of the Parking Lot, by Neal Freyman (Morning Brew)

Before I wrote for the Brew, I worked in urban planning. And if I learned one thing, it was to despise parking lots like the good-for-nothing, colossal wastes of space they are.

But times are changing. In the Coronavirus Age, parking lots are winning the heart and mind of at least one jaded American for (finally) putting their asphalt to good use.

First, though, we should establish something

Parking lots are indeed good-for-nothing, colossal wastes of space. I take my cue from the parking lot’s #1 enemy, Dr. Donald Shoup, a UCLA professor who’s famous for writing a 741-page tome called The High Cost of Free Parking. In the book, Shoup rails against “parking requirements,” which are laws requiring developers to add a minimum number of off-street parking spaces to new buildings.

99% of you will not read this book, so I’ll just summarize his main points:

• When you park for free at a mall or restaurant, you aren’t really parking for “free.” Parking requirements mandated by the city of Los Angeles increased the cost of building a shopping center by 67%–93%, according to a study cited by Shoup. Those costs are passed down from retailers to you, the consumer.
• The same thing happens in housing. When residential developers are required to add a certain number of parking spots to a new housing complex, they pass those construction costs down to you, the apartment renter.
• Not to mention, parking lots increase traffic congestion, exacerbate climate change, prevent walkability, and...did I mention they’re good-for-nothing, colossal wastes of space? A 2015 study found that 14% of all incorporated land in Los Angeles County is dedicated to parking.

Redemption

One of the ways COVID-19 has turned our world upside down is that park

ing lots, with their uncanny ability to accommodate social distancing, have made themselves useful ...

A survey of America's mayors finds that many "aren’t eager to challenge the status quo."

"If they don’t adjust their priorities to match the urgency of the crises they’ve identified, mayors might have no one to blame for stalled progress but themselves."

I attended yesterday's DNA-sponsored merchant meeting, the first such gathering of 2020.

The meeting lasted an hour, during which there was no mention whatever of the impending (2021) Sherman Minton Bridge repair-mandated adjustments -- lane and ramp closures and the like -- that stand to have a disruptive impact on downtown specifically, and in more general terms the city as a whole.

Does Team Gahan have a secret plan for the 11th Hour?

If not, or even if so, shouldn't this be something we're planning for? Or is participatory "infrastructure" of this sort simply not a priority in Nawbany?

U.S. Mayors Say Infrastructure Is a Priority. But What Kind?

The Menino Survey of Mayors identifies priorities like infrastructure, traffic safety, and climate change. But many mayors aren’t eager to challenge the status quo.

... Generally, pedestrian and cyclist safety was prioritized by many mayors—a reflection, perhaps, of the limited progress most U.S. cities are making on their efforts to reduce traffic-related injuries. New research shows that even as being a car passenger is getting safer, being a pedestrian is becoming more dangerous. Still, “majorities of mayors rate travel in their city as safe for all of the groups we asked about,” and only 22 percent of mayors ranked “pedestrian friendliness” as a top infrastructure priority, while 66 percent listed “roads.” Democratic mayors did full-throatedly commit to sacrificing car lanes and parking spaces to bike lanes, with 92 percent on board compared to Republicans’ 34 percent—a partisan divide that’s ballooned 30 points since the survey’s 2015 edition.

Vision Zero, the global movement to dramatically reduce pedestrian fatalities, may be a hot topic in transportation circles but it’s not exactly a national priority in America’s city halls: It’s tied for seventh place (with “lighting”) on a list of what’s been most important for pedestrian safety improvements. Based on CityLab research showing that Vision Zero efforts aren’t paying off fast enough in some of the U.S.’s largest participants, perhaps that shouldn’t be surprising. As for other traffic safety measures, most mayors think their cities are doing enough. Despite global efforts to drop vehicle speeds inside cities, nearly three-quarters of mayors surveyed thought their speed limits were set at the “right level,” while only 15 percent thought they were set too high.

Gahan's Limitless Ignorance, Volume 392: "Free parking is a bigger equity concern because everyone pays for it, but you must have enough money to own a car in order to qualify for it."

"Essentially, our poorest citizens are subsidizing the wealthiest when it comes to transportation."

Lest this come as a shock to the city's self-described "progressives," almost nothing Slick Jeffie has emphasized during his two terms as Genius of the Flood Plain has had anything remotely to do with assisting our poorest citizens.

Why do you "Democratic" people keep giving him a pass for this? 

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Why equity-centered advocates should think about parking, by Parking Nerd (Medium)

Most people concerned about equity in reference to parking usually miss the big picture. They worry that raising the cost to park will harm poor people. This is a valid concern, but it is not the real equity dilemma. Free parking is a bigger equity concern because everyone pays for it, but you must have enough money to own a car in order to qualify for it. The money that our communities spend to support the use of private automobiles vastly overshadows the transportation expenditures for those with the fewest resources and the greatest needs. In 2011, Portland’s Mayor Sam Adams said that his team calculated that if they were to build their entire existing bike way network from scratch, it would cost about the same as building just one mile of an urban 4-lane roadway.

The historical inequities of our transportation system go hand-in-hand with the historical inequities in housing. In The Color of Law, Richard Rothstein meticulously catalogs the discriminatory housing policies at the local, state, and federal levels that restricted housing opportunities for African-Americans following their emancipation and whose proliferation spread like wildfire in the 1940s. Our discriminatory housing regulations, often enforced by police, prevented black people from living in desirable neighborhoods and restricted them to other neighborhoods — often places with more industry and pollution. There was more demand than supply and black people ended up paying much more for rental housing than their white counterparts paid in mortgages for nicer homes. They ended up over-crowded and with little savings or investment to pass on to their children.

At the same time as the cost of buying a car was dropping significantly, white Americans were fleeing to the suburbs. Yet the jobs remained in the urban centers that white people were abandoning, and getting people to those jobs became a dilemma that needed major transportation dollars. In 1950, President Eisenhower delivered the Interstate Highway system, to enhance the ability of our nation’s militia to travel the country. This freeway system also enabled people to live further from urban centers and drive in. Given discriminatory housing practices, this new mobility benefit was essentially limited to white people.

