Five years ago today: "The more greatly a place conforms to post war auto centric design, the more injurious it is to people."

Gahan, Rosenbarger set to go full frontal Pinocchio about their urbanism credentials when the Congress for the New Urbanism 27 meets in Louisville June 11-15.

Originally published on June 3, 2014 and just as true today as then.

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Are we bugging you with facts? We don't mean to bug you.

More Narrative (Rational Urbanism)

There are conceptual links which, somehow, form narratives in the news media, and others which don’t. Urban homicides form a narrative. Whether at a bar at closing time, a domestic dispute, a drug deal gone bad, or something gang related they are all bound together as a tale of death and the streets. That they are linked more to behavior and identity than place goes unnoticed and uncommented because it unwinds the narrative.

The story of death and the road, as distinct from death and the streets, is told much differently. It is told as a tale of behavior and identity (speed, age, drunkenness) but almost never a story of place. Place rating sites completely ignore traffic fatalities and pedestrian deaths in their calculations of livability despite the fact that there is clearly a causational link between place and fatality and injury: the more greatly a place conforms to post war auto centric design, the more injurious it is to people.

"The fundamental flaw of the entire automated vehicle concept revolves around our confusion between a road and a street."

I'm thinking Google didn't quite grok my intent in searching.

I'm not interested in this purported autonomous panacea, and it isn't because I'm a Luddite in terms of technology (although I'm getting there). Rather, Marohn explains it; we're merely substituting one form of car-centrism for another.

And eff all that.

AUTOMATED VEHICLES WILL MAKE OUR STREETS WORSE, by Charles Marohn (Strong Towns)

There are a lot of people very excited about automated vehicles and their potential to transform our cities. I’m not one of them. I think we as a society seem all too enamored with technology, all too trusting of those pushing it and all too forgetful of the fact that we’ve been down this street before.

SNIP

Let me be very clear: I think the fundamental flaw of the entire automated vehicle concept revolves around our confusion between a road and a street. Roads are connections between places where speed and travel efficiency is the emphasis. Streets are the framework for growing a place, a platform for building wealth where the quality of the human habitat is more important than the throughput of vehicles.

The promise of automated vehicles is the promise of the stroad, the street/road hybrid. Adherents believe that, with AV, we will be able to move vehicles quickly and — simultaneously — improve safety and comfort for people not in a vehicle. This is nonsense, or stated more clearly, this is nonsensical unless we are willing to destroy the street as a platform for building wealth in a place.

Let me provide a simple mind experiment. I’m going to call it the Cambridge Test after my experience last week at the Harvard campus for a Strong Towns speaking engagement ...

#SLOWTHECARS ... "Streets emphasize wealth creation. Roads are about movement."

The primary reason why Jeff Gahan botched the two-way grid reversion is explained right here. It's because he didn't know, or didn't care, about the difference between a street and a road.

Charles Marohn could have told him; Jeff Speck tried. So did numerous advocates in New Albany.

Deaf ears ... Deaf(er) Gahan.

SLOW THE CARS, by Charles Marohn (Strong Towns)

We design our streets like roads, as if their primary function — and sometimes their sole function — is the movement of automobiles.

Many people don’t grasp the difference between a street and a road. They think the terms are interchangeable, and rightly so. In the United States, we’ve spent decades — and trillions of dollars — blurring the distinctions.

To make our cities financially strong and successful, we need to reclaim the lost art of building great streets, and we must empower our transportation professionals to build high-performance roadways. There is a serious difference between those two pursuits.

Streets: The function of a street is to serve as a platform for building wealth. On a street, we're attempting to grow the complex ecosystem of businesses and homes that produces community wealth. In these environments, people (outside of their automobiles) are the indicator species of success. Successful streets are environments where humans and human interaction flourish.

Roads: In contrast, the function of a road is to connect productive places to one another. You can think of a road as a refinement of the railroad — a road on rails — where people board in one place, depart in another and there is a high speed connection between the two.

With a street, we’re trying to build a place. With a road, we’re trying to get from one place to another. Streets emphasize wealth creation. Roads are about movement ...

Placing a dollar value on the services that street trees perform.

Has Judge Cody read this  article?

Back in April, I attended a Tree Board meeting.

Unlike New Albany, "The people of Somerville, Massachusetts really, really care about trees."

New Albany's Tree Board -- statute, staff and board members.

Come to think of it, I'm still waiting on the information I requested from the Tree Board, though the duration has yet to approach epic Caesarean standards of non-cooperation.

418 days later, it's obvious that Bob Caesar doesn't care for you to know how the Bicentennial money was spent.

At any rate, consider what our urban trees are actually worth, and thanks to B for the tip.

