When it comes to lighting one up, best to be careful what you wish for, lest politicians bogart the joint.

I'll freely admit there are times when I just plain don't get it on a personal level, and this bridge lighting and decorating idea is one of those times.

Note that I fully respect the viewpoint of proponents. Good luck in your efforts. Rock on. At this precise moment I'm not boarding that train, merely regretting we have no trains to board. However, I'm not above buying popcorn, having a seat in the bleachers and being a spectator. Maybe I'll change my mind. 

IT'S LIT: New Albany residents push for decorative lighting on Sherman Minton Bridge, by John Boyle (League of Tom May Voters)

NEW ALBANY — In the coming years, the Sherman Minton Bridge will get a facelift in the form of a major renewal project.

The rehabilitation will cost anywhere from $90 million to $105 million, with an expected start date in early 2021. How the timeline of the project will look is still up the air, as Indiana Department of Transportation (INDOT) officials are still in the process of deciding whether to move forward with a full closure or a partial closure.

While the looming prospect of impeding traffic flow on the major artery in any capacity is cause for concern to some residents and business owners, others are looking at the possibilities in a more creative light. This week, a Facebook page called "Light the Sherman" was launched, attracting over 200 likes in the few days it's been active.

The move appears to have been inspired by the Sherman Minton's sister bridge, the Hernando de Soto Bridge in Memphis, Tenn. While that bridge shares a similar design, there is one obvious difference — it has decorative lighting, similar to that found on the Big Four Bridge in Jeffersonville.

The idea has gotten quite a bit of attention on social media, with the page organizers calling on people to convince local members of Congress to allocate money for the installation ...

Although I remain open to persuasion, bridge lighting strikes me as a want, as opposed to a need. It's also a distraction from other more genuine needs.

I believe any money generated to pay for creatively lighting the Sherman Minton bridge -- by the way, where exactly is this money coming from? -- would be better spent scattered among numerous enhancement projects along the waterfront, rather then illuminating it from above like a gaudy billboard (see photo above).

To me, this is another example of the One Big Grandiose Project syndrome, rather than the two dozen smaller projects actually impelled by participatory grassroots partnerships, with the problem being that OBGPs tend to move with lightning speed away from the grassroots, and into the hands of usual design suspects like HWC Engineering or their bridge lighting equivalents.

The result usually is generic pay-to-play pablum like baseball Hall of Famer Jim "Do You Know I Live in Carmel?" Rice's HWC Market Street Mussolini tribute.

In this vein, tourism's Russell Goodwin makes a very good point in the newspaper article.

Studies have shown that such aesthetic ventures do often translate into more visitors and money spent by them in the local economy. Russell Goodwin of SoIN Tourism said the key factor is collaboration and communication between project officials and local stakeholders, such as residents and business owners.

Let's not forget the templates and schemata of "collaborative" public input meetings in New Gahania ...

Joshua Poe explains how those "public input" meetings are kept meaningless to maintain pre-determined outcomes.

As noted: I'm open to a rethink.

Until the evidence is mustered, I'm sticking to the imperative of many small improvements rather than one big one -- and don't use the Big Four in Jeffersonville as a counter-example, because it's the "big project" exception that proves the rule.

The Big Four Bridge is all about function as a non-automotive mobility device, and this function would remain completely intact without lighting (which cost more than $2 million) or the dreadfully redundant and intrusive classical music playing halfway across.

The Big Four's logic is applicable not to the Sherman Minton, but the K & I. That's the mobility project in need of prioritization.

Nationalize that mutha, now. I bet President Sanders will.

New Albany knows all too well how highways ruined cities.

"If a factory is torn down but the rationality which produced it is left standing then that rationality will simply produce another factory. If a revolution destroys a government, but the systematic patterns of thought that produced that government are left intact, then those patterns will repeat themselves...There's so much talk about the system. And so little understanding."
-- Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Interstate 64 and the Sherman Minton Bridge severed New Albany's west side and destroyed the city's first public park. Whether "ruined" is the best word to describe the situation, it can be posited with confidence that the interstate irreparably altered for the worse this place where we live, while enabling suburbanization out yonder.

We've managed to take back some of what was lost, though the interstate's perpetual noise and visual blight is always there to remind us of the price we've paid.