So what does this have to do with parking and equity? Well, every transportation system has three components: Rights-of-way, vehicles, and terminal capacity. Automobile travel is unusual in three ways: (1) it requires enormous terminal capacity (several spaces per car), (2) drivers rarely pay for terminal capacity (parking is free for 99% of trips), and (3) the cost of parking has been shifted out of the transportation sector into the prices of everything else (Shoup, The High Cost of Free Parking). We even see transit agencies using their limited funding to provide parking for cars at stations without charging drivers the amount that it costs to build and maintain the parking.

So who pays for parking when it’s free? Everyone but the motorist. A shopper pays more for groceries as the funds to provide parking must be covered by the store. Housing is more expensive when parking is included — regardless of whether the renter or home buyer has a car. This has generally been accepted because *most* people drive, and any politician who would conceive of shifting the costs of driving onto drivers would risk being run out of town.

Wealthier people own more vehicles, are more likely to drive large SUVs which cause more damage to roads, and are more likely to pay for fuel-efficient vehicles which means they pay less into the roads through gas taxes. Essentially, our poorest citizens are subsidizing the wealthiest when it comes to transportation.

Roads cost a lot of money to build (and maintain), with estimates around $2 million per lane mile. A typical small urban road, with one lane in either direction and parking on both sides would mean that approximately HALF of the budget to construct the roadway (as much as $4 Million per mile!) is going toward providing parking, which is usually free for the motorist.

The cost to build this roadway includes the parking on either side of the street.
As motor fuel tax revenues have declined, other funds have been shifted to cover the cost of providing and maintaining our roadways. Road subsidies push up tax rates, limit our ability to provide other government services, and encourage people to drive. A growing concern among equity-centered advocates is the shift of poverty from transit-accessible locations to areas that are not well-served by transit, also called the suburbanization of poverty. In this case, lower housing costs may be overshadowed by the costs of vehicular travel. And people living in these areas who cannot afford a car will find themselves stranded. It is important that transportation planners provide safe transportation options to all residents.

What would a more equitable transportation system look like? It would be a transportation system where drivers pay their fair share of the road and what it costs to provide parking, with that payment going toward provision of transportation options and housing subsidies to enable residents to continue to live in transit-accessible, walkable, and bikeable neighborhoods in the face of gentrification.

Some more equitable policy ideas include the following ...

To park or not to park? Conflicting signage is the question.

A regular reader sent a note to the Green Mouse.

Just noticed this yesterday on Vincennes, just before DePauw. Nice parking spots complete with a no parking sign. All that’s missing is a no-progress anchor.

Our crack graphics team can fix that.

Steve Resch plans a new entertainment venue in Jeffersonville.

An old satellite image. 

And all they can think about is their cars.

Last week the Jeffersonville newspaper broke a Jeffersonville story. Given that today most readers are bedazzled or engraged by visiting oligarchy, let's revisit.

New entertainment venue to replace downtown Jeffersonville parking lot, by John Boyle (Tom May Content Multiplier)

Developer Steve Resch, owner of Resch Construction, is planning to open the venue near the corner of Pearl and West Chestnut streets, just behind Parlour. Right now, Resch said not many details are available, as he is still in the planning stages, having hired architects to do landscape and structural work on the properties.

If Jeffersonville is anything like New Albany, there is ample parking in reality, if not in the perception of people who'll drive to the end of a fifty-foot driveway to pick up the snail mail.

I don't know Rita Fleming, but her words here should be inscribed on John Rosenbarger's forehead.

One of the buildings was sold to Resch by Rita Fleming, president of the Jeffersonville Main Street board of directors. Though recognizing that parking is indeed an issue, Fleming said that the city is walkable and pedestrian-friendly — attributes it should continue to focus on as more developments pop up.

“When you think of downtown in any city, there’s always a question of parking," Fleming said. "When you put it in perspective, downtown people expect to walk 10 feet to the doors of where they're going. If you’re in a mall during holiday season, you’re going to walk a lot farther than that, and people don’t complain. Certainly for individuals who have trouble going longer distances, it’s an issue. We’re a very walkable community. We’re pedestrian friendly. Maybe we should start thinking about how we can make our community more bike and pedestrian friendly so people will come to our area without undue hardship, even as our city continues to flourish."

Gahan's ears are afire.

Perhaps the only predictable parking problem shared by both cities is the propensity of business owners and their employees to use customer spaces for their own vehicles.

Resch noted that from his perspective, the lot is mostly used by Parlour employees and some of its patrons. Once everything is all said and done, he doesn't believe its absence will cause any problems. “It is a good project," Resch said. "It’ll be an asset and a destination for downtown Jeff.”

Best wishes to Steve, Jacob and their great crew.

Team Gahan speaks with forked tongues: If residents are being moved OUT of Riverview Tower, why does NAHA need MORE parking on State Street?

Back in March we stole a glance at a downtown parcel.

GREEN MOUSE SAYS: Why is the New Albany Housing Authority buying commercial property at the dumping grounds downtown on State Street?

When Mayor Jeff Gahan visited the Mark Elrod Tower to campaign for lifetime employment as mayor, he was asked about the purchase. Imperial NAHA Procurator David Duggins brushed aside Dear Leader to explain NAHA's desperate need for State Street frontage.

Resident: “I want to know why you’re buying more property for parking when you’re going to tear down Riverview. The newspaper states that you’re putting in more parking for Riverview residents, but yet you’re moving Riverview residents out and you’re going to tear down the building.”

(Duggins quickly intervenes in a question intended for Gahan)

Duggins: “Well, none of that’s been released, it said in the paper we had the opportunity to buy an eyesore, and one of the proper uses for that is parking for that area. We do have a parking issue in that entire area, when we have anything that goes on at Riverview Tower we have to move folks out, we have to close those two spots out front, so any work, when we have electricians and all that, and when that eyesore became available to be purchased, which the city had targeted that for a long time, we purchased it, and that is why we’re doing it."

Last week there was a fire at Riverview Tower, and Duggins quickly steered the ever obliging Chris Morris from humans to buildings.

