A hilarious day of automobile supremacist anguish as Clarksville vows to put Brown's Station Way on a road diet.

Making the yokels SCREAM.

Better late than never.

This Brown's Station Way lane reduction project is going to have an excellent supporting effect on our ongoing efforts to keep pass-through drivers on the interstates where they belong, and off our city streets in New Albany.

Fine work, Clarksville. I don't recall meeting Mike Mustain, but in this first sentence he states the fact of the matter with uncommon clarity. This project can't begin soon enough for me, and the more roundabouts, the better.

"Ultimately, Brown Station Way is a town street, not an interstate, and as such should not be a dividing roadway which separates Clarksville."

Yep. As Bluegill noted elsewhere, it's a step in the right direction. Drivers needn't worry; they'll still be coddled like little babies, just a little bit less often than before.

Officials approve plan to redesign Brown's Station Way in Clarksville (WDRB)

Clarksville's Redevelopment Commission voted 3-2 in favor of the planned redesign Thursday, according to a news release. The revamp calls for narrowing the cut through between New Albany and Clarksville down from four lanes to two, according to previous reporting. It also calls for dropping the the speed limit from 45 mph to 35 mph and would also eliminate or change intersections at Emery Crossing, Leuthart Drive and Clark Boulevard.

Agonized drivers scream bloody murder as Louisville contemplates a 9th Street shrink 'n' slow.

Photo credit: Undivided Nation.

Let the coddled drivers' bitching begin.

On second thought, it probably already has. Amid the spitting and snarling and all-purpose selfish venom, I'll just be resting here with a beer and cigar, thinking back to all the places I've been that have nice buses, trams and subways extending from city center into the outlying areas.

Soon I'll be walking to work again. It's going to be a quite a pleasure.

The Future of Ninth Street: City debuts potential redesign, by Caitlin Bowling (Insider Louisville)

Louisville Metro Government officials are hoping that by 2022, Ninth Street, from the riverfront to Broadway, will look less like a hazardous highway on the edge of downtown and more like a version of Queens Quay in Toronto.

The street has long been considered problematic, as it effectively divides downtown from the predominantly minority neighborhoods in west Louisville, as well as promotes high vehicles speeds and dangerous crossing conditions for pedestrians.

“It’s well past time for the physical and psychological divide at Ninth Street to end,” Mayor Greg Fischer said in a news release highlighting ways that the street could be transformed.

The draft plan, which was created by consultant Gehl Architects with input from residents, shows three alternatives for Ninth Street but identifies one — the Urban Parkway — as the optimal choice, asserting that it would provide adequate vehicle capacity while improving safety for pedestrians and cyclist and creating new public space.

The Urban Parkway plan would make Ninth Street a four-lane road, down from six lanes, and reduce the lane width to between 10 feet and 11 feet, down from its current 11 to 14 feet. The plan also calls for a bike lane divided from the vehicle lanes, a shorter median, a walking path from Broadway to the Ohio River and 20- to 25-foot landscaped sidewalks with places to sit, play and shop ...

Louisville "Streets for People" series is worth a read by New Albanians, because two-way traffic is only the end of the beginning.

We covered the first in Chris Glasser's informative Insider Louisville series here:

Us, too: "Louisville’s roads need to be designed for citizens, not cars."

 ... To take (Louisville mayor Greg) Fischer at his word and judge him by his own standard, our city is falling well short of the administration’s stated top goal. Fischer’s annual budgets speak volumes on this matter — they’re his defining action, louder than his words. Yes, there is a small amount allocated to build a bike network — a pittance that Metro Council undercuts every year during the budget review period — but beyond that, there is virtually nothing that will begin to push us toward achieving Fischer’s goal of 25 percent of trips occurring on foot, bike or bus by 2030.

Glasser's second installment offers an interesting twist on downtown Louisville's "9th Street Divide."

... Much has been made of the city’s “9th Street Divide” — the supposed invisible racial line that separates black Louisville to the west from white Louisville to the east. The city’s segregation (and inequality) is a matter of fact, but the “9th Street Divide” is a fallacy — or at least, a simplification of a broader, more complex idea. What we have, actually, is a crater of surface parking lots in our western downtown, creating a void in what could be a thriving city center.