Philly Fed economists: Here’s how highways ruined your city, by Darryl C. Murphy (Plan Philly)

No one should be denied a good taco, but the Vine Street Expressway has often deterred Jeffrey Lin from visiting a nearby taqueria for lunch.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia economist channeled that frustration into a working paper about the negative effects of highways on cities.

“Just the experience of getting there is so unpleasant,” he said. “That was kind of one early inspiration for thinking what are the effects of highways on cities.”

Lin and senior economist Jeffrey Brinkman took a broad look at how highways have contributed to suburbanization, and the subsequent decline of U.S. cities during the 20th century ...

City election in 2019, bridge repairs in 2021. One should be a forum to prepare for the other.

Photo credit (and interesting article about
the Sherman Minton's inspection (2015).

There's a municipal election coming in 2019, and the projected date for a months-long bridge closure in 2021.

If the toll-free bridge closure is inevitable, we might as well kick back and ask this important question, joyfully or otherwise: shouldn't there be a level of local preparation, and shouldn't this be a prime campaign topic during next year's local races?

I think it should be one of the major questions. It might be a jumping-off point for a far-reaching public discussion about transportation alternatives, and ... well, that's not going to happen, is it?

You can read all about the repair costs courtesy of Marcus Green at WDRB

Costs climb on Sherman Minton Bridge rehab

The increase, from $80 million to $92 million, reflects added work on the Indiana side of the Ohio River.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – The price tag for a massive overhaul of the Sherman Minton Bridge has climbed since the project was announced nearly a year ago, a result of more work slated for the Interstate 64 corridor ...

Here's the meat.

In interviews last fall, Indiana officials said they anticipated a planned construction start in 2021. But (Harry) Maginity indicated this week that a timeline for the project won’t be known until after the state moves into the bidding process – although it’s not known when that will happen.

Indiana plans a “best value” approach that will award the Sherman Minton contract based not only on price, but also on a construction plan that tries to limit road closures. The states used a similar strategy when replacing the Milton-Madison Bridge, awarding the contract to a company that proposed a 10-day shutdown; other bidders sought months-long closures.

Transportation officials suggested last year that the Sherman Minton could be shut down for more than seven months during the work.

“The idea of best value is to get the best deal for the motoring public,” Maginity said. “It’s a major inconvenience, obviously. But we’re going to try to minimize that the best we can.”

The 2019 mayoral race is handed a critical debating point: "$80M Sherman Minton Bridge project to extend life up to 50 years."

I missed all the fun with last week's Sherman Minton repair revelations, but it seems the beaming powers-that-be are making reassurances about the absence of future tolling.

They're not to be trusted any longer than Dan Coffey's attention span.

Based on our previous local experience with the ORBP's unelected implementation junta, my advice is not to accept a single word any of them say, now or ever, sans verification.

I'd also advise every last elected official in New Albany and Floyd County to follow the timeless wisdom of holding these appointed decision-makers far closer to their bosoms than loved ones, or even mistresses.

The ORBP was a brutal top-down example of regional and state oligarchies in action. If River Ridge stands to benefit from the Sherman Minton Bridge reassembled over a period of five years, with double the existing rate of tolls when finished, then don't kid yourselves, because that's exactly the way it will come down.

Wendy Dant Chesser will beam, humanities majors will be purged, and the toadies will gather to toast "progress" -- although in fairness, many local residents still will be screaming about taking the knee, well into Trumpolini's second term.

Having said this, and conceding that issues pertaining to the bridge place it near the top of the "must hear" list for our mayoral/re-enthronement contest in 2019, the single biggest issue in the campaign remains the catastrophic implications of presumed Democrat Jeff Gahan's public housing putsch.

But you already knew that, right?

EXCLUSIVE: $80M Sherman Minton Bridge project to extend life up to 50 years, by Elizabeth Beilman (News, Tribune and Evangelism)

Project will result in months-long shutdown

NEW ALBANY — Indiana officials are planning an estimated $80 million rehabilitation and painting project for the Sherman Minton Bridge corridor that will extend its life up to 50 years.

The cost-sharing project with the state of Kentucky is fully funded, so tolling drivers as a method to pay for it isn't being considered, Indiana Department of Transportation officials say.