For Gauleiter Duggins and Dear Leader, it's all about the timetable to transform Riverview Tower into luxury with a view.

In this article, Duggins refers to Riverview as "a 16-story building with 160 units."

Duggins said he is in weekly discussion with officials with the Department of Housing and Urban Development about Riverview's future. He said it would likely be a year before any decision is made on the building. He said he tries to meet with residents weekly to dispel any rumors about the facility's future.

He said he is no longer leasing units at Riverview because of the building's uncertainty. There are currently 60 vacant units in the building.

"Regardless of the plan, we wouldn't have to move folks for at least a year ... "

If Riverview is only 62% filled, and given the ongoing profusion of hints to the effect that the building will be taken out of commission in some way, shape or form, then what's the need for extra parking on State Street, which is situated three times the distance from Riverview as the city's huge parking capacity opposite the ball fields?

Isn't it the case that Gahan is borrowing from NAHA's unused "refurbishment" funds to finance City Hall property speculation?

You know, it's not hard to call them out for telling bald-faced whoppers when they're openly contradicting themselves.

If you haven't read the transcript of Gahan's and Duggins' comments to residents at the Mark Elrod Tower, consider doing so.

Previously:

Demolition Man: Either Gahan lied about the NAHA "memorandum of understanding" from 2017, or he lied to Mark Elrod Tower residents in 2019. Which is it?

Elrod 3 In which Deaf Gahan asks: “Okay, what’s the ISSUE with Riverview? Do you KNOW people who live over there? I mean, WHY are we talking about Riverview?”

Elrod 2 In which Deaf Gahan encourages public housing residents to be "thrilled" about the indoor grass at the sportsplex he built with their money.

Elrod 1 In which Deaf Gahan regales public housing residents with ribald tales of the "superstar" Warren Nash.

When it's time for personal status protection, local Democrats rally around the Kool-Aid.

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Democratic mayoral candidate David White understands that change begins with a whole lotta scrubbing, and NA Confidential advocates just such a deep civic cleansing. 

After eight years on the job, Mayor Jeff Gahan's list of stunning "achievements" is long, indeed: tax increases, budgetary hide 'n' seek, self-deification, daily hypocrisy, public housing takeover, non-transparency, pay-to-play for no-bid contracts, bullying city residents and bullying city employees. Eight years is enough. It's time to drain Gahan's swamp, flush his ruling clique and take this city back from Gahan's Indy-based special interest donors. 

NA Confidential supports David White for Mayor in the Democratic Party primary, with voting now through May 7. 

Downtown stakeholders need to learn about issues pertaining to parking, and stakeholders shouldn't allow the city to conduct this discussion in secret.

"The goal here is to create a virtuous feedback loop, where parking fees are used to improve the downtown, an improved downtown draws more patrons, and those patrons generate more parking fees. This is how we turbocharge downtown development."
-- Charles Marohn

I mentioned this topic just last week.

What's a Parking Benefits District? DNA needs to pay more attention to matters that pertain to merchants.

In the essay linked below, Marohn touches on several sub-topics pertaining to the larger issues of downtown parking. His Brainerd and our New Albany are not directly comparable, but it doesn't mean that aren't parking universals applicable to either city, or both.

Give yourself 10 minutes, pour a coffee and read the whole article. I can't summarize it in a short, glib way, although the quote at the top comes close.

The first paragraph sets the mood, and points to something we're NOT doing in New Albany: having a "healthy conversation." Currently all discussions about parking are occurring within the limited confines of the Redevelopment Commission, so as to be kept safely in-house and controlled by the powers that be.

This is the exact OPPOSITE of how the conversation should be proceeding -- and couldn't Develop New Albany play a valuable role in making the discussion public?

Here's How to Build a Parking Garage, by Charles Marohn (Strong Towns)

In my hometown of Brainerd, Minnesota, we’re having a healthy conversation about parking. I’m calling it healthy not because we’re all agreeing, but because we’re starting to question things that have long been taken for granted. That is an important first step.

A big part of this conversation is the realization that tearing down buildings to add parking destroys the tax base, makes the city less desirable a destination, and, ironically, makes the parking less necessary. Here parking is having the opposite of the Yogi Berra effect. (“Nobody goes there anymore because it’s too crowded.”) Here, all the parking lots make it seem so desolate that not enough people want to go there. We’re starting to grasp that parking has become a liability.

That doesn’t mean the parking isn’t needed. Most patrons of our local businesses arrive by automobile and thus have a need to park. Most business owners and employees likewise drive to work. While it is clearly a winning strategy long-term to have more people living downtown and to improve walking/biking connections with the surrounding neighborhoods—both strategies that would add patrons without adding parking—that is not a viable short-term reality.

As cities (including ours) have a tendency to do, there is a push to skip to what everyone knows is the ultimate end condition: a parking garage (or parking ramp, as we call them here in Minnesota). I italicized “what everyone knows” there because I don’t actually agree with this conclusion. But many people in this conversation do, especially the ones who live outside of the city and drive in. For them, it’s obvious that we need a parking ramp, and so the process of justifying more debt to a struggling population in an already highly-indebted city is underway.

Those advocating for big action on parking ramps closely correlate to those calling for big action on a local initiative called River to Rail, a plan to spend millions on a reimagined city (to instantly make it more appealing to those who don’t live here). This past summer, I wrote about this initiative and identified three truths related to parking:

Truth #1: If we ask people who drive to Brainerd whether there is enough parking, they will say no.

Truth #2: If we ask downtown business owners whether the city of Brainerd should provide more free parking, they will say yes.

Truth #3: Whenever I go downtown—which is multiple times per week—there are always plenty of places to park within a block of my destination. Always.

As I wrote in that piece, I can agree with the eventual need for a parking ramp, I just think we have a lot of work to do to get there. Along those lines, I’m going to offer three phases of action that we can take, steps that will be applicable to far more places than my own ...

What's a Parking Benefits District? DNA needs to pay more attention to matters that pertain to merchants.

Yesterday Jeff Speck tweeted a thread briefly explaining Rule 19 from his new book, Walkable City Rules.