Yesterday's third and final essay raises a point critical to Jeff Gahan's program of road reworkings in New Albany (in general) and the soon-to-be-finished Downtown Grid Modernization Project (specifically).

The central point is enhanced and in bold.

Streets for People: A missed opportunity on Lexington Road

This month and next, Metro Government will be completing work on the Lexington Road Safety Project — a repaving and redesign of the corridor between Grinstead Drive and Payne Street.

As stated in the city’s press release, the “new configuration is intended to improve traffic flow and reduce accidents as previously demonstrated by similar projects across Louisville.” Bike lanes will be added, and the project will improve drainage along the roadway, which neighbors Beargrass Creek and sits partially in a floodplain.

The colloquial term for a project like this is a “road diet.” It will look like this:

Road diet for Lexington Road.

While a project like this is progress to a certain degree, it’s also a huge missed opportunity — one that falls short of the original goals of the plan and fails to keep pace with what’s being implemented throughout the country. With “progress” like this, we can simultaneously be moving forward and falling behind.

The last sentence neatly summarizes the issue for New Albany. Judging from their past exploits, we can rely on our leadership cadre to declare victory and erect self-congratulatory plaques, but the fact is that the long overdue implementation of two-way streets is only a partial victory. It is the end of the beginning, and there is far more to be done.

There are walking issues, biking issues and connectivity issues. Dan Coffey will disagree, but he's an irrelevant anachronism, a sort of ideological love child spawned by Strom Thurmond and David Duke, to be breast-fed by the Thoreau Institute.

Does Jeff Gahan have a plan for the next phase of street modernity?

If so, let's see it. This whole thing about waiting to reveal designs until the milling begins is so very Ceausescu, isn't it?

When CM Caesar begins praising walkability downtown, you know a space alien has occupied his body.

As indicated by the minutes from the city council meeting of Monday, November 7, something's happened to Bob Caesar, strident opponent of street grid rationality. Perhaps we should call an ambulance ... or an exorcist.

All of which should make the coming Tuesday morning far less Boring than usual.

Upper Spring work continues as drivers somehow manage to pay attention in spite of their boiling anger.

Not that we don't have comments and questions -- like speculating about the next round of driver complaints?

"WTF? Those are Floyd Central's colors."

More importantly, what's with all the wasted space? Maybe Irv can plant some native grasses there.

A sharrow? Here? Is there any single facet of road design that even approaches a sharrow in terms of Rosenbargerite laziness?

It's a road diet, folks.

Stop your grousing and read about "A Los Angeles Road Diet That Worked."

A road diet like the one being implemented on Upper Spring, in an auto-centric city like Los Angeles?

"This is an encouraging message for other towns considering the viability and impact of a road diet."

Cool. We just might be able to pull it of right here in Nawbany.

A LOS ANGELES ROAD DIET THAT WORKED, by Rachel Quednau (Strong Towns)

... This road diet didn't occur without some pushback. From the article:

Some nearby residents, however, complained that the new street design — though well-intentioned — increased traffic and decreased safety by diverting drivers onto neighboring residential streets. They organized a much-publicized petition calling for the city to provide an alternative solution to its road diet plan.

But the road diet persisted with excellent results. Recent data collection efforts show that average speeds on the street decreased and motor vehicle crashes went down. Unfortunately, speeding and crashes have not been completely eliminated, but it seems the road diet has had an overall positive effect and safety has improved. Most significantly, the data shows that all of this was accomplished while traffic on the street remained at a similar volume. From the article:

We analyzed the average traffic counts on Rowena both before and after the project and found that typical traffic volume was unchanged after the road diet was implemented. [...] These results challenge the perception that Los Angeles is too auto-centric for road diets to work.

This story not only reinforces the value of road diets, it also stresses the need for adequate data collection and analysis both before and after their implementation (or, indeed, the implementation of any project like this) ...

Pre-election striping: By Mayor Gahan's usual standards, this ALMOST qualifies as political courage.