But they do anticipate the entire Sherman Minton will shut down, likely for a period of several months, during a portion of construction.

That work won't begin until early 2021, with construction bids awarded in the fall of 2020. Officials have "no idea" how long the work will take, as the project hasn't yet been designed ...

Apocalypse WOW: Pat McLaughlin thinks toll evaders will stop to shop in New Albany. Jeff Gahan doesn't return calls. Welcome to tolling preparedness, New Albany-style.

Imagine how a local newspaper might be functioning as tolling approaches. Imagine the hard questions a reporter might be asking of local officials. Imagine the dialogue that might be engendered.

Keep imagining, because we have no newspaper in New Albany.

Meanwhile, it still isn't clear what the city of New Albany's official position will be with respect to the issues discussed in Green's piece. We suspect servile silence, but only because it's what we've been conditioned to expect from Jeff Gahan, but note that if the council president's uninformed opinion is any indication, we might be better off with no opinion at all.

SUNDAY EDITION | Old overpasses to get more wear and tear as Kentuckiana drivers avoid bridge tolls, by Marcus Green (WDRB)

... “Talking to a lot of people that I know, they said they’re going to change their route of going to Indiana and coming around the Sherman Minton and ride all the way around to avoid paying a toll,” said Natalie Neil, who lives in the Shawnee/Chickasaw neighborhood in western Louisville.

Neil said she uses the Minton twice a day for trips to New Albany. More traffic on the bridge is troubling, she said, because there’s “a lot of increase already.”

And:

Traffic on those structures in Floyd County is expected to increase by as much as 118 percent in the coming decades. Indiana plans maintenance and repair work on four of the overpasses before 2018, according to the state.

The state also aims to paint and maintain the Sherman Minton Bridge within the next four years, said Will Wingfield, spokesman for the Indiana Department of Transportation. The Minton was closed for about five months in 2011 and 2012 to fix a crack in a load-bearing beam.

This means that very soon, we'll either lose the Sherman Minton for an extended period, and/or see it tolled. But here's the important part (emphasis mine).

Opponents of tolling interstates often cite traffic diversion as a side effect of tolls and rate hikes.

“Tolls are often easily evaded, usually by motorists who are using an alternative route that unfortunately was not built to handle the level and type of traffic experienced due to that toll evasion,” said Stephanie Kane, spokeswoman for the Alliance for Toll-Free Interstates.

After reviewing projections showing increased traffic on the Minton, she said ambulances and other first responders could face delays getting across the river on I-64.

With the Minton remaining toll-free, traffic passing through New Albany is expected to double in the decades to come. Mayor Jeff Gahan did not return a phone message seeking comment, but council president Patrick McLaughlin said “it’s something that’s been constantly on our radar.”

McLaughlin stopped short of agreeing that traffic will rise at the levels predicted by INDOT, but he said any increase could give the city an economic boost.

“When trying to judge human nature,” he said, “no one really knows how that’s going to pan out.”

Yes, please: "Induced demand" as necessary corrective to road-building lobbyists' Goebbelsian propaganda.

Wouldn't it be nice if perhaps once in a person's lifetime, a conventional local news outlet -- News and Tribune, Courier-Journal, Business First, WDRB, Insider Louisville -- would accompany the breathless transcribing of an equally breathless press conference or news release from an eternally breathless corporate-financed, road-building lobby group with a simple explanation of induced demand?

Which in these instances, would act as the antidote to the breathless propaganda being dispensed by the usual paid-up suspects?

Have an opinion about traffic? You're entitled, but henceforth, when you air it, I'll be asking you if you're familiar with induced demand.

It's going to be on the test, folks.

What’s Up With That: Building Bigger Roads Actually Makes Traffic Worse, by Adam Mann (Wired)

... As a kid, I used to ask my parents why they couldn’t just build more lanes on the freeway. Maybe transform them all into double-decker highways with cars zooming on the upper and lower levels. Except, as it turns out, that wouldn’t work. Because if there’s anything that traffic engineers have discovered in the last few decades it’s that you can’t build your way out of congestion. It’s the roads themselves that cause traffic.