Trees lining California streets are worth an extra $1 billion a year, by Clayton Aldern (Grist)

It’s not easy to price a tree, but a group of researchers from the U.S. Forest Service and U.C. Davis have tried to do exactly that.

Working with a dataset of about 900,000 trees that line California’s public streets, the group sought to place a dollar value on the services those trees perform, which include “energy savings, carbon storage, air pollutant uptake, and rainfall interception.”

All told, the researchers estimate the trees contribute about $1 billion annually — nearly $111 per tree for each of the state’s 9.1 million street trees.

Vectren's idea of a public art project is colorful, with hints of impending deconstructionist jack-hammering.

Shouldn't we all start using the streets as a coloring book?

I mean, why should utility monopolies have all the fun?

"If this isn't the job of an engineer -- and it's not -- who should design streets? The answer is as simple as it is radical: everyone."

They're roads, not streets.

This is too good not to print in its entirety .The point isn't to spark conflicts between engineers or to malign those charged with engineering jobs. Rather, it is to delineate between streets and roads, and to urge democratization of the planning process as it pertains to their proper uses in a varied environment.  

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Engineers Should Not Design Streets, by Charles Marohn (Strong Towns)

Last Friday I was participating in the 5th Annual Mayor's Bike Ride in Duluth following a week spent sharing the Strong Towns message on the Iron Range. The friendly woman riding next to me asked me what could be done to to better educate engineers so they would start to build streets that were about more than simply about moving cars. My answer rejected the premise of the question: We should not be asking engineers to design streets.

A quick review for those of you that are new here (which might be up to half the audience -- amazing). Roads and streets are two separate things. The function of a road is to connect productive places. You can think of a road as a refinement of the railroad -- a road on rails -- where people board in one place, depart in another and there is a high speed connection between the two.

In contrast, the function of a street is to serve as a platform for building wealth. On a street, we're attempting to grow the complex ecosystem that produces community wealth. In these environments, people (outside of their automobile) are the indicator species of success. So, in short, with a street we're trying to create environments where humans, and human interaction, flourish.

Engineers are well-suited to constructing roads. Road environments are quite simple and, thus, lend themselves well to things like design manuals and uniform guidelines. There are only so many variables and the relationship they have to each other is fairly straightforward. In the United States, we have tested, refined and codified an engineering approach to roads that is pretty amazing and, in terms of engineering, the envy of the world.

There are two primary variables for designing a road: design speed and projected traffic volume. From those two numbers, we can derive the number of lanes, lane width, shoulder width, the width of clear zones and the allowable horizontal and vertical curvature. From those factors, we can specify all the pavement markings and signage that are necessary. We can then monitor things like the Level of Service, the 85th percentile speed and traffic counts to optimize how the road functions over time. Engineers are really good at this.

Engineers are not good at building streets nor, I would argue, can the typical engineer readily become good at it. Streets that produce wealth for a community are complex environments. They do not lend themselves well to rote standards or even design guidelines. There are numerous variables at play that interact with each other, forming feedback loops and changing in ways that are impossible to predict.

Consider just one variable: the future of the adjacent land. The operative component of building wealth on a street is building. Who owns the property? What are they going to do with it? What is their capacity? Will they stick with it? Will they find the love of their life and move across the country? Each property has a near infinite set of complexities to it that change and respond to change, each of which is far more important to the wealth capacity of the street than, for example, lane width.

If we're trying to create an ecosystem that results in our indicator species (people) showing up in greater and greater numbers, we can't just focus on one or two variables. It can't be just design speed and volume. The natural ecosystem equivalent would be an observation that productive forests have trees and so we hire our forest engineers to go out and plant rows and rows of the optimum tree. It's obvious that, absent other flora and fauna, insects and bacteria, sunlight and rain and a myriad of other variables, the trees we are planting just aren't enough to get the ecosystem we're after.

If we're trying to create a natural ecosystem, we first have to recognize the environment we're in. A desert ecosystem will be far different than a northern forest. We then need to seed the basic elements, but we don't direct them day-to-day; we nurture them as they grow. If we know what we're after -- if we know our indicator species of success -- if we see the experiment getting way off track, we can intervene in small ways to nudge it back on course. We can introduce small changes and see how the system responds. Over time, our natural ecosystem will show us how it wants to grow.

We do a disservice to our communities when we treat streets as if they were roads, when we ignore the complex environments streets are meant to create and treat them as if they were simple throughput models. Streets need to be designed block by block. Those designs need to be responsive and adaptable.

Understanding that 99%+ of all streets that will exist a decade from now already exist today, what we're really talking about here in North America isn't building new streets but making good use of existing streets. The way we do this -- the way we design block by block in ways that are responsive and adaptable -- is to try things and see what works. Our tools are not traffic counters and code books but paint, cones and straw bales. Before we make any change permanent, we test it -- and possibly other variations -- first to see what works.