There hasn't been an explanation for why it took so long, but on Tuesday the striping finally began on Spring Street between Beharrell and Vincennes. Weird and confusing, to be sure, but under way.

You could tell it was underway because social media went ballistic. It was entertaining, I must say.

NAC doubted the striping would happen until after the election, because that's been Jeff Gahan's previous default setting; recall that he refused to discuss two-way streets until after last year's re-election campaign, when the race might have served dual purposes as educational opportunity and political mandate.

If the choice is between open communications and bunker, Gahan's headed down those stairs to the down-low almost every time.

But on Tuesday, I was proven wrong.

As usual, the road diet between Beharrell and Vincennes is a cautious compromise that doesn't go far enough. It's being offered as the sole corrective for toll-dodging, and this probably isn't enough. Worse, it's predicated conceptually on automotive considerations alone, and squanders yet another opportunity to teach the community the value of calming, walking, biking and other manifestations of modernity.

But (perennial advocate of a rational street grid sighs wearily) ... it's something, rather than the usual nothing, and a glimmer of political courage coming from a mayor who seldom shows any.

The city's official explanation is here, and when finished, the street is supposed to look like this.

Maybe it even will.

Chronicles of New Gahania, political cowardice edition: Beharrell to Vincennes, or the choke valve from the choke artist.

I'll repeat.

It's an act of political cowardice to predicate these Spring Street grid changes (see article below) entirely on automotive safety, with scant mention of pedestrians and cyclists, because doing so reinforces the plain fact that Jeff Gahan has nothing resembling a go-to civic master plan for walking and bicycling.

Rather, it's auto-centrism, 24-7-365 ... not at all unexpected from a suburban mayor who has shown almost no urban aptitude from the very start.

Just imagine the usefulness of placing these street changes in a context of overall mobility improvement, as opposed to piecemeal band-aids catering to distracted drivers.

There are some in the municipal apparatus who agree with me on this point. Just imagine if they were allowed to deploy their expertise toward progress without fearing the midnight phone call.

Will the road diet between Vincennes and Beharrell help matters?

Yes.

Will it ward off forthcoming pass-through toll evasion all on its own, as Gahan seems to believe?

Unlikely.

Gahan's miserable failure to implement two-way streets in the timely fashion he has promised privately suggests that we're about to be used as guinea pigs when tolling begins, testing the mayor's cherished theory that little dribs and drabs are sufficient in the absence of comprehensive improvements.

Look for a Gahan for State Senate Christmas Bonus come December, 2016, in the form of fireworks, gladiatorial epics, feats of strength and the announcement that Pearl and Bank will be reconverted to two-way traffic, even as another year is lost as Duggins's wife's engineering firm seeks to properly monetize the two-way changes to Spring, Elm and Market for campaign finance, if not real-world success.

It'll be Jeffey's bone to us all. We'll be expected to express delight. Please, sir -- may we have another?

• New signal with exclusive opposing left turn lanes at the Spring and Silver intersection
• A modified 3-lane section with two west bound travel lanes on the east leg of Spring Street (from Beharrell Avenue to Silver Street)
• A two-lane section with buffered bike lanes, parking lanes, and exclusive left turn lanes at key intersections on the west leg of Spring Street (from Silver Street to Vincennes Street)

Spring Street work begins Monday in New Albany, by Chris Morris (News and CNHI Doubloon)

Narrow streets: They do more with less, but we'd rather allow Padgett to hold the city hostage.

The author Herriges rejects the grand wazoo approach in favor of something more organic, and offers a few interesting alternatives to grandiosity. Bob Caesar and Irv Stumler should read this essay.

They won't, and that's the Sorrow of New Albany (with apologies to Hugo Claus).

Narrow Streets Do More with Less, by Daniel Herriges (Strong Towns)

The same lesson applies to urbanism: In creating a great place, less is often more. The "recipe" for a good urban street is in fact remarkably simple, which is why societies all over the world have been able to replicate it, with some variations, for thousands of years.

This is good news for Strong Towns advocates concerned about the fiscal sustainability of our cities too, because simple design means less money that must be spent to build and maintain our public realm.

