"Safer Trucking in Changing Cities," or something Nawbany doesn't talk about at all.

SAFER TRUCKING IN CHANGING CITIES from Fields of Vision on Vimeo.

Meanwhile, the same company currently dumping thousands of dollars each year into Mayor Jeff Gahan's re-election fund, and which was given the contract to gut Speck's plan, design last year's two-way reversion and “keep those trucks moving” (as HWC's Jim Rice once observed) now has been given a second contract to explore whether their first contract was a success.

Is this stand-up comedy?
 
What are the chances that HWC will acknowledge failure? After all, wouldn't we be due a refund if so?

Maybe a better way would be having an IMPARTIAL outside firm perform the speed study -- one actually aware of what traffic calming entails. Then again, Gahan has to desire traffic calming, doesn't he?

And the way Gahan's system works at present, doing business with HWC is good for ... business.

Imagine what we could accomplish is we wanted to accomplish something beyond fattening the campaign finance heifer at every turn.

Let's check on the Democratic Party's point of view.

Yep. Business as usual, on ALL fronts.

According to this study, distracted DRIVING is 100 times worse than previously thought, but pedestrians are easier to blame.

I won't say "distracted walking" doesn't happen, because I've seen it and done it a few times myself. The point to remember is that someone like me, walking "distracted," carries poundage in the hundreds rather than the thousands.

Drivers are elevated for coddling in many and varied ways, but the point stays the same: they're capable of wreaking far greater havoc, their responsibility is greater, and the law enforcement apparatus should prosecute accordingly.

The state of Indiana hired a consultant to determine why pedestrian deaths have risen, and the result is mostly car-centric bilge and claptrap, but at least one good point emerges.

Increase In Indiana Pedestrian Deaths Follows Concerning National Trend, by Sarah Fentem (WBAA)

Retting says the combination of a good economy and lower gas prices mean more drivers on the road: going to work, traveling on vacations and visiting restaurants—and bars.

“At a minimum, half of pedestrian fatalities are alcohol related,” Retting says. “And that doesn’t begin to take into account drivers and pedestrians that are impaired by alcohol, just not at that high of level.”

As an aside, "more drivers on the road" also helps to explain why the added traffic lane never actually reduces congestion. It's called induced demand, and you can look it up during cigarette breaks while you lobby for 10-lane highways to get you to work, when just leaving a few minutes earlier costs taxpayers so very much less.

Getting back to the heart of the matter:

100 times worse than we thought: Insights from a Zendrive’s 2018 Distracted Driving Snapshot

Distracted driving is far worse than we thought. How bad? 100 times worse than the most reliable data available. Zendrive’s 2018 Distracted Driving Snapshot reveals that 69-million drivers use their phones behind the wheel every day, far higher than the 660,000 daily distracted drivers reported by government data.

We also know that we really shouldn’t be playing with our phones while driving, as it contributes to 26 percent of all collisions. But until now, we didn’t have accurate data on the extent of the problem. To mark Zendrive’s 100-billionth mile of driver data analyzed, we tried to quantify how bad the distracted driving problem is in the US ...

 ... Zendrive estimates that 69-million drivers use their phones each day
Compare our findings to previous research by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA): NHTSA estimates that 660,000 drivers use their phones during daylight hours. Based on our experience on the streets everyday, these numbers seemed low, and our analysis found that they were low, really low.

One-way streets damage businesses and neighborhoods. Two-way streets help businesses and neighborhoods. Why are we waiting?

The medicine's right there in his hands, and yet the delay continues. The silence, the non-engagement, and the unwillingness to face facts ... they continue, too.

Most regular readers already know where I stand, and have been standing for more than a decade as it pertains to the city's street grid. Normally I would't repeat a column so soon, but in recent weeks, this blog has many new readers, attracted by coverage of Brooklyn and The Butcher, Gospel Bird and the Fest of Ale move.

Hence, a repeat. Every day that passes with one-way streets in New Albany is a day in which city government depresses value, whether of property, quality of life or potential for business growth. Study after study proves this point.

When will Jeff Gahan finally listen and LEAD?

---

How many businesses already have died because of City Hall’s street grid procrastination?

October 28, 2015

Speck's downtown street network proposal finally was released early in 2015, only to be shredded one page at a time for use as toilet paper by a captive Board of Works charged by Mayor Jeff Gahan with gutting and delaying it during an election year.

As recently as this week, Gahan was unable to take a substantive public position on a topic (two-way streets) that he is disinterestedly willing to concede addresses public safety, but seeks to defer until long after his presumed political re-enthronement -- never mind all the promises he made four years ago to me and others in downtown business community as to his eagerness to support them with precisely this long overdue and fundamental infrastructure improvement.