So if this isn't the job of an engineer -- and it's not -- who should design streets? The answer is as simple as it is radical: everyone. Building a productive street is a collective endeavor that involves the people who live on it, those who own property on it, those who traverse it as well as the myriad of professionals who have expertise they can lend to the discussion.

Put your least technical person on staff in charge of your next street. Empower them to meet with people, observe how people use the street and then experiment, in a low cost way, with different alternatives. Keep experimenting until you start to see your indicator species show up (outside of their cars, of course). Now you have a design you can hand over to your engineer to specify the technical stuff -- pavement thickness, paint specs, etc... -- and get the project built.

Engineers are highly competent at building roads. When you are trying to move automobiles quickly from one place to another, put your engineering in charge and do what they recommend. When you are trying to build a street -- when you are trying to make your city wealthier and more prosperous -- make your engineer one small voice in a larger chorus of people whose words and, especially, whose actions dictate what your design should be.

Finally, some love for Karl-Marx-Allee: "Berlin's Best Street Is a Communist-Era Boulevard."

(Wikipedia)

We've all had experiences that define us, whether for better or worse. They generate instant snapshots in the memory.

Regular blog readers know that my summer of '89 in the East Bloc generated powerful ghosts that remain with me to this very day. For three months that year, I was in Czechoslovakia, the USSR, Poland, Hungary and East Germany.

Most of August was spent working for the East Berlin Parks Department, buffing and polishing V. I. Lenin’s shoes, as attached to a gargantuan statue of the Soviet Union's founder, standing prominently at the entrance to the Volkspark Friedrichshain.

It has since been removed.

The ultimate objective of my voluntarily proffered shoeshine -- and tree planting, and landscaping -- was to make things look tidy and respectable in the Volkspark, which was cleverly reclaimed atop mounds of bombed-out rubble from World War II, and served afterward as the front yard for a hospital that often disgorged armless and legless pensioners into the summer sun for their afternoon constitutionals.

The whole story is here:

Pilsner, Putin and Me (Part One).
Pilsner, Putin and Me (Part Two).
Pilsner, Putin and Me (Part Three).
Pilsner, Putin and Me (Part Four).

The volunteers, both East German students and foreigners, lived together in a military-issue tent camp. The various groups were expected to commute to job sites by public transport, which wasn't difficult, but on the first day, my unit was met at the camp by a work vehicle.

It was the East German equivalent of a heavy-duty pickup truck, and we all hopped into the back, to be driven to orientation at the Volkspark prior to being handed our shovels.

In front with the driver was the park's reigning Communist party functionary, an older man with ludicrous hair dyed jet black. His orientation lecture about the importance of labor was openly mocked by the East German student assigned to translate his utterances. After all, the functionary couldn’t speak a word of English. Years later, it was revealed to me that the translator was a Stasi informer.

Back to those defining experiences.

We were in the back of the truck on a beautiful, warm August day, and turned onto a ridiculously wide boulevard with hardly any traffic. It was Karl-Marx-Allee, and I'll never forget the the feeling of passing through the shadows of the over-sized apartment tower blocks, built during the period just after the war, before building techniques devolved into mass shoddiness.

Surely the chosen route was intentional. It showed off the best that the DDR had to offer. A quarter century later, I returned and talked the missus into accompanying me. It was a moving experience, confronting those ghosts.

2014 Euro Reunion Tour, Day 4: To Leninplatz and the Imbiss, 25 years later.

Bizarrely, Karl-Marx-Allee is garnering belated recognition. It doesn't excuse the many and varied abuses of the system that produced it, although once again, it becomes apparent to us that even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

Berlin's Best Street Is a Communist-Era Boulevard, Says a Leading Architect, by Feargus O'Sullivan (City Lab)

What Berlin needs to thrive is more communist-style development. That’s the verdict pronounced by one of Germany’s leading architects this week. Writing in the newspaper Tagesspiegel, Hans Kollhof (responsible for many of the new buildings at Berlin’s central Postdamer Platz) says that Berlin needs a “new Karl-Marx-Allee,” referring to the monumental Stalin-era avenue carved through ruined East Berlin in the early 1950s. Nothing Berlin has built since, Kollhof insists, comes close to its quality, against which today’s constructions measure up very poorly indeed.

“What now comes as luxury in German city centers turns out to be uptight, prettified project housing. Hidden behind a tired packaging of science fiction motifs or Styrofoam classicism…[by contrast] Karl-Marx-Allee is the only example of German urban planning and architecture that continues the great tradition of the 19th century, that needn’t shy away from comparisons with American and other European cities.”

It's this week: Strong Towns Conference and keynote speaker Charles Marohn, on cities, streets, and sprawl.