Yesterday I read this thread just after attending Develop New Albany's monthly merchant meeting, where a guest speaker discussed wealth management in the context of family-run independent businesses.

I appreciated his efforts, while at the same time shaking my head in disappointment. Downtown merchants should be discussing matters precisely like Speck's "Parking Benefits District" thread.

Aren’t topics like parking more relevant than wealth management to merchants in the here and now?

It remains that business owners have invested FAR MORE downtown than the city. Shouldn't they be part of the city's prospective solutions -- if any?

City Hall is fond of dictating from above. This process needs to be reversed.

How about it, DNA? Isn't that what you're here for?

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Probably the most effective Parking Benefits District is the one that Donald Shoup helped establish in Old Town Pasadena. Begun in 1993, it paid for all of the benefits mentioned above, as well as a team of public service officers, the burying of overhead wires, and the conversion of a rear alley network into a lovely pedestrian zone. There are no dumpsters in Old Town; each block has its own industrial trash compactor.

The experience in Pasadena has been truly transformative: a virtuous circle in which improvement has led to more visitors which has led to more meter revenue and more improvement. Within five years of its inception, property tax revenue from the district tripled and sales tax revenues quadrupled. Clearly, this is an effort worth copying.

RULE 19: Re-price parking with an eye to Shoup’s 85% rule, and establish a Parking Benefits District to direct revenue toward local improvements. From #WalkableCityRules

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I've chosen a random on-line reference as an additional overview.

Parking management is an issue often overlooked in a city’s development plan. While it may seem like a secondary concern in the quest for economic development, parking management directly impacts accessibility to businesses, customer willingness to travel to certain areas, and the quality of life experienced by residents.

Current parking practices tend to favor generous parking supply at free or minimal cost which has unintended and undesirable consequences. Higher development costs, higher prices for goods and services, sprawl, and increased automobile travel leading to more traffic congestion, roadway costs, crashes and pollution emissions are just a few of the unwanted effects of free or cheap parking.

Several cities across the country have begun implementing alternative parking management strategies to ensure more convenient curbside on-street parking through better pricing. A Parking Benefit District (PBD) is an emerging strategy that uses better pricing to reduce the negative effects of parking and reinvests the increased revenue into improving the area streets and sidewalks.

Ain't talkin 'bout guns: "Understanding Safety at Neighborhood Schools."

Did any of the school board candidates discuss this?

Don Sakel, maybe?

I trust Strong Towns will forgive me for reprinting this piece in its entirety, which I seldom do, but it strikes me as precisely the sort of thinking that isn't ever considered locally.

Ever.

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Understanding Safety at Neighborhood Schools, by Charles Marohn (Strong Towns)

Earlier this year, I was part of an unsuccessful effort to keep my local school district from tearing down an historic structure—a 1930s-era elementary school—as part of an effort to create two square blocks of parking in my city’s core downtown. Our efforts were called “disingenuous” by school officials who wrongly assumed we were anti-school, anti-education, or anti-taxes.

No, we’re just anti-destroying the city.

Geographically, the school district is enormous. Most of the people who voted do not live in one of the city’s core neighborhoods. Advocates for the school district had few misgivings with sacrificing an historic structure for more convenient parking. Most voters experience Brainerd as a place to drive through to get to a destination. For them, there will never be too much parking; trying to save the building was merely misplaced nostalgia.

Even so, there was controversy in the district’s discernment process over proposals to convert playgrounds into parking lots. Early site drawings showed off-street parking in the existing playground areas. In the months before the vote, this parking was removed from the drawings, and a note was added indicating parking would be built, with the location to be determined at a later date. I’m not suggesting anything sinister at this point; district officials said their drawings were creating confusion, that they had not intended to put the parking in the playground, and so they removed the parking from the drawings. It just also happened to be a convenient omission from the public conversation.

Now that the district has voter approval and is moving ahead with its plans, the full extent of the damage to my city’s core neighborhoods is becoming more widely understood. While they have yet to release schematics, the list of properties they are seeking through eminent domain suggests they are going to convert multiple blocks of residential dwellings into surface parking. It’s a double tragedy in that (1) it will permanently damage these struggling neighborhoods, and (2) few who are involved with the district or as advocates for the school’s plans seem to care.

In fact, in very predictable fashion, the people promoting the off-street parking are adamantly claiming that their motivation is safety. Specifically, safety for the children.

Safety First, or Driver Convenience First?
Call me cynical. I’ve read the school district’s documentation where faculty indicated that more convenient parking was one of the “top five priorities.” I’ve been in many of these schools, and while I’m sure there are staff members who live in the neighborhoods surrounding the schools, the vast majority do not. These neighborhoods tend to be poor and struggle with disinvestment. While education is not a lucrative career, it is a solidly middle-class career here in Minnesota. Most middle-class people live outside these neighborhoods and drive in. It’s understandable why, come February in Minnesota, people driving to their place of employment would want their parking to be more convenient.

It’s also easy to understand why a school board and senior administration—none of whom live in these neighborhoods, all of whom drive in—would be intuitively sympathetic to the convenience argument.

As psychologists have taught us, humans tend to reach conclusions based on their intuition and then use reasoning to justify those conclusions after-the-fact. We’re going to build parking lots to increase convenience, but we’re going to justify it based on safety for children. Alright, so let’s talk safety.

The Difference Between Urban and Suburban Environments
The vision for safety that the school district espouses comes from a misapplication of suburban design standards to an urban neighborhood. In a sense, what the district is proposing to do is to convert an urban neighborhood school into as close a facsimile as possible of a suburban campus. In that environment, safety is then addressed in standard suburban ways: separating conflicting uses, increasing traffic flow, and managing points of conflict.

In terms of safety for an urban neighborhood, this approach is an absolute disaster. Let me explain why.

Separating conflicting uses means keeping kids who are walking away from traffic. The theory is that, if we keep them separated, there will be no chance of any accidents occurring. The bus lane, pickup lanes, and surface parking departure lanes are all designated and kept away from where kids will be walking. Everyone in their place.