It's been a cynical gamble. If Gahan genuinely understands that traffic speeds are excessive, and in densely populated urban areas, that speed surely kills, then every moment of delay in implementing a solution comes with the risk of death and injury.

Concurrently, if he grasps the empirical record of success in other locales of assisting local independent business growth through street grid reform, he's actively abetting daily infrastructure conditions that work against economic development.

The following was published on December 14, 2014. Almost a year has passed.

What has been the opportunity cost of Jeff Gahan's cowardice?

---

Oh where oh where, can our Speck study be?
(There’s no hope if Duggins is the addressee)
Speck’s gone to Portsmouth, so we’ve got to be good
So we can see the study before we’re dead

Let's go all the way back, a full 200+ entirely wasted, squandered and lost civic days ago – not to mention the 730 ones ticking past before these – to April 18, 2014, and what should be required reading for owners and employees of each and every independent small business located in downtown New Albany.

Grace Schneider’s article in the Courier-Journal on that day was about Jeff Speck's then-ongoing (and since forever-impending) streets study.

The streets study was supposed to have been finished in September, but now it's almost Christmas, and if the city of New Albany actually possesses a copy of the study, not one of its supposed "proponents" at City Hall is saying a single word about it. “Coy” hardly does the silence justice. “Gag order” comes closer.

I’m holding out for “sheer primal terror.”

In fact, when the topic of Speck’s streets study is publicly raised, the muzzles come out faster than Wyatt Earp’s six-shooter, with those who claim that Speck’s recommendations are their first priority are transformed into inward and outward censors, seeking only to suppress discussion of what they purport to support.

Luckily, a Third Floor insider explained it to me last week in plainer English:

Two way streets? You won't get them from Jeff Gahan. He doesn’t think there’s a problem, and if there is, he thinks it will just go away and solve itself. He’s scared to death – and he’s getting most of his information from Duggins. All the trust is gone.

Strong words … but so far, amply buttressed by observable reality and the administration’s own bizarrely frank admissions. For the benefit of those readers who own and operate businesses downtown, only one brief pull from Schneider’s article is necessary.

Walkability advocate studying New Albany street grid

(Speck) said he expects to recommend removing all one-way streets and converting them to two-way because "the data shows very clearly (one-way streets) hurt businesses."

Granted (and ranted), we’ve known since the Reagan administration that mayoral teams in New Albany simply do not have economic development plans for downtown, although it is striking that in the past, “lifer” luminaries like the since-deposed Carl Malysz would at least offer periodically creative lies to the contrary: “That’s DNA’s job,” or “Mainland Properties should do the trick for a mere $15 million.”

In today’s Down Low New Albany, various functionaries can do little better than make limp excuses, assuming they can be roused to so much as even try. In fact, they seldom do.

The polar Inuit have fewer words to describe "snow" than Mr. Duggins possesses excuses as to why a downtown economic development plan isn’t only implausible on his watch, but impossible.

But please, read Schneider’s paragraph again.

If one-way streets hurt businesses, then removing them helps businesses.

And, by readily logical extension, if helping businesses is a function of economic development – and this seems both reasonable and widely accepted – then simply removing one-way streets and retrofitting them into two-way streets is a function of economic development.

Are you still with me, Mr. Duggins? I know, I know ... books, reading and all that shit.

Two-way streets are economic development tools of the precise sort this administration persistently denies it can manage to conceive.

Two-way streets stand to lift all boats, pro-actively, without the need for selective interpretation and random political awards.

In short, the Gahan administration need only calm and retrofit the city’s streets to rightly lay claim as steward of the only discernible downtown economic development plan in recent memory.

And yet, not only does it obfuscate and delay consideration of Speck's streets study, owing almost surely to the coming election cycle, it also refuses to speak aloud about any of it, seemingly terrified of its own shadow ... or, perhaps, more pathetically, of its own Luddite supporters among locally unreconstructed Dixiecrats.

But there’s even more.

Walkability is a key component of any rational definition of “quality of life,” providing “better access” to all users and enhancing “public safety” in the process.

The ripple effects of any and all measures promoting walkability, as forcefully advocated by Speck (traffic calming, complete streets, two-way traffic and other measures to support increased levels of walking and bicycling) would extend into the neighborhoods nearest the city center. Walkability actively supports other revitalization efforts, not negates them in the fashion of the defeatism inherent in one-way arterial streets.

According to Richard Florida, just last week:

Walkability is no longer just an ideal. The evidence from a growing body of research shows that walkable neighborhoods not only raise housing prices but reduce crime, improve health, spur creativity, and encourage more civic engagement in our communities.