The concept is called induced demand, which is economist-speak for when increasing the supply of something (like roads) makes people want that thing even more. Though some traffic engineers made note of this phenomenon at least as early as the 1960s, it is only in recent years that social scientists have collected enough data to show how this happens pretty much every time we build new roads. These findings imply that the ways we traditionally go about trying to mitigate jams are essentially fruitless, and that we’d all be spending a lot less time in traffic if we could just be a little more rational.

I'm not exactly certain why we should take seriously a trucking and logistics lobby group with key personnel that includes a former Clark County GOP party chairman, although it's obvious that the group's announcements have Ron "Fluff the Wealthy" Grooms billing and cooing like a teenager in love with a pin-up girl.

Perhaps we can expect Ron to introduce vital legislation: The Auto-centric Freedom Restoration Act, or some such drivel.

Let's do this drill one more time. When the talking point proposes laying asphalt to solve problems:

"A new report aimed at reducing transportation bottlenecks."

Remember induced demand:

"The fundamental law of road congestion: New roads will create new drivers, resulting in the intensity of traffic staying the same."

I'm not picking on the reporter Finley; his was the first link I copied. No area news outlet did itself any favors with coverage (see Riefenstahl, Leni for historical antecedents).

Plan calls for expanded I-65, I-64 and new Sherman Minton bridge, by Marty Finley (Louisville Business First)

A new report aimed at reducing transportation bottlenecks and improving logistics channels for business calls for the widening of Interstate 64 and I-65 in Indiana and the reconstruction of the Sherman Minton Bridge.

Those three major regional priorities were outlined among 63 needed infrastructure initiatives in "Regional Links: Global Connections," a strategic plan that has been under development for two years by the Southeast Regional Logistics Council. The plan was released during a news conference in Jeffersonville Tuesday morning.

Responding to the "squeeze" with more of the same suburban sprawl "logic" would bring us closer to the clinical definition of municipal insanity.

Everyone has an off day now and then, and maybe this explains the article in Business First. It's non-sequential, mixes causes and effects, and overall is somewhat confusing.

My alarm bells started sounding with this.

New Albany mayor, business owner talk about city’s growth, by Caitlin Bowling (Business First)

“I think New Albany has become more visible to people,” said New Albany mayor Jeff Gahan.

Gahan expects traffic through downtown New Albany to increase after tolls are introduced on the two new Ohio River crossings.

People who currently drive over the Kennedy Bridge to get to and from Jeffersonville and Clarksville might opt to reroute through New Albany rather than pay a toll to cross the river via Interstate 65, he reasoned.

Given the article's uncharacteristic muddle, it is possible that the mayor was quoted out of context, but to the casual reader, the preface of "visible" sounds very much like the words of those who believe the axiom about traffic counts determining the viability of a business's location.

It is crucial to understand that this is an axiom rooted in the "logic" of suburban sprawl, not core urban reality.

The fact that these two realities are utterly incompatible helps to explicate, if not explain, the perennial cluelessness of downtown business operators like Bob Caesar. He looks out at the surrounding historic buildings and sees a strip mall paradigm, not a dense urban center's. He fails to recognize the reason for his own success: Skill and ability at what he does, qualities that would not change if Pearl Street were replaced by four lanes of one-way traffic -- although amusingly, in such an imagined case, he'd no longer have any customers at all, because they'd be driving past too quickly to care, eager to get to the other side and a Kay Jewelers somewhere in the exurb.

Reading the mayor's words in Business First, and accepting them at face value, yields a terrifying thought: Is the molasses-intensity slowness of the city's street grid planning to be understood as increased traction for the Caesaresque, dreamworld notion that a vastly higher volume of traffic passing through New Albany to access the untolled Sherman Minton Bridge could be a truly wonderful thing, because we'll be able to show off our charming, revitalizing downtown to even more people, who'll stop here, spend money and forget why they "chose" New Albany in the first place?

My succinct rebuttal to this viewpoint during the subsequent Facebook discussion:

The primary point is, and remains: If an untolled bridge is central to a driver's reasoning, then whatever route he or she chooses is going to be about the quickest way to and from the untolled bridge. What lies in between is utterly irrelevant. And that's the problem.