I find this approach suspect in suburban schools, but at least there the expectation is that most students will be driven in a car or bus to and from the site. For each of our neighborhood schools, the school district’s policy is to provide no busing for students living within a mile of the school. They are all expected to walk, bike or be driven by someone to school. As the school is in a poor neighborhood with a lot of working families, a high percentage of students walk, and they will be walking in every which direction. Compared to a suburban campus, walking patterns around urban schools are more random and chaotic.

That randomness conflicts directly with the second aspect of the district’s safety strategy: to increase traffic flow. Suburban schools channel personal vehicles and buses into their own designated lanes to help traffic flow more smoothly. This is accomplished by removing conflicts, by giving drivers a sense of security that potential conflict points have been managed. If we don’t expect turning cars, stopping traffic, wandering kids and the like, we feel more confident driving faster. A.k.a.: increase traffic flow.

Again, I’m not sold on this as a general concept even in a suburban setting, but in an urban neighborhood, it is an obscene level of negligence. These are random environments by their nature. Students are all over the place, like they should be in a good, urban neighborhood. Doing things that artificially speed up traffic, or give drivers a heightened sense of security, makes the environment vastly more dangerous for a child on foot.

The best thing that can happen for the safety of students is counter-intuitive for those who prioritize convenience of parking and driving: people driving through a school zone should be so terrified of hitting someone or something that they drive very slow and with an extreme level of caution. In other words, the exact opposite of what is being designed.

The third aspect of this misapplied suburban safety strategy relates to managing points of conflict: how we handle instances where children walking or biking must cross areas where buses or cars are driving. This is where we get the greatest insight as to the true motivation of the design, because designers are forced to prioritize one group over the other.

Let’s guess which one gets prioritized for safety purposes. Come February in the dead cold of winter, will the flow of traffic for parents picking up their kids, or faculty leaving the off-street parking lot, be halted so that students on foot can cross the street and get on their way? Or will students be expected to wait on the corner while those in their heated cars and on the bus are provided the opportunity to improve traffic flow?

Designers, in the name of safety, will attempt to channel kids on foot to designated locations where they will be collected and then, at intervals that don’t excessively interfere with traffic, be allowed to cross. In these situations, the design relies on everyone to follow the rules—or to put it another way, to mindlessly follow the rules, and be more obedient than attentive—and stay in their designated place.

Predictably, this creates the perfect excuse for the well-intentioned when tragedy strikes: “They weren’t following the rules.”

Not: “We should have anticipated that kids don’t always follow rules.” Not: “This is a complex and random urban neighborhood where unpredictable things happen, despite our planning and design.” Not: “We shouldn’t have given everyone a false sense of security.” None of the above.

And all of this reasoning applies merely to the roughly 75 minutes per day people are entering and exiting the school site. For the remainder of the time, and through all evenings and weekends and the three months of summer, this over-engineered design approach leaves a doughnut of desolation around each school, an inducement to drive even faster through this area where we know slower speeds are the key to safety.

From a pure safety standpoint, imposing a suburban design on an urban school is a disaster in the making. School officials who argue that this must be done for the safety of the students do not have the proper sense of how to create a safe environment in an urban setting. For the well-being of our students, and the health of our neighborhoods, we need a different vision for how to implement the will of the voters.

Fortunately, the city council in my hometown has the capacity to stop this. At its last meeting, the Planning Commission—which I am part of— recommended a moratorium on tearing down structures for conversion to surface parking. The council has the capacity to approve this time-out at any point, without any further public notice.

Such a time out would give city officials the opportunity to meet with the school district and work out the details in a way that is respectful to the neighborhood and truly safe for students. And if common ground could not be reached, the city has the capability to act unilaterally to require an implementation strategy that doesn’t damage the neighborhood where these students live.

I don’t think it will come to that, however. School district officials are smart and our city council has some very good leadership. And despite different concepts of convenience and safety, everyone involved does seem to want what is best for the students. I’m optimistic we can find a way to have a great neighborhood school while still having a neighborhood.

Non-learning curve: This ON THE AVENUES column repeat reveals that since 2011, we've been discussing the safety hazards on Spring Street between 10th and 9th. Too bad City Hall is deaf.

Elsewhere today: If you want to know how Deaf Gahan purposefully botched the Speck plan for walkable streets, read this article. Hint: HWC dunnit.

I'm rethinking my weekly ON THE AVENUES column placement. It isn't going away, but it may be moving to a different time slot, and as I contemplate the options, hopefully you'll forgive a rerun or two.

This column from February 12, 2015 is a doubleheader of topicality. It addresses the ongoing foolishness of street sweeping, but more importantly, establishes a chronology with regard to the Spring Street safety hazard otherwise known as Williams Plumbing, located in a building at 901 E. Spring that seems always to teeter on the edge of an eyesore -- and has fallen off the edge on more than one occasion, as in 2016.

This outrage against innovative public art must be avenged -- or, what happened to the Williams Junk Water Heater Park?

Let's begin a block up the street. The spot where Spring Street curves at the intersection of 10th always has been a red flag, whether one-way or two-way. Drivers approaching westbound, completely unimpeded from the stop light (and railroad crossing) at 15th Street, have five full blocks to build up speed, and invariably navigate the curve too fast.

The problem isn't quite as bad eastbound, probably because the intersections at 7th Street (stop light) and 8th Street (major northbound connector) have a slowing effect.

Last year's two-way reversion, and the embarrassing placement of a completely useless pedestrian "beg button" crosswalk (a tiny, sad yellow light -- thanks, HWC Engineering) at precisely the point when westbound traffic reaches top speed, has done nothing to decrease westbound speeds around the curve.

Drivers simply drift to the right in order to make the curve, which means they're regularly straying into the (rumored) bicycle lane and unoccupied parking spaces. At times, they come very close to the sidewalk itself.

I see it often while walking -- something city officials should consider trying some time, if they can extricate themselves from Nanny Barksdale's "inhumane" working conditions.

Then, having driven too fast around a dangerous curve, drivers speedily approach 9th Street, where the tall Williams Plumbing trucks have been parked along the north side of the street for as long as anyone can remember, and often on the east side of 9th.

In the evening and on weekends, these trucks completely obscure the viewpoint of all users, whether traveling westbound on Spring or southbound on 9th.