As an aside, kindly note an instance of supreme irony: In their zeal to defend the Main Street Improvement Project beautification boondoggle, some friends among home owners living on the street have taken to contesting my assertion that they’ve been the prime beneficiaries of selective largesse, in the sense that any street changes benefitting walkability, even those botched as thoroughly as John Rosenbarger’s use of state money to butcher theirs, still will have the effect of raising property values. If not, the “improvement” project is more indefensible than we reckoned, correct?

The opportunity cost of Jeff Gahan’s neglect is irrefutable, and the evidence to support my position is overwhelming. 

When cornered periodically into stating a position, Gahan’s team insists it believes the evidence, and intends to implement every last one of Speck’s recommendations – when, and if, the study ever materializes to provide them with requisite political cover.

However, it is precisely this interminable wait for political cover, and damningly, this element of wasted time, that should be at the forefront of each downtown business person’s and surrounding neighborhood resident’s mind, because contrary to the administration’s feeble protests, there most certainly is something it can do in terms of economic development downtown: Remove one-way streets.

At a time when times are tough, can there be any excuse for a doctor waving a prescription before an ill person’s eyes, all the while saying, “I’ve got just what you need to help you feel better, but you can’t have any just yet, and we’d rather not talk about it, so don't ask. Maybe later. Try to stay alive, okay?”

One month ago, David Duggins told me that if City Hall publicly touted the benefits of two-way streets for independent small businesses, the mayor’s team would be blamed for the failure of just one business.

But if City Hall already knows the answer and perpetually procrastinates, then how many businesses has it already caused to die?

Tell us, Mr. Duggins.

How do you defend such abject and purposeful neglect of the “economic development” brief you pretend to carry?

Not to be giggled away like a hung over frat boy over a recuperative Miller Lite longneck, but for attribution?

Not privately, but aloud.

To the very business owners you’re so poorly serving.

ON THE AVENUES REWOUND: How many businesses already have died because of City Hall’s street grid procrastination?

ON THE AVENUES REWOUND: How many businesses already have died because of City Hall’s street grid procrastination?

A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.

Speck's downtown street network proposal finally was released early in 2015, only to be shredded one page at a time for use as toilet paper by a captive Board of Works charged by Mayor Jeff Gahan with gutting and delaying it during an election year.

As recently as this week, Gahan was unable to take a substantive public position on a topic (two-way streets) that he is disinterestedly willing to concede addresses public safety, but seeks to defer until long after his presumed political re-enthronement -- never mind all the promises he made four years ago to me and others in downtown business community as to his eagerness to support them with precisely this long overdue and fundamental infrastructure improvement.

It's been a cynical gamble. If Gahan genuinely understands that traffic speeds are excessive, and in densely populated urban areas, that speed surely kills, then every moment of delay in implementing a solution comes with the risk of death and injury.

Concurrently, if he grasps the empirical record of success in other locales of assisting local independent business growth through street grid reform, he's actively abetting daily infrastructure conditions that work against economic development.

The following was published on December 14, 2014. Almost a year has passed.

What has been the opportunity cost of Jeff Gahan's cowardice?

---

Oh where oh where, can our Speck study be?
(There’s no hope if Duggins is the addressee)
Speck’s gone to Portsmouth, so we’ve got to be good
So we can see the study before we’re dead

Let's go all the way back, a full 200+ entirely wasted, squandered and lost civic days ago – not to mention the 730 ones ticking past before these – to April 18, 2014, and what should be required reading for owners and employees of each and every independent small business located in downtown New Albany.

Grace Schneider’s article in the Courier-Journal on that day was about Jeff Speck's then-ongoing (and since forever-impending) streets study.

The streets study was supposed to have been finished in September, but now it's almost Christmas, and if the city of New Albany actually possesses a copy of the study, not one of its supposed "proponents" at City Hall is saying a single word about it. “Coy” hardly does the silence justice. “Gag order” comes closer.

I’m holding out for “sheer primal terror.”

In fact, when the topic of Speck’s streets study is publicly raised, the muzzles come out faster than Wyatt Earp’s six-shooter, with those who claim that Speck’s recommendations are their first priority are transformed into inward and outward censors, seeking only to suppress discussion of what they purport to support.

Luckily, a Third Floor insider explained it to me last week in plainer English:

Two way streets? You won't get them from Jeff Gahan. He doesn’t think there’s a problem, and if there is, he thinks it will just go away and solve itself. He’s scared to death – and he’s getting most of his information from Duggins. All the trust is gone.