Still confused about "road diets" and street redesign, Irv? Take a video tour and LEARN.

What? You mean just like in this document? Wow!

Even your grandchildren can watch a video ... and comprehend facts.

A Wonderfully Clear Explanation of How Road Diets Work: Planner Jeff Speck leads a video tour of four different street redesigns, by Eric Jaffe (City Lab)

A road diet is a great way for cities to reclaim some of the excess street space they’ve dedicated to cars—generally preserving traffic flows while improving safety and expanding mobility to other modes. But just as food dieters have Atkins, South Beach, vegan, and any number of options, road diets come in many flavors, too. Urban planner and Walkable City author Jeff Speck, in collaboration with graphic artist Spencer Boomhower, takes us on a tour of four types of street diets in a deliciously clear new video series.

Six ideas from Jeff Speck that are as plain as the cost-benefit nose on a banker's face.

This 2011 article provides an outline of Speck's book to come ("Walkable City"). As I read through them, I keep hearing bankers talking about "cost-benefit analyses," and I feel much the same way as when I see people looking at their iPhone weather apps rather than looking out the window. 

Quality of life "no-brainers"? Here are six. Can you take the time to read them, please?


Recipes for Great Places: Jeff Speck On Six Ideas That Are Changing the Planning World, by Kevin Pozzi, (1000 Friends of Oregon)

Walkability

A consistent theme throughout Speck’s discussion, walkability is a key focus for planners, consumers, and business people today, as evidenced by popular sites like Walkscore.com.

“It really all comes down to walkability. It’s a great way to tell if your city is doing something right,” Speck said, detailing that pedestrians desire a safe, comfortable, enclosed, and interesting walk. “So how do you get people to walk? You give them a reason to walk—a mix of uses.”

As walkability consultant for Oklahoma City, Speck’s firm advanced the city’s downtown transformation through the successful Project 180 initiative, retrofitting many of the city’s wide arterials to improve walkability and add bikes lanes and on-street parking.

Urban Triage

The next concept Speck introduced, a Duany-coined term known as urban triage, acknowledges that most American cities are dominated by auto-oriented land uses, likestrip malls, and big box stores.  

Because these uses will be around for the foreseeable future, Speck advocates for a thorough analysis of street quality in targeted areas like downtowns, focusing resources on what will ultimately have the most amount of impact.

“We need to get people to walk by choice and to create walkable places,” he said. “And to reference a Duany quote, the first place to do that is in our downtowns, because downtown is the one neighborhood that belongs to everyone.”

One-Way Versus Two-Way Streets

Speck also discussed the impacts of one-way streets versus two-way streets. He described how the uninterrupted mass momentum of vehicles in one direction harms the retail environment by obscuring visibility of shops from view and distributing vitality unevenly throughout the urban landscape.

He mentioned Vancouver, Washington as a prime example of a city that experienced a remarkable transformation of downtown street life and business activity after modifying its one-way thoroughfares to two-way streets.

“ODOT’s boilerplate solution to everything seems to be speeding traffic through downtowns,” Speck said, referencing the prevalence of one-way thoroughfares in smaller towns and cities throughout Oregon. “It really should be changed.”

Road Diets

Related to the one-way vs. two-way distinction is the concept of road diets,an approach that reduces the amount of lanes on thoroughfares in an effort to increase safety and encourage active transportation.

Most of these adjustments retrofit streets from four lanes to three, allowing space for bike lanes, wider sidewalks, landscaping, and on-street parking. Studies show that these modifications don’t significantly alter overall capacity and are a cheap solution that improves the overall safety of the street.

The video from Streetfilms explains the concept further, and includes some impressive examples from around the country.

“Four lane roads are extremely dangerous. T-bones come from cars turning left into lanes that you don’t see,” Speck said. “If you have a three lane road, there is simply no more danger of being t-boned.”

What We Know About Parking

Transitioning the discussion to stationary vehicles, Speck detailed the latest on parking through the lens of Donald Shoup, a Yale urban planning professor who has written extensively about the intersection of parking and land use.