Jeff G. then offered a summary of sorts, one worth reprinting here, prompted by those people contemplating the implications of an untolled Sherman Minton, and advocating what seems to them the easy "cure" of making it possible for the hoards of pass-throughs to traverse New Albany as quickly as possible by retaining one-way arterials, even widening them, and increasing speed limits.

After all, it's what the gospel of suburban sprawl ordains.

But we're just not suburban, are we?

---

In terms of the "counterintuitiveness" of it all, there's a really simple way to put it: Build for more cars, get more driving. Build for transit, get more transit ridership. Build for bikes, get more bicycling. Same for walking. Subsidize sprawl as we have for a few decades now, get more sprawl. The notion that whatever you plan/build for is what you get has proven true repeatedly all over the country. It's actually very intuitive, only made difficult by people being so unable to envision anything other than what they've seen recently. The truth is, a good portion of New Albany's on-the-books street laws still reference multimodal use. There is an expectation of cars but other modes of transport on equal footing as well. That's how and why our streets were meant to properly function ...

Drawing an arbitrary line through the middle of the metro and charging people to cross it in the name of better connections, as our state and regional "leaders" are doing, is dumb. Responding to that on a more localized level by making New Albany a less attractive place to live via the purposeful welcoming of even more high speed, neighborhood killing, pass-through automobile traffic would be dumber. To then suggest that more residential development is needed while simultaneously touting factors like increased, high speed traffic that make a place a less desirable residence is dumbest. I'm not sure what comes after dumbest, though I fear we may get a clearer picture of it pretty soon ...

Gas taxes and automobile related fees only cover about 35% of road expenses in Indiana and Kentucky. Drivers haven't actually been paying for roads for a long time. We rob other areas, i.e., give up services we could otherwise have, to pay for them. Instead of either raising those taxes and fees to actually cover expenses or curtailing so much car-centric development, local governments and developers just keep building more and more automobile infrastructure and new construction requiring services knowing they don't have the money to pay for it, let alone for the long term maintenance and negative impact of sprawl. It's hollowed out our cities and left us in a financial lurch.

Blocks of buildings sit nearly empty or in severe disrepair while we're busy building more blocks that won't generate enough revenue to cover their own expenses. We already have far more built environment here and all over this country than we have people to use it and pay for it. "Growth" and "development", as usually defined, are counterproductive. That's why cities and states around the country are focusing more and more on their older, close-in, more densely populated neighborhoods with transit, bicycling, and walkability. It's cheaper, leads to more positive economic outcomes, and is sustainable over the long haul.

Our metro is so far just flat out too dumb to follow the many examples from around the country and world. All of this is stuff Roger and I and lots of others have been talking about for years with regard to New Albany, the Bridges Project, and the region in general. Now that it's too late and we're stuck with this monstrosity, the outrage that should have been made very apparent during those previous years is finally starting to kick in ...

Refusing to be a part of the Sprawl is one of the primary reasons we moved to older, denser New Albany. Had we understood how strongly the sprawl mentality still dominates City thinking even downtown, we may not have made that choice. A lot of us keep hoping, begging, pleading, and hollering for them to get past it, to make so many private investments (aka the Renaissance) worth it, but local and regional governments have been inexplicably slow to even acknowledge it. See: Bridges Project and responses to it ...

Bridge honchos know good and well they're creating more traffic and devaluing older, inner-city neighborhoods. They know that the traffic projections they fudged to justify the project in the first place have not been remotely accurate over the many years we've now had to judge them. They don't care. The project was specifically designed to promote sprawl and benefit those who profit from it. That's the Bridges Project's primary function. State transportation planners have publicly stated they expect approximately 30,000 cars per day or so diverting through New Albany to avoid tolls via the Sherman Minton. Privately, those same planners have told NA city officials they actually expect substantially more than that. If even a relatively small percentage of the increased traffic cuts through our neighborhoods as many do already, we're sunk without adequate preparation. Inviting them in via larger, faster roads while providing no alternative to driving is the poorest strategy possible.

Like the proverbial glove: Ed Clere, a healthy Horseshoe Casino, and Toll Free New Albany.

The best way for New Albany to avoid the considerable collateral damage of bridge tolls (which Rep. Clere has enthusiastically supported), is for Horseshoe Casino's indirect taxation to continue, and to thrive.