By the way, municipal ordinance forbids parking commercial vehicles being parked curbside in this manner -- and as long as anyone can remember, this ordinance has not been enforced. 

To summarize, it's been seven years since this blog first mentioned the issue, and the problem was ongoing for quite some time even then.

It's very simple, folks. These conditions almost certainly played a part in skateboarder Matt Brewer's death, and irrespective of the role they played, these conditions are dangerous, not only to non-automotive users, but for drivers, too.

The intersection of Spring and 10th needs to be controlled, and those trucks from Williams Plumbing need to be removed.

If HWC Engineering's crack team of Speck Plan assassins couldn't grasp these plain facts in 2017, a refund is due the city. My neighborhood is sick and tired of the bullshit, wherein leaders and their chosen contractors duck responsibility.

If Team Gahan's sickening arrogance precludes admitting they made a mistake in allowing these obvious instances of negligence to continue unabated, then the clique needs to be cashiered in 2019.

Here's the column repeat from February, 2015. Note that in 2016, I began protesting the street sweeper violations ... and Team Gahan folded like the poseurs they are.

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ON THE AVENUES: Street “sweeping” epitomizes the degradation of governance in New Albany.

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.

It’s an election year, and so the current occupant must hurriedly make up for three years of squandered time as it pertains to his unwillingness (read: sheer inability) to define various meaningless but oft-chanted mantras. Consequently, the street department chief has been ceremoniously trotted out to announce an expansion of the city’s street “sweeping” program.

Unfortunately, words have meaning, and ideas matter, and in New Albany, street “sweeping” has not ever been a cleanliness issue.

Rather, it is a political hypocrisy issue, fully exposing this city’s historic tendency not only to tolerate selective law enforcement, but to double down, institutionalize and celebrate it as a civic birthright.

Bluegill perfectly summarizes the prevailing idiocy:

A wasteful program is getting more wasteful. As a Midtown resident. I wish they'd stop rather than expand. This is a parking ticket revenue grab, hounding locals for cash while truckers and other passers through speed by unhindered. We're continually told the city can't afford this or that but we can always afford to pay people to ride around in circles all day writing ridiculously expensive tickets to residents. They even write them when the sweeper isn't sweeping, when people have blocked absolutely nothing. It's a joke.

To repeat: Street “sweeping” should not be expanded. It should be ended. The physical process of “sweeping” is largely futile, and there is no United Nations storm water “law” stipulating dust cloud creation as a workable corrective. Genuine drainage impediments like leaves and garbage barely are addressed by “sweeping.”

Bluegill again:

We'd be better off spending the time and money on drain cleaning and waterway improvements. Instead, the City has chosen the least effective (but most profitable) system to expand.

However, when it comes to profitability and effectiveness, the most profound outrage of all is that parking regulations supposedly applying to all city residents are enforced in some instances, as during street “sweeping,” and not in others, as in the entirety of the historic downtown business district.

Amazingly, it gets worse. Since the inception of institutionalized parking enforcement hypocrisy during the waning years of the third England Error, there has not been the first clear indication of where this imaginary Green Line between enforced and non-enforced parking is drawn.

Following is a column originally published here on May 19, 2011, and repeated in 2013. That's almost four years of ongoing failure. How much longer before we undertake to resolve the parking issues downtown?

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The sweeping of municipal dysfunction is prohibited. That's the ordinance we actually enforce.

Yesterday was Wednesday, and Wednesday is street sweeping day on our side of the block.

A police operative customarily follows the street sweeper, because cars are not supposed to be parked on the street, where they obstruct the sweeper’s solemn duty to transfer rubbish from the curb into the center of the bicycle lane.

Recently, with the stated intent of promoting businesses (like my own) and sparing shoppers, diners and shop employees the hassle of thinking about where they park, City Hall publicly announced a moratorium on the enforcement of parking regulations “downtown.”

To my knowledge, downtown as a geographical construct was never specifically defined in this enforcement suspension context. My household is in Midtown, while Vincennes Street, only a few blocks away, now calls itself Uptown.

However, Develop New Albany only recently indicated that in the organization’s eyes, a stated organizational mandate to deal exclusively with downtown issues does not preclude it from expanding operations outward, into areas previously not regarded as such, implying that suddenly, we’re all downtowners.

Meanwhile, our residence in Midtown shares a driveway with a dental office. There used to be a day care business next door, and a doctor’s office further down. Big Value is on one corner of the block, opposite an ad agency office. On another corner, there is a funeral home, facing a fire and water damage repair shop.

That’s a fair number of businesses for a residential block -- and I’m not even counting meth labs.

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Yesterday, although I knew the street sweeper was coming, I left my car parked on the street. I wanted to see what would happen.

Leaving the usual pathway of uncollected dirt in its wake, the sweeper swerved to avoid my car, and the police functionary promptly ticketed me. Moments later, I climbed into the car and drove to my meeting, westbound on Spring Street, where I caught up to the sweeper and the tailing police officer.

Other parked cars were obstructing the sweeper’s progress, but they were not ticketed, presumably because an invisible line of demarcation had been passed, and the weekly shifting of muck and butts from curb to street was occurring within the “downtown” area, where the moratorium of non-enforcement was in effect to promote businesses ... that's right, businesses just like the ones on my block, where the rules against sweeper obstruction are being enforced, or at the very least, where tickets are being written, whether not there is any intent to collect the fines.

I got the ticket, and I’ll pay the fine.

The question: Why should I?

When there is a stated policy of non-enforcement within areas that are only vaguely defined, what is the rationale for enforcement elsewhere?

Anywhere?

If the rationale for non-enforcement downtown (whatever that really means) is the proximity of businesses, shouldn’t that rationale apply throughout the city?

If downtowners who have serially refused to pay their parking fines for decades announce their evasive intentions on local television, and are not prosecuted immediately, why should I feel any obligation whatsoever to drop my twenty-spot in the slot?

Yet, I do. It’s something in my upbringing. Granted, that’s twenty fewer clams to be deposited with local businesses downtown, but heck, I just consider it a token of my esteem for a New Albanian process so random, convoluted and inexplicable that it nostalgically reminds me of the feudal nonsense prevalent in Old Albania.