The Strong Towns Conference takes place in Louisville this week. I REALLY WANT TO GO, but I'm just not sure it can be done.

Crossing my fingers ...

First, a little about Charles Marohn, and information on the Strong Towns Conference. Then, one small but telling excerpt from the interview.

Ahead of Strong Towns Conference, Charles Marohn talks cities, streets, and the future of sprawl, by Branden Klayko (Broken Sidewalk)

The pattern of building more and more sprawl continues into the 21st century with potentially devastating economic implications to the well being of cities. Charles Marohn is a professional engineer in Minnesota who has been highlighting the problems with the way we design and build our cities today. To advocate for building prosperous cities, Marohn founded the nonprofit Strong Towns, with a mission “to support a model of development that allows America’s cities, towns, and neighborhoods to become financially strong and resilient.”

Marohn is the keynote at the Kentucky Heritage Council’s upcoming Strong Towns Conference, and we highly recommend attending. The two-day event takes place Thursday, September 24 and Friday, September 25 at the Kentucky Center for the Arts. Advance tickets cost $25 and tickets at the door are $35. The Heritage Council is partnering with Preservation Kentucky, Preservation Louisville, the Kentucky Main Street Program, and Friends of Kentucky Main Street. Additional support is provided by KHC member Nana Lampton and Hardscuffle Inc.

The excerpt:

What do we do with the existing network of sprawl that’s already been built?

Well, I’m going to paraphrase the Iowa department of transportation director, Paul Trombino, who said in June when I was there doing a lecture with him a lot of this stuff is just going to go away. We don’t have the money to maintain it. We don’t have the money to fix it. And it’s just not going to be maintained. It’s not going to be there. I think once you understand that in reality, that we’ve literally built more than we can possibly pay to fix, it opens up a whole other realm of thinking.

I think we need to start talking about how do we transition into a world where these things, from a market standpoint, start to go away. What we see now in a macro sense is an increase in suburban poverty and an increase in social isolation that goes along with that.

"The more greatly a place conforms to post war auto centric design, the more injurious it is to people."

Are we bugging you with facts? We don't mean to bug you.

More Narrative (Rational Urbanism)

There are conceptual links which, somehow, form narratives in the news media, and others which don’t. Urban homicides form a narrative. Whether at a bar at closing time, a domestic dispute, a drug deal gone bad, or something gang related they are all bound together as a tale of death and the streets. That they are linked more to behavior and identity than place goes unnoticed and uncommented because it unwinds the narrative.

The story of death and the road, as distinct from death and the streets, is told much differently. It is told as a tale of behavior and identity (speed, age, drunkenness) but almost never a story of place. Place rating sites completely ignore traffic fatalities and pedestrian deaths in their calculations of livability despite the fact that there is clearly a causational link between place and fatality and injury: the more greatly a place conforms to post war auto centric design, the more injurious it is to people.

Parking: No code or ordinances necessary for failure to enforce any of them.

Yesterday there was an instructive conversation about parking, during which several comments made reference to sidewalks and driveways.

No parking meters necessary for sidewalk parking.

Which leads me to believe there is a rule against parking on the sidewalk unless permission has been asked from the Board of Public Works.

New Albany's code of ordinances offers helpful definitions, and for a fascinating journey into the mysterious realm of the unenforced New Albanian ordinance, visit the site and search "parking."

You'll find an exhaustive list of rules that Doug England suspended in the name of ... well ... something; maybe Maalox remembers. But, as in the NBA, we have continuation, and although the current administration has privately or publicly distanced itself from the England Er(a)(ror), it has refrained from downtown parking enforcement as well.

Understand one crucial point: I couldn't care less where the Copier Mart car is parked. The point I'm trying to make is that the overall absence of parking enforcement downtown is patently absurd, and contributes to our ongoing, flabby infirmity.

As for the relevant city traffic ordinance definitions (§ 70.02 DEFINITIONS), there's this one:

SIDEWALK. The portion of a street between the curblines and the adjacent property lines.

And these, all dating from 1939 ... before World War II:

PARKING. The standing of a vehicle upon a roadway, otherwise than temporarily for the purpose of and while actually engaged in loading or unloading, or in obedience to traffic regulations or traffic signs or signals.

PRIVATE ROAD OR DRIVEWAY. Every road or driveway not open to the use of the public.

ROADWAY. The portion of a street between the regularly-established curblines or improved and intended to be used for vehicular traffic.

STREET. Every way set apart for public travel, except footpaths.

TRAFFIC. Pedestrians, ridden or herded animals, vehicles, streetcars and other conveyances using any street for the purpose of travel.

VEHICLE. Every device by which any person or property is or may be transported upon a public highway, except devices moved by human power or used exclusively upon stationary rails.