(Look at it like this. Jerry Finn, head of the Horseshoe Foundation, served on the Bridges Authority, so as provide an acceptable proxy to protect the interests of the Casino, a mission that was accomplished when tolling was removed from the Casino's main access bridge, the Sherman Minton ... meaning that implicitly, Finn knew all along that tolling would be bad, insofar as it would discourage Kentuckians from coming to Indiana -- which would be death to Horseshoe. All he (and Clere, for that matter) need do now is to extend what already has been proven, and help his adopted city, not by random flower plantings, but by helping it to avoid the pass-through price of bridge tolls)

As such, Rep. Clere is entirely correct in seeking a re-examination of all casino laws.

What I'd further recommend is that the Foundation, having understandably participated in the Horseshoe revenue protection exercise otherwise known as "no tolls on the Sherman Minton Bridge," provide matching money for the city to complete its streets before the coming deluge of motorized citizens passing through to flee the chaos of bridge construction and the larceny of tolling.

As we hold our breaths in utter futility, here's the article.

Indiana lawmaker calls for 'holistic look' at all casino laws, by Charlie White (C-J)

With a new Horseshoe Casino set to open March 4 in Cincinnati and the possibility of more casinos opening in surrounding states, Indiana needs to reassess its gambling policies, putting all options on the table, according to state Rep. Ed Clere.

Clere said Hoosier state lawmakers must find ways to shore up casino revenues — money the state has become “very dependent” upon — by reexamining the number of gambling licenses it allows, locations and the state tax structure.

“The Indiana legislature has made gaming policy in an incremental, ad-hoc, usually reactive fashion for two decades now, and I think it’s time to take a holistic look at all our gambling statutes,” said Clere, a Republican from New Albany.

Random 2013 Platform Goals 1: Toll Free New Albany and all it entails, ASAP.

I'm not running for anything, but I'll be devoting random posts in December to civic goals for the year 2013.

Topping my list is complete streets: "A holistic approach that makes the streets, intersections and neighborhoods more accessible to walkers, bikers and mass transit." It would be interesting to know how many elected officials in this city have so much as considered such an idea. I know one who has not.

During Year Two of the Gahan administration, articulating and implementing a program of evolution toward complete streets in New Albany is a policy that can address multiple needs with one throw.

1. Complete streets are a means of transforming the urban street grid into a diverse, human friendly mechanism for growth.

2. This enhances prospects for the further expansion of retail, offices and even housing downtown, and of connecting downtown to outlying areas by means of the Greenway and other routes radiating outward.

3. Critically, boldness is needed right now, because the closer we get to a tolling regime on some Ohio River Bridges and not on others (read: Sherman Minton), the more likely that New Albany's current one-way street grid reverts to abuse by no-stop pass-throughs to the detriment of any human scale reform. It is time to act.

Here's the plan for Toll Free New Albany, as originally proposed back in August.

---

If bridge tolls eventually become reality, three things need to happen.

One.

First, we must consider the status of the Sherman Minton Bridge – New Albany’s bane as recently as last year, when it was closed for repairs, but in the future, potential symbol of our civic free lunch.

As a disclaimer, label me skeptical. In spite of the oligarch cadre’s insistence, the mere existence of Horseshoe Casino, and the need for untrammeled (read: untolled) access to the all-night gaming we depend on to indirectly fund waning social programs probably will not permanently spare the Sherman Minton from taxation.

However, for so long as it remains safely off the tolling grid, the city of New Albany has a tailor-made, providential civic slogan, one we must repeat over and over:

“TOLL FREE NEW ALBANY”

Forget Trickle Back City, Open for Business, Riverview is Our Savior and all the other half-baked suggestions that make reasonable people wonder whether we’ve lost our minds. Compared with our brethren over in Jeffersonville, who are about to be relentlessly pulverized, first with unnecessary downtown bridge construction detritus, delays and clutter, and then, when all of it has been nicely carted off and paved, with the sheer villainy of tolls themselves, New Albany will be able to market itself as an island of sanity amid the turbulence of KStem’s self-serving tumescence.

Two.

Second, seeing as this potential New Albany advantage has one significant drawback, we must reverse decades of Real-time, Caesaresque inertia and get radical, aggressive and determined about our own streets, what they mean for the people who live here, and what we can do to facilitate them for use by people as well as automobiles.