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Neighborhoods lying in, outside or near downtown, depending on today’s variable definition of downtown, historically have served as laboratories for non-enforcement of a different variety.

Slumlord empowerment blocs and the occasional derelict private dwelling have freely ignored basic codes pertaining to building appearance, sanitation and safety, and pretend-leaders have abetted the extractive shtick.

Nowadays, the city seem to be doing a slightly better job of it, although there always seems to be greater interest in the last resort of demolishing those properties allowed to deteriorate through previous non-enforcement regimes. Little time is devoted to filling the holes left behind, but then again, this is New Albany: One thing at a time, please, and you’d best give us five or six years to accomplish it.

Like basic exterior repairs. I’m continually amazed by prominent examples of neglect that go completely unaddressed. Almost every day, I walk or bike past Williams Plumbing* on the northeast corner of E. Spring and 9th. If I’m not mistaken, long ago it was Cora Shrader’s Shoppe, a nicely maintained corner property.

Now it is a scantily maintained, increasingly dilapidated eyesore used exclusively for what amounts to industrial storage. Extreme weather over a period of years has torn hunks of siding away from both sides of the house, exposing the wood.

Worse, the company’s big trucks tend to be parked right on Spring Street, consistently impeding the view of motorists approaching southbound on 9th.

Do these trucks get ticketed when they block the street sweeper, or does the invisible, undefined, non-enforcement Green Line come into play?

Is it downtown or midtown?

Lowdown, or down low?

If there is ticketing, does Williams Plumbing pay the tickets?

Can a building crying out for code enforcement scrutiny be any more prominently located than this one, or do the code enforcers just shut their eyes two dozen times a day while driving past it?

If readers can answer any of these questions, they’ll enter a drawing for a $175,000, studio-sized condo overlooking the river … in downtown Tirana, Old Albania. Play your cards right, and the neighborhood Mullah might save you a parking space.

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* Williams Plumbing finally repaired the exterior in 2012. The trucks continue to block sight lines at 9th and Spring.

Windmill dunk by Richard Florida: "America devotes far too many of its precious resources to parking."

Outside, it's New Albany, and in this map prepared a few years back by Jeff Gillenwater, parking areas in downtown are colored red. Granted, not all are public auto-friendly spaces, and perhaps pieces of the wasted acreage have since disappeared for infill, as with Breakwater.

The point remains: the red splotches should be vastly reduced -- and as far as Harvest Homecoming's parking needs for one week each year are concerned, just don't go there.

Would you rather generate income 51 weeks each year, or only one?

The article at CityLab is Parking Has Eaten American Cities, and Richard Florida's conclusion is the place to start.

America devotes far too many of its precious resources to parking. This is especially troubling given that driving is in decline. For example, the share of Seattle households with a car has fallen for the first time in at least 40 years, and the percentage of U.S. high school seniors with a driver’s license is at “a record low”—down from 85.3 percent in 1996 to 71.5 percent in 2015. Meanwhile, ride-sharing is up, and cities and real estate developers are striving to reduce parking requirements.

Joni Mitchell famously sang: “They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.” It’s time we reclaim our cities from car storage and use the space for what we need more of, from housing and bike lanes to sidewalk cafes and parks.

As always, Florida offers statistical evidence.

Parking eats up an incredible amount of space and costs America’s cities an extraordinary amount of money. That’s the main takeaway of a new study that looks in detail at parking in five U.S. cities: New York, Philadelphia, Seattle, Des Moines, and Jackson, Wyoming.

The study, by Eric Scharnhorst of the Research Institute for Housing America (which is affiliated with the Mortgage Bankers of America), uses data from satellite images, the U.S. Census, property tax assessment offices, city departments of transportation, parking authorities, and geospatial maps like Google Maps to generate inventories of parking for these five cities. (The inventories include on-street parking spaces, off-street surface parking lots, and off-street parking structures.)

Friday evening is going to be an interesting test case. There'll be two food and drink openings downtown, and maybe a third, and also Schmitt Furniture's birthday concert is at the amphitheater. Friday's always the busiest night of the week for eating out, anyway.

If all this comes down on Friday and the top two levels of the (free) parking garage are still mostly empty ...

Behind closed doors: Redevelopment is talking about parking downtown, but we can't hear them.

Indeed.

No one knows what goes on behind closed doors, but to infer from the following excerpts, it has to do with a "solution" to a parking problem that doesn't exist.

I can hardly wait to be served notice that a "solution" without any significant public input has suddenly become breathlessly urgent, and must be implemented immediately.

January 9

February 13

April 10

May 9

At Strong Towns, Marohn says "I’m one person with one vote and, sadly, despite my strong desire to invest in our schools, I’m compelled to vote NO."

A reminder of rants past, this one from November 4, 2016.

ON THE AVENUES: It’s our big fat Hibbardendum, and Jeff Gahan is carrying the superintendent across the threshold as Metro United Way tosses rice and One Southern Indiana steals all the liquor.

Charles Marohn's testimony isn't a perfect analogy, but it's a reminder of how at times, voices raised in opposition to sacred cows are the most progressive ones of all.

MY "DISINGENUOUS" PUSH TO SAVE A NEIGHBORHOOD SCHOOL, by Charles Marohn (Strong Towns)

... Without knowing what else to do to nudge the school district towards sanity, I started a Facebook page to save the historic school. My thought was that if I could raise the profile a little bit, I could get the school district to, perhaps, open up to the potential of repurposing that building.

Two things happened. First, the response of this community was overwhelming. As I write this, the page has over 500 supporters — enough to tip the vote in my small town. I’ve been inundated with people wanting to talk about these issues, find ways to improve our neighborhoods and, most importantly, save the school from the wrecking ball. I’m ashamed that I did not anticipate this, but it has been a heartwarming surprise.

The second thing that happened has somewhat offset those good feelings. Not only has the school district doubled-down on their off-street parking rhetoric (and I feel somewhat compelled to say, stretched the truth beyond what I think is friendly in a situation like this), but the collection of insider voices — the newspaper, the chamber, local dignitaries, even some personal friends — have joined to ridicule, when they weren’t outright condemning, any efforts to question the approach.