 “Parking is a public good that must be measured properly if downtown succeeds,” Speck said. “It is important to price parking so that one space is empty at all times, mirroring individual choices to maximize utility.”

Speck explained that underpriced parking leads to crowding, which can then lead to a loss in customers and quality of life issues.

Of course, discussions about parking prices can generate considerable debate. So how can municipalities price parking in a politically feasible way? Speck suggests that they create a public benefit district to transfer generated revenues back into the neighborhood.

Greenwashing

Speck concluded his discussion with the topic of greenwashing, citing numerous examples of initiatives that may seem environmentally friendly, but often consist of green gadgetry or misleading spin.

Speck argued against what he calls “gizmo green,” the addition of accessories to buildings in an effort to fulfill an obligation to be environmentally friendly. While not advocating against these retrofits, he is concerned that many of these ‘sustainable’ buildings are located so far from walkable neighborhoods and transit corridors that they are completely dependent on automobiles.

“By far a human being’s greatest carbon footprint and environmental impact is from driving,” he said.

Conclusion: "Details Matter"

As a respected author, consultant, and advocate, Speck’s voice has been very influential in the smart growth and New Urbanism field. While seemingly critical of certain dogma within the profession--namely his discussions around certain "green, sustainable" improvements and street couplets--he consistently champions the creation of walkable cities designed for all modes of transportation.

Speck’s overall argument might be condensed down to the phrase “details matter.” It matters to pedestrians if the journey is interesting enough to actually walk, it matters to businesses when commuters can only see their storefronts one time of day, and it matters how we price parking spots. Most of all, it matters how communities locate, connect, and design their neighborhoods, businesses, and services, to create transportation options and a thriving local economy.

online?os_issue=%2Fsites%2Ffriends.org%2Ffiles%2FOS_October2011-102411-FINAL.html" style="color: #2763a5; text-decoration: none;">Oregon Stories | October 2011

Brownsboro Road diet: Greg Fischer gets one right.

Two accounts of a positive resolution to the mildly controversial Brownsboro Road "diet", as noted by The Ville Voice and Louisville Courant. The latter's piece a few days back was mentioned here: Road diets: Abhorred from Indian Hills to Karolus Magnus. Is anyone in New Albany city government following this issue? We need major road diets right here, and right now.

The White Flighters Lost On Brownsboro Road

June 1st, 2012 by jake · 2 Comments

Just like that, the white flighters lost their battle to drive 900MPH on Brownsboro Road:

JUNE 1, 2012

Mayor Greg Fischer does right thing, gives Brownsboro Road Diet green light!

Compliments of CART

ZOMG. SOMETHING GOOD HAPPENED! 

Road diets: Abhorred from Indian Hills to Karolus Magnus.

In New Albany's case, resistance to a "road diet" for Spring Street must be coming from the "greater" public residing entirely outside town. Is there an Indian Hills in Clarksville?

Traffic jam: Brownsboro Road ‘diet’ pits the ‘greater public’ and their Ultimate Driving Machines against Blue Collar bikers, pedestrians

By STAFF | Published: MAY 29, 2012

Run, pedestrian, run!

By Curtis Morrison, Louisville Courant

Progressive change, whether treating sewage or creating safe streets, does not come easily when the always petulant greater public is not getting its way.

Take for example the proposed “road diet” for Lower Brownsboro Road (closer to downtown), a plan to slow traffic by reducing the road to one lane each direction  from two lanes, with a center turn lane. The redesign would add a sidewalk, but commuters from the wealthy areas the road connects to downtown – including Windy Hills and Indian Hills – are less than thrilled.

Eastern Parkway's "Road Diet" explained.

Stretch Of Eastern Parkway Going On ‘Road Diet’, by Branden Klayko (Broken Sidewalk blog).

A “road diet” is a relatively new technique that enhances the overall functionality of a road. Transportation officials admit is seems a little counter-intuitive to make a better road by removing lanes, but that the idea generates support over time. Officials point out that without a turning lane, traffic is hindered at turning movements and intersections, effectively transforming a four lane road into a two lane road as one lane is blocked.