It should suffice to say that maintaining our holy writ of a quasi-Stalinist 1960’s grid of one-way speed enhancers, with the novel magnet of an untolled Sherman Minton Bridge attracting drive-throughs and fly-overs through the city’s neighborhoods in unprecedented numbers, traveling as quickly as possible to save two bucks, and ignoring what we have to offer as they put the pedal to the metal, would be suicidal to our future prospects.

They will not stop here any more than casino clients already do (they don’t). Let’s “complete” New Albany’s streets now, and cure with a dose of intelligent design the illnesses we now try to “treat” with old-fashioned Georgia speed traps.

Three.

Third, let’s resolve to never forget that the ORBP is happening not because of genuine concerns for safety, or comprehensive thoughts for the future of transportation in the metro Louisville statistical area, or whatever other drivel we’ve been fed in a effort to solicit support for the project where precious little exists among just plain folks.

Rather, this is happening because the oligarchs and their ancillaries need to make their money the Mitt Romney way, in the exurbs, at places like River Ridge, where the jobs added by the likes of Amazon can only subtract independent small businesses from their homes down the street in the urban core.

In short, the ORBP is capitalism all right, but in a very restricted, profit-making sense of channeling the largess in directions so obvious that Nostradamus needn’t return to help us guess.

From the ORBP’s beginning until now, it has been representative of American robber baron capitalism of the old, heavy, monopolistic school, where Gohmann Asphalt’s soulless flunkies issue pious public intonations of “for your own safety” even as they ink the bids for the business constructing the project itself, “sealing” the deal with watery Bud Light Limes at a vapid chain restaurant somewhere on Veteran’s Parkway.

Thus, my third suggested bit of pre- and post-tolling therapy is simply this: Let’s never forget from whence this foolishness has emanated. Granted, we cannot vote against the likes of Kerry Stemler, Steve Schultz and the rest of their merrily fluffing oligarch’s advancement society.

However, politicians are another matter, and when it comes to the ORBP and the likelihood of the regressive tax we’re all still euphemistically referring to as “tolls,” we have a clear idea of who is responsible.

"Welcome to Toll Free New Albany."

Yes, our official civic slogan has been written for us by the likes of Kerry Stemler, who spent Wednesday in a state of multi-orgasmic stupor, cuddling a souvenir facsimile of Reardon Metal from the Church of Ayn Rand, slobbering atop reams of falsified CDM Smith tolling statistics, and singing hymns of praise to Mitt Romney in a raspy, capitalism-ravaged voice.

New Albany's strategy now becomes so incredibly simple that Bob Caesar will never grasp it for as long as he lives: Begin a ceaseless comprehensive complete streets program now to avert the detrimental aspect of a toll-free Sherman Minton (i.e., oblivious pass-through traffic damaging our neighborhoods) and educate the masses as to the "come to NA" benefits of the very same toll-free bridge.

It isn't a question of money. Do we have the civic intelligence and political courage to put the hammer down on bad traffic, and skim the benefits of good traffic? Let the debate begin, and Bob, just for once, perhaps you can read up on it -- wait, not so fast ... put that IRS code book down ...

Feds OK tolling for bridges project, by Braden Lammers (The "Bama Pensioners Luv Chick-fil-A Journal)

LOUISVILLE — The Federal Highway Administration has approved tolling as part of the financing plan for the Ohio River Bridges Project.

The $2.6 billion plan to construct an east-end bridge, a new downtown bridge and to reconstruct Spaghetti Junction has long awaited word from the federal government on tolling the new infrastructure in order to pay for the project.

Tolls will appear on “only on the new east-end crossing and the downtown crossing, which includes a new I-65 bridge for northbound traffic only and a revamped Kennedy Bridge for southbound traffic only,” according to a press release.

And let me tell you, he's plenty mad.

By all rights, Ed Clere should be cringing as Kentucky's Jim Wayne asks: "How to avert bridges injustice?"

Jim Wayne of Louisville (D) represents the 35th district in the Kentucky House. His comments below are reprinted from the Courier-Journal website (March 29, 2012; thanks, WA). Note the reference to tolls on the Sherman Minton, and ask yourself: Why hasn't this been mentioned by Ed Clere and Ron Grooms? Shouldn't they be addressing this point?