(Ord. 4074, passed 11-12-1936; Ord. 4139, passed 11-27-1939)

Then there's this.

§ 72.18 PROHIBITED PARKING AREAS.

(A) (1) No person shall stop, stand or park a vehicle in any of the following places:

(a) On a sidewalk ;

(b) In front of, or otherwise blocking access to, a public or private drive;

(D) For the purpose of this section, a DRIVEWAY shall be defined as a private road giving access from a public way to a building on abutting grounds.

(E) Only authorized and constructed curb cuts and driveways permitted by the city shall be used for ingress and egress. Driving, parking or stopping across the curb, tree lawn or sidewalk is not permitted.

If the sidewalk begins at the curbline and ends at the property line, then the whole expanse of concrete in question is, indeed, the sidewalk. And, if it's a driveway, given Barturtle's research on the building that used to stand there, it isn't supposed to be blocked. And, if it is a "tree lawn" or verge, it isn't supposed to be a parking space, either.

But see, it doesn't matter, because the city enforces none of it.

And we wonder why we're perpetually backward.

No parking meters necessary for sidewalk parking.

I'm confused about something, although this isn't uncommon; often I pause from walking to remove my headgear, scratch my head and wonder -- as when those few who bother to clear snow from their proximity choose to deposit it on public right-of-way, with the city doing absolutely nothing to prevent it or penalize it.

But I digress. As I was strolling through the frozen tundra the other day, I passed this car. As is evident in spite of the accumulated white death, it is parked on the sidewalk. In fact, it's parked on the sidewalk most of the time.

Fair enough, I suppose; no harm, no foul; but then again ... when I attended a Board of Public Works meeting last November, the Fire Museum (since departed for Jeffersonville) was there to preview its chili cook-off at The Grand, asking the board for permission to park a vintage fire truck on the sidewalk for a few hours.

Which leads me to believe there is a rule against parking on the sidewalk unless permission has been asked from the Board of Public Works.

Given that downtown street parking rules have been somewhat bizarrely suspended since the most recent England administration, making hash of any sensible notion of supply and demand, doesn't it mean that the car pictured above could occupy a curbside parking space in perpetuity, without penalty?

Does it mean that the Board of Works has approved the sidewalk parking space?

Or, does it mean what I think it means?

After all, this is Nawbony.

Marohn: "We built places that rocked back when we had to build them to be financially sound."

"Chuck Marohn, the executive director of Strong Towns, explains the difference between a road, which is a connection to two places and a street, which is a network of activity. He stresses the importance of returning roads to towns for community and economic development."

In the process, Marohn does a nice of job of explaining how the government driven dominance of automobile-centric development has led to unsustainable economic inefficiencies and the breakdown of our social fabric.

Anyone advocating on behalf of the Ohio River Bridges Project or just about any other massive, in-town road (rather than street) building project under the guise of economic development, social good, or the free market is simply ignorant - and perhaps purposefully so - of our history, both impetuses and outcomes. They are rallying in favor of debt, the unneeded and unwise prostration of locals to volatile international financial markets, and a model that extracts rather than enhances the value of place for a majority of regional citizens.

Interstates and highways were meant to connect places over long distances, something they're sometimes actually good at. When we make them the centerpiece of local development, however, we've missed the point entirely, resigning ourselves to the sort of disrespect for and loss of previous investment and work from which it's difficult to recover.

Walking is political, as are cigar cutters.

I ran into John Gonder yesterday morning, and he remarked that in the context of an auto-centric New Albany, walking had become a revolutionary act. Bicycling fits that description, too. It needs to change, but the impetus must come from the city's neighborhoods. There must be neighborhood self-determination in the sense of us deciding how we wish our streets to be used: For people, or for cars. Think of it as Occupy Spring Street.

It reminded me of a entering the City County Building a month or so ago, and being told by the sheriff's deputy that I couldn't take my guillotine cigar cutter inside; evidently, it has been classified as a deadly weapon, one conceivably able to slice off the tip of one's middle finger when held aloft to protest stupid rules.

I asked him what could be done with it while I was inside. He told me to put it in my car. When I said my car was at home, and I'd walked down, his eyes went blank and he looked at me as though I'd sprouted antennae. It simply did not compute. Eventually he mumbled that he didn't know, but he was sure I couldn't bring the cutter inside. I hid it behind the trash can outside, roughly ten feet away from where the two deputies stood, and by the time I came back, it was gone.

Will Self: Walking is political (Guardian)

A century ago, 90% of Londoners' journeys under six miles were made on foot. Now we are alienated from the physical reality of our cities.

Of the errant forks.

Lest there be any misunderstandings, I personally view those painted forks in the road as one of Dave Thrasher’s best ever ideas, period. They’ve been on the back burner for years, and it hurts no one, least of all the streets, to have the forks there.