People I’m very close to have suggested that I’m hurting our area students, threatening the future of the community and basically being a “disingenuous” jerk for not getting on board with the official plan. The newspaper even rolled out the tired bully tactic common to small towns: you didn’t bring up the concern years ago, so shut up, because it’s not valid anymore. I’m a little sickened by it.

I look around and I’m starting to feel the momentum shifting in this place. A sleepy old railroad town that accepted decline and second-rate status is waking up to possibility. The people in charge are no longer aspiring to be a cheaper version of the big box strip in the (showing the early signs of failure) city next door. They are starting to embrace our strengths. So are my neighbors, some of who have put their time and money into fixing up buildings in our struggling downtown. The list of things we can change is growing.

I owe it to them, and I owe it to the future residents of this community — kids and adults alike — to not support a $200 million investment that would irreversibly turn large parts of their neighborhoods into parking lot. I can’t support any more scars to the fabric of these neglected places. I won’t approve of my tax dollars making student’s walks any more dangerous, let alone their parents and those who must walk to get to where they are going. I find these site plans disrespectful.

And I won’t pay for a perfectly good, historic building to be put in the landfill instead of being repurposed, just so we can have a few more parking spots within convenient distance of the front door. The suggestion feels shameful and I can’t imagine what my Depression-era ancestors would say.

We’re making a once-a-generation decision, borrowing money for 25 years in this proposal. With the people of this community finally standing up to push back on the long-accepted decline, I don't feel compelled to settle for a choice between neighborhood schools and neighborhoods. They go together, and I’m going to keep saying that until school district officials grasp it.

Gibson points to Duggins' letter as proof that Coffey had the OK for his harvest cash-coming car park. In other news, City Hall ethics are in critical condition.

Previously we were trying to determine whether anyone in a position of authority had given Dan Coffey explicit permission to use city property to park cars during Harvest Homecoming.

In a dramatic semi-literate letter to city council, former redevelopment bag man (David) Duggins accepts responsibility for Coffey's harvest cash-coming car park cronyism caper.

Prior to Duggins' conveniently timed revisionist history lesson, we'd asked interim redevelopment commission director and city attorney Shane Gibson, as well as the body's secretary Adam Dickey, whether any commission records exist testifying to official recognition of Coffey's antics.

Today the response came back.

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Mr. Baylor:

In response to your email request dated November 29, 2017, please find attached the only document in the possession of the Commission/City regarding that matter.

Shane L. Gibson
Corporate Counsel
City of New Albany
311 Hauss Square, Rm. 316
New Albany, IN 47150
812-948-5333

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Naturally, this document is Duggins' very same letter, as almost certainly commissioned by Gibson himself and brandished like a mutton javelin by Coffey at Monday's council meeting.

Pending coherent thoughts from Mayor Jeff Gahan, it seems that our inquiry is halted. Duggins said it was okay; he does as he pleases, conflict of interests be damned, and that's that.

Coffey's piling up the pork barrel winnings for the Knights of Columbus, who at a future time probably will regret the decision to allow a copperhead snake to be the face of the organization -- though not just yet.

City council has not ever censured Coffey, who in the past physically threatened a citizen and openly spouted anti-gay slurs. Of course, Duggins is Jeff Gahan's golden boy, one who could openly urinate on the city's Christmas tree and be promoted with a pay rise for his bladder relief.

In New Albany, in spite of the PR ballyhoo at their inception, neither human rights nor ethics commissions exist in any tangible, real-world way, and yet what we're witnessing here is the precise rationale for some semblance of the citizenry's recourse to ethical lapses. 

As it stands, Coffey wins yet again ... and the city loses.

Yet again ... and 2019 just can't come soon enough.

Ethics, human rights commissions remain conveniently disabled as Team Gahan, Coffey run amok.

Yesterday we examined the inspiring entrepreneurial success of Copperhead's Valet Parking, which leveraged the little-known Cronyism Director's Exemption (CDE) into a sweet puddle of beak-wetting for the councilman whose thirst is never satisfied.

In a dramatic semi-literate letter to city council, former redevelopment bag man Duggins accepts responsibility for Coffey's harvest cash-coming car park cronyism caper.

In strikingly similar fashion, early last month it occurred to all and sundry that one pathway toward contesting Jeff Gahan's hostile takeover of public housing had been misplaced and was nowhere to be found.

November 5, 2017: UPDATE: A Human Rights Commission would come in handy given the public housing putsch, but the same lawyer who wrote the belly-up human rights ordinance now sits on the public housing board. Now that's New Gahania.

So much for CM Phipps' sole legislative achievement in six years. Of course, there is another fake facade erected amid back-slapping fanfare by Team Gahan, only to be just as quickly stuffed into a body bag.

March 27, 2015: On the trail of the Phantom of the Ethics Commission.

So, how does one file a complaint with the Ethics Commission? Or, for that matter, the Human Rights Commission? As suggested the last time this dysfunction was assessed here at NAC ...

Step 1. File ethics complaint concerning city attorneys who won't answer questions about filing ethics complaints. LOL. Sometimes I look at the tragedy and comedy masks laying there together and I just don't know which one to choose. -- Bluegill 

We already know the human rights and ethics commissions were designed to serve as lipstick on the pig. Gahan might have tolerated their creation, though solely as self-congratulatory passages on a press release or campaign flier.

Apart from the usual propaganda, there was not ever a desire on Gahan's part for human rights and ethics commissions to be functional in any meaningful sense; given the mayor's incessantly nurtured cult of personality, it's absurd to believe a politician who genuinely believes he is perfection incarnate would submit to cross-examination by the rabble.

The clique keeps right on clacking,and when it comes to monetization and influence peddling, the Astroglide corporation's owner can afford a second vacation home in Majorca off Gahan's monthly orders alone.

As Bluegill observed yesterday about the Duggins-Coffey lovefest:

Given that procedural rules and perhaps even laws were broken, anybody want to hazard a guess what the punishment will be (other than a promotion and salary increase)?