Jim Wayne ... Of tolls and trolls: How to avert bridges injustice

The children’s tale of “The Three Billy Goats Gruff” can teach us something about bridges and tolls, as well as trolls. You remember the story: one by one sibling goats cross a bridge to get to their livelihood, the green pastures on the hillside. In turn each goat is stopped by a troll who wants to extract a huge toll (their lives) to cross the bridge he controls. The first two negotiate a reprieve. The third, the oldest and strongest, butts the troll off the bridge, rejecting his demand for the unconscionable toll.

Earlier this month, the Louisville and Southern Indiana Bridges Authority presented their long-awaited financial plan to construct the new Downtown and East End bridges just two weeks before legislators were to endorse it. Included in the plan is a tolling schedule to pay for over $731 million in bonds to help build the $1.3 billion Kentucky portion of the project.

On the face of it, the plan might look reasonable. But so might have the initial greeting of the troll to each goat. Even though a thorough, professional analysis of the financial plan is impossible because the consultant refuses to reveal the study’s methodology, we have to be skeptical of the numbers used to justify the tolls proposed. Traffic counts of current bridge usage reveal a decline in numbers. With rising gas prices driving habits will continue to change. The consultant does not admit a decline in such numbers.

Regardless of possible faulty projections, tolls are not the best way to pay for the new bridges. Tolls are particularly burdensome to the growing numbers of working poor who must cross the river to get to their livelihoods. I am talking about the hard-working men and women who clean the toilets at the hotels and offices, the servers and dishwashers at the restaurants, the people who wash your cars and change your oil, the child care workers and nursing home assistants who change soiled children and elderly.

These citizens were not at the table when the decision was made to toll. Under the plan, frequent users will pay $1 toll each way. Thus the low-income workers will see $500-a-year tax increase (face it, tolls are taxes) to commute to their jobs each work day for 50 weeks a year. They will work an extra week and half each year to stay even.

So, what are the alternatives?

Start by testing the idea of a modest increase in the state gasoline tax. Just a penny increase generates $32 million a year. A nickel increase could finance not only our bridges, but also other worthy road projects such as the badly needed new bridge to Cincinnati, a four-lane highway to Pikeville and the new interstate in Western Kentucky. The gas tax spreads the cost to all drivers in a fashion that is more just than targeted toll. Instead of $500 a year, the working poor would pay about $10 a year more in taxes with a nickel gas tax increase.

Secondly, the formula for allocating the state road fund, which was set up in the 1940s when 70 of the state’s population lived in rural areas, needs to change. Instead of distributing the money based on road miles, it should be based on road usage. In his 2003 analysis of Kentucky’s road fund, Dr. Paul Coomes, economist at the University of Louisville, showed the drain of Louisville’s dollars to pay for rural roads. As a consequence Jefferson County doesn’t have sufficient funds to pay for our bridges project, resulting in the need for tolls.

But if in the end we are left with tolls as the only option, their injustice must be minimized by guaranteeing to anyone who works across the river and is at 200 percent of the federal poverty level, a toll rebate at the end of each year. Their W2s and a toll receipt summary would substantiate their eligibility. TARC, which serves this same group, should also be exempt.

Finally, some argue the poor don’t need to use the new bridges and can avoid tolls by simply using the non-tolled Clark and Sherman Minton bridges. This sounds similar to Marie Antoinette’s cake statement. It also minimizes the fact that 13 years after the new bridges open the Sherman Minton Bridge will also be tolled (a fact never mentioned in any public meeting on the financial plan in Frankfort). So, what are all the poor workers expected to do? Converge on the narrow 90-year-old Clark Bridge to get to and from work?

The financial plan has been hatched in the brains of mostly wealthy white males, who may have little empathy for the growing number of working poor. I suggest these smart leaders go back to the drawing board and develop a more just, workable plan that serves the needs of all the residents of Kentucky and Indiana, not just their country club cohorts. They need not be seen as trolls.

The Sherman Minton Bridge: It's the gateway to Horseshoe, isn't it?

That explains a lot about the horsetrading, doesn't it?