Having said this, I join many others in being a bit baffled as to why forks have appeared in places where there are no eateries, seeing as the stated intent from the very beginning was to use the painted forks to indicate food and drink establishments. Doesn't it confuse matters to put them elsewhere? Couldn't a another symbol in a different color mark non-culinary attractions?

The history of the fork in the road is very clear. On November 29, NAC explained the project, which had been outlined by Thrasher at a Merchant Mixer meeting held earlier the same day.

Minutes from recent Board of Public Works tell the rest of the story.

November 8, 2011COMMUNICATIONS – PUBLIC:

David Thrasher 205 E. Market explained that he is getting ready to do a city-wide promotion for downtown and part of it involves some public art. He stated that it is called “Fork in the Road” and it is to promote local restaurants and there will be a fork painted in front of each business that participates. He stated that they would like to get started as soon as possible.

Mr. Denison stated that they have met with the businesses downtown and they are very excited, but the board will have to discuss the paint and the aesthetics. He suggested that they table this item and then keep it on the agenda for next week to work out the details.

Mrs. Wilkinson moved to table the item until next week, Mrs. Garry second, all voted in favor.

November 15, 2011
OLD BUSINESS:

Item #4 - “Fork in the Road” art project

Mr. Denison stated that he has looked into this and he would recommend the board’s full approval.

Mrs. Wilkinson moved to approve, Mrs. Garry second, all voted in favor.

So, what’s the reason for the misplaced forking mystery?

The Green Mouse guesses that it owes to political expediencies ... but from whom and where? None of the usual suspects is taking credit -- and they always take credit. Perhaps the Ritter House is a clue, and because of that, we suggest following the project’s patronage trail. Is it Indiana R-72? Only the Shadow and St. Daniels know for sure, and they're busy plotting bridge tolls.

Urban Indy: "Having a healthy conversation about how cyclists should be using the streets and sidewalks."

Preaching to the choir, brother -- preaching to the choir.

Urban Indy » Bicycling » Cycling on sidewalks in Indy

Cycling on sidewalks in Indy

September 27th, 2011 | 12 Comments

I’m sure we’ve all seen it or experienced it a time or 10 here in Indy. Walking down the sidewalk (when there is one available) and someone either comes at you on a bike, or brushes past you from behind on a bike. Some go fast, some go slow but the fact that they are cycling ON THE SIDEWALK is the point I wish to examine with this post.

If it's good enough for zoning ...

On the topic of polling data, today I decided to conduct a sampling in my workplace. The error rate for this informal questionnaire was plus or minus 6.2% abv.

This question was posed to 25 customers: Would you rather the city council ban workplace smoking, or take action to pave the streets?

The results were 7 in favor of a smoking ban, 17 in favor of paving, and one who said that our progressive pints cost too much. He was a Republican, so I threw him out into the street, where the smokers soon will be expected to congregate.

Coupled with the irrefutable evidence of the last council meeting, when twice as many people spoke publicly against the ban than in favor, I believe we have a fair reading of the people's will.

Lies, damned lies ... and what?

Tighten your seatbelts: The Coffey is boiling, and the scene is set for another round of self-inflicted wounds.

Wikipedia observes:

In the United States of America's (U.S.) history, "waving the bloody shirt" refers to the demagogic practice of politicians referencing the blood of martyrs or heroes to inspire support or avoid criticism.

NA Confidential paraphrases the bloody shirt thusly:

In the city of New Albany, "boiling the bitter Coffey” refers to the demagogic practice of politicians attacking the source of ideas, innovations and hope for the future to inspire support or avoid criticism.

For the foreseeable future, you’re going to see a high volume of Coffey being mercilessly boiled, because the embittered troglodyte councilman’s offensive against the current administration’s infrastructure repair program is going to be highlighted each and every time by snide references to two-way streets, with the obvious implication being that “them people” – i.e., those generally non-natives eligible to be feared and loathed precisely because they’re capable and willing to effect change – are callously demanding something effete and unaffordable that the saintly “little people” oppose, primarily because they don’t understand what’s at stake … and aren’t likely to do so any time soon so long as their sources of information remain the likes of Coffey, conjoined CM Steve Price and the inhabitants of the Coup d’Geriatrique elder hostel.

All of it is pretty far from the truth, but the Coffey Coterie is hardly renowned for letting facts stand in the way of cultural bile, and we’re all looking forward to another nickel and dime ride on Danny and Erika’s Crazy Train through the Open Air Museum of Superstition and Ignorance rather than anything approximating meaningful dialogue.

After all, we've been there and done that. Way back on December 27, 2005, we were discussing two-way street conversion at NAC. Then, we thought the idea might be sufficient to unite the city, but it would seem that our optimism was misplaced. Here’s the rewind, as posted earlier today.

