John Rosenbarger: Yes, it's a design flaw, and yes, we know who designed it. Why can't we do anything about that?

Today's drive to Indianapolis shouldn't be much different than a daily jaunt down Spring Street, so let's pop the tabs on a six-pack of Rosenbarger Light.

Main Street Deforestation Project: If John Rosenbarger's lips are moving, chances are he's lying about traffic diversion. Here's why.

In other words, Main Street should be the officially designated through route bisecting downtown from east to west. It should be signposted as the One True Through Route. In particular, through trucks should be compelled to use it.

Of course, it's a design flaw. Guess who designed it?

Jeff Speck on John Rosenbarger's 12-ft wide Spring Street traffic lanes: “A 12-foot lane is a 70 mph lane."

England and Rosenbarger claimed victory, by changing absolutely nothing. They built two unbuffered bike lanes next to 70 mph traffic lanes. They did nothing else, and they want you to believe that what they did was heroic and innovative, primarily so one of them can run for office again while the other keeps his job -- again.

Until the reign of error is over, citizens are treated to recurring rounds of double dealing.

ON THE AVENUES: Bridge envy in a time of 18-wheelers.

Trust me on this one: When I’m elected mayor, Rosenbarger will become the highest paid cigarette butt remover this city has ever seen, leaving him free to mutter like a plucked peacock about the eternal stupidity of his political bosses, and the boundless depravity of the general public, but deprived of his ability to punish us any further with Gail Wynand-style “improvements” to the street grid.

Even his greatest achievements must eventually give way to the cold, hard logic of t he intersection.

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

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

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

But as the photos show, there are no bike lanes through the intersection.

We'd need a matchbook cover to list the achievements.

Answer the question, John Rosenbarger: Can Jeff Speck's ideas work here, or not?

Rosenbarger's appearance at the FAN Fair followed much the same script, including open public doubt as to whether what he is paid to do, can ever actually be done in this city.

It begs a rather obvious question:

Then why pay you at all?

Ever since he decided to use the FAN Fair as a forum to explore the dimensions of his own under-achievement, I've decided to call his bluff. I'm not going to swallow the duplicity any longer. You shouldn't, either.

Ranting on John Rosenbarger's fundamental contradictions in the aftermath of an atrocious day in the neighborhood.

Rosenbarger spend quite a lot of his time yesterday mumbling about the unacceptable costs of congestion, which pretty much proves something I've been saying for a while about inbred political cowardice, and although I'll have more to write about this with time, what I think about this, I phrased in the form of a tweet to Jeff Speck yesterday afternoon:

@JeffSpeckAICP When your city planner outlines complete street options by parsing 50 shades of traffic congestion, you grasp political fear.

He retweeted it, and that makes me feel very good.

Then again, Speck's never seen anything like it, either. Verily, New Albany remains the place where brains go to atrophy. Here's the bonus: Jeff Speck in New Albany: “I’ve never seen anything like that in America."

Mom, apple pie, Chevrolet ... and NA-FC Parks Department?

I've never harbored any doubt that Roger Jeffers, the parks department superintendent, does a good job. I've heard nothing but praise for him. For all I know, he quite possibly is the finest local administrator of them all.

So, given the tenor of his comments ever since the mayor's parks secession project was announced, pardon my insouciance in asking: Was Roger Jeffers ever elected to anything?

And: Do residents of Floyd County (of which, at last glance, New Albany remained a part) answer to Jeffers, or does he answer to us?

Look, of course it's tough. You take a job, and then things change without warning. It's also called life, and sometimes politics, and it's something that happens to working people all the time. When it does, they adapt ... or get swept away.

But when Jeffers switches from hired hand mode to aspirant Gallup pollster, it's rather embarrassing: "The citizens are not happy," opines the super, and yes, the ones bothering to call him probably are. Me? I'm perfectly happy. Need I phone the Rajah to provide the other side of the story?

It might be easier for him to dismount the high horse and realize that Generalizations typically are Hell. It might also be the case that if citizens genuinely are unhappy -- as oh so many city residents have been during county's government's merrily irresponsible period of chronic parks underfunding -- this discontent will indeed be manifested at the polls when voting time comes.

To repeat: Parks are damned important, and for numerous reasons, but there are as many different ways to have, use and operate them as there are governmental entities. The NA-FC parks board's current theme of "Just the Way We Are" is one such strategy. It is neither the only way, nor a religious commandment set in balsa. Can someone representing the parks-business-as-always side of the aisle please conjure a persuasive argument? My eyelids are drooping, already.

They cannot plausibly deny that there are other organizational models. As for the "duplication of financing" arguments, we already have a profound example of non-duplication: The county's decade-long decision to not pay its share. No duplication there. All we seemingly have left is the argument from gloom and doom: If we cannot continue doing something the way we always have, there will be floods, pestilence and cross-dressers descending upon us.

As Nero Wolfe once observed, "Pfui."

Bluegill provides the closer:

Jeffers: "That makes me not want to work for either side to tell you the truth." Me: "OK."

In the newspaper (remember to lower the volume so you don't have to listen to the automatically generated sales dentist): Floyd County moving ahead with parks plan; Jeffers doubtful city can handle transition in two months, by Daniel Suddeath.