REWIND: Return of two-way streets in NA: Might this constitute an idea that unites?

On December 13, 2007, Bluegill offered this consideration on adaptation to new ideas, which also was reposted earlier today:

REWIND: Up for adoption

Readers, we'll soon be entering a whole new epoch of Hail Mary, Luddite disinformation. Enjoy the ride ... but be informed. The future may very well be now.

REWIND: Return of two-way streets in NA: Might this constitute an idea that unites?

(Originally published on December 27, 2005. The links may be defunct)

Or are we too hopelessly stupid to succeed?

While it’s true that our local newspapers have been filled to the rim with misty-eyed Christmas bilge during the past week, it remains that a few articles of genuine substance have somehow crept through the de facto blockade against reality-based programming.

Among the best was “Traffic patterns on the move in Southern Indiana,” last week’s Tribune offering by John L. Gilkey (News-Tribune), in which the writer briefly but comprehensively surveyed road and traffic issues in Clarksville, Jeffersonville and New Albany:

New Albany Mayor James Garner said he is considering a conversion of the city’s one-way street system back to two-way traffic, but he said the cost will be high.“The one-way system needs to be two-way based on current traffic patterns, but the cost of doing so is high — about $1 million,” Garner said.

The city has been analyzing its traffic patterns for some time, and believes the change will improve traffic flow, he said. But to do so will require extensive changes to traffic signals, restriping of roadways and, in some cases, resurfacing. Also, crosswalks will need to be added at certain locations.

Mayor Garner also discussed the future of Daisy Lane, and work needed on the city’s exurb arteries, i.e., Charlestown and Grant Line Roads and State Street.

From the desired perspective of boosting New Albany’s future prospects by improving the city’s quality of life in those residential districts adjacent to downtown, by linking this to commercial development in the historic business district, and in recognizing that traffic problems like speeding and recklessness commonly are viewed as roadway design issues and not law enforcement issues, this much debated restoration of the city’s street grid certainly must be a centerpiece of future redevelopment strategies.

Urban planners of a previous generation (show trials, anyone?) manipulated the street grid as a means of moving people quickly from one side to the other, implicitly (or otherwise) acknowledging that there would be little interest in stopping in between.

It was shortsighted then, and it’s plainly mistaken now, but the point is that as real world conditions change, so must the premises with which we treat them, and what we need now is a slower pace downtown, with opportunities for walking and bicycling, and not just because of the aesthetic advantages – because the overall economic well-being of the community stands to be enhanced in such a manner.

Model after model indicates that in all facets of life, downtown must be transformed into the overtly stated antithesis of the plastic, big-box exurb, and what is more perfectly representative of the soulless exurb than its cruelly necessary traffic patterns?

Appropriately, Gilkey considers the evolving Clarksville retail exurb, and provides us with one of the greatest examples of mover-and-shaker disingenuousness that you’re likely to view in print:

Clarksville Redevelopment Director Rick Dickman said the town is seeing extensive changes in traffic patterns because of its Veterans Parkway Corridor development.

The corridor was designed based on the town’s original development plan for the area, which included specialty retail and office buildings along with a hotel and conference center.

“The roadway wasn’t designed to accommodate big-box retail from one end to the other, but that’s what we have,” Dickman said.

Dickman must be kidding.

“That’s what we have,” he purrs, as though "big-box" burst from a tiny seed and grew overnight like a flower in time-lapse photography … as though the town were utterly powerless to prevent the construction crews and big box retailers from radically altering its original plan for the area and thus rendering the roadway obsolete before it was completed ... as though the abrupt surrender of the planners owed to anything other than greed.

Did Wal-Mart hold a pistol to your head, Rick? Did the Gary McCartin’s of the world kidnap your family and hold it hostage until you approved their plans? Did they bring the bricks and mortar into the town limits by backpack and build at night, when they couldn’t be seen?

That Rick Dickman and his brethren chose to alter virtually everything about their original plan so as to maximize the financial return of the development for Clarksville is perfectly understandable, if not entirely consistent with their original stated aims – but please, just don’t insult the community by expressing mock shock and dazzled surprise that it happened the way it did.

Wait -- we’re not trusting Dickman with the Greenway, are we?

Can he squeeze a tacky McCartin retail development (Coffey Commons?) alongside the Loop Island Wetlands (on the Clarskville side, preferably) -- perhaps with Mike Sodrel's federally-mandated help?

But I digress (shrug).

NA Confidential’s question for today is this: We know the reasons for restoring the two-way street grid in New Albany, but what is the case against?

Down trogs, down; we know there currently isn't a cool million buried in one of Steve Price's backyard "nickel 'n' dime" deposit boxes to finance such a project, but are there compelling reasons against finding the money?

Discussion, anyone?

It's never too late for a renewed civic commitment to human rights.

If I had never heard of New Urbanism … if the identity of the “creative class” had remained unrevealed … if I were to return to a dormant state of apathy with respect to public affairs … it would still make perfect sense to me that New Albany as a city might choose to encourage walking and bicycling as part of an overall program of public transportation alternatives that seeks to leave more cars parked, and fewer miles driven overall.

Imagine, then what it must feel like to take a leading role in promoting civic improvements like walking and cycling – in essence, to publicly espouse reforms in an effort to make the city itself a more livable and civilized place – when even the greatest gains accrued may not be sufficient so as to protect the advocates of change from harassment.

I’m not writing about myself in this context. It is widely known that I walk and bike New Albany’s streets on a daily basis, and do so at all hours, seldom giving the notion a second thought.

Then again, I’m a white male standing well over six feet, and weighing 235 lbs. Naturally, physical stature neither precludes violent acts nor negates harassment, but it does have a way of reducing problems.

All bicyclists have an intimate knowledge of the dangers that regularly emanate from passing autos, courtesy of inattentive, unskilled and sometimes crazed drivers. Being jacketed by several thousand pounds of metal is almost like drinking whiskey. It lowers inhibitions, and has a way of imparting behaviors that wouldn’t be attempted face to face, but seem charming and fun when practiced from an open window while speeding away from the scene.

If the occasional passing yokel is amused by baiting a man my size, just imagine what it must sometimes be like for potential targets of a more traditional nature: Our community’s women, gays and ethnic minorities, to name just three.

In the months and years to come, how many of them will be striving earnestly for a New Albany where greater walking and biking opportunities contribute to an enhanced quality of life, even as they recognize that they’ll not be able to take full advantage of these normal human pursuits owing to a stunted social and cultural milieu that extends well beyond the petty crime borne of familiar urban woes like drugs and impoverishment, into areas like public racism and overt homophobia?

It is tempting to note here that among the many disadvantages of the slumlord culture enabled by successive generations of local political officials as an expedient to fill the limitless vacuum left by visionless “leadership” is that it serves as the perfect support mechanism for the dysfunction perpetuated by downward immobility.

Instead, permit me to state simply that sexism, racism and homophobia are human right issues that pertain to numerous contemplated reforms at many levels, ranging from the examples provided above to the very essence of rental property inspections and reform.

The current mayoral administration has suggested at several junctures during the past three years that a revival of New Albany’s moribund Human Rights Commission might be in the offing, but so far, nothing has been done.

Now is the time. Is there the will?

CM Price again AWOL as public meeting addresses 3rd district transportation needs.

Here's a Wednesday morning reminder from Randy Smith:

"Big parts of the presentation (from last night's public meeting) will be available for public viewing at Destinations Booksellers for the next several days. Those who were unable to attend the presentation by ACE are welcome to examine the data-filled aerial photographs during regular business hours."

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On Tuesday evening there was an illuminating public meeting on the topic of New Albany’s Inner-City Grid Transportation Study, which is an examination of the usefulness of “traffic calming,” including considerations of traffic flow, one- vs. two-way streets, speeding and accidents in the context of street design. Roughly 30 people attended, and many excellent questions were asked, and answers provided.

As the Tribune noted in its preview (New Albany downtown traffic forum set for Tuesday):

One-way traffic serves parts of Oak, Elm, Spring and Market streets as well as some north-south streets between West 10th and East 10th. Converting some or all of those to two-way traffic “is one of the alternatives we would expect to consider,” said Scott Wood, the city’s chief planner.

The study area’s boundaries are Oak Street to the north, Main Street to the south, Scribner Drive to the west, and Vincennes Street to the east. Perceptive readers will immediately see that the majority of this area falls within the domain of the city’s 3rd city council district.

The 3rd district’s incumbent councilman, Steve Price, who once commissioned his blogging ghostwriter to bloviate, “I have communicated my principles, stood by my fundamental values, and remained true to my core beliefs consistently and constantly,” once again was observed doing exactly that: Spitting vividly into the eye of his district’s neglected core neighborhoods by failing to attend. Will he now whine before the council that the crucial information about the street grid was not forthcoming?

In fact, neither CM Price nor any of his eight colleagues on the city council were to be seen last night, but both Charlie Harshfield and Maury Goldberg, CM Price’s opponents in the May primary, were there, as was Mayor James Garner. 4th district candidate Pat McLaughlin and at-large candidate John Gonder also were spotted.

Okay, that's all. Having made the sadly necessary point that certain of our "leaders" are entirely unfit for anything remotely approximating leadership, we’ll happily defer to Wednesday’s Tribune coverage of the public meeting for the nuts and bolts. It will be linked here when the time comes.