Strong words … but so far, amply buttressed by observable reality and the administration’s own bizarrely frank admissions. For the benefit of those readers who own and operate businesses downtown, only one brief pull from Schneider’s article is necessary.

Walkability advocate studying New Albany street grid

(Speck) said he expects to recommend removing all one-way streets and converting them to two-way because "the data shows very clearly (one-way streets) hurt businesses."

Granted (and ranted), we’ve known since the Reagan administration that mayoral teams in New Albany simply do not have economic development plans for downtown, although it is striking that in the past, “lifer” luminaries like the since-deposed Carl Malysz would at least offer periodically creative lies to the contrary: “That’s DNA’s job,” or “Mainland Properties should do the trick for a mere $15 million.”

In today’s Down Low New Albany, various functionaries can do little better than make limp excuses, assuming they can be roused to so much as even try. In fact, they seldom do.

The polar Inuit have fewer words to describe "snow" than Mr. Duggins possesses excuses as to why a downtown economic development plan isn’t only implausible on his watch, but impossible.

But please, read Schneider’s paragraph again.

If one-way streets hurt businesses, then removing them helps businesses.

And, by readily logical extension, if helping businesses is a function of economic development – and this seems both reasonable and widely accepted – then simply removing one-way streets and retrofitting them into two-way streets is a function of economic development.

Are you still with me, Mr. Duggins? I know, I know ... books, reading and all that shit.

Two-way streets are economic development tools of the precise sort this administration persistently denies it can manage to conceive.

Two-way streets stand to lift all boats, pro-actively, without the need for selective interpretation and random political awards.

In short, the Gahan administration need only calm and retrofit the city’s streets to rightly lay claim as steward of the only discernible downtown economic development plan in recent memory.

And yet, not only does it obfuscate and delay consideration of Speck's streets study, owing almost surely to the coming election cycle, it also refuses to speak aloud about any of it, seemingly terrified of its own shadow ... or, perhaps, more pathetically, of its own Luddite supporters among locally unreconstructed Dixiecrats.

But there’s even more.

Walkability is a key component of any rational definition of “quality of life,” providing “better access” to all users and enhancing “public safety” in the process.

The ripple effects of any and all measures promoting walkability, as forcefully advocated by Speck (traffic calming, complete streets, two-way traffic and other measures to support increased levels of walking and bicycling) would extend into the neighborhoods nearest the city center. Walkability actively supports other revitalization efforts, not negates them in the fashion of the defeatism inherent in one-way arterial streets.

According to Richard Florida, just last week:

Walkability is no longer just an ideal. The evidence from a growing body of research shows that walkable neighborhoods not only raise housing prices but reduce crime, improve health, spur creativity, and encourage more civic engagement in our communities.

As an aside, kindly note an instance of supreme irony: In their zeal to defend the Main Street Improvement Project beautification boondoggle, some friends among home owners living on the street have taken to contesting my assertion that they’ve been the prime beneficiaries of selective largesse, in the sense that any street changes benefitting walkability, even those botched as thoroughly as John Rosenbarger’s use of state money to butcher theirs, still will have the effect of raising property values. If not, the “improvement” project is more indefensible than we reckoned, correct?

The opportunity cost of Jeff Gahan’s neglect is irrefutable, and the evidence to support my position is overwhelming. 

When cornered periodically into stating a position, Gahan’s team insists it believes the evidence, and intends to implement every last one of Speck’s recommendations – when, and if, the study ever materializes to provide them with requisite political cover.

However, it is precisely this interminable wait for political cover, and damningly, this element of wasted time, that should be at the forefront of each downtown business person’s and surrounding neighborhood resident’s mind, because contrary to the administration’s feeble protests, there most certainly is something it can do in terms of economic development downtown: Remove one-way streets.

At a time when times are tough, can there be any excuse for a doctor waving a prescription before an ill person’s eyes, all the while saying, “I’ve got just what you need to help you feel better, but you can’t have any just yet, and we’d rather not talk about it, so don't ask. Maybe later. Try to stay alive, okay?”

One month ago, David Duggins told me that if City Hall publicly touted the benefits of two-way streets for independent small businesses, the mayor’s team would be blamed for the failure of just one business.

But if City Hall already knows the answer and perpetually procrastinates, then how many businesses has it already caused to die?

Tell us, Mr. Duggins.

How do you defend such abject and purposeful neglect of the “economic development” brief you pretend to carry?

Not to be giggled away like a hung over frat boy over a recuperative Miller Lite longneck, but for attribution?

Not privately, but aloud.

To the very business owners you’re so poorly serving.

---

Recent columns:

October 26: ON THE AVENUES EXTRA: Gahan says speeding sucks, but street safety can wait until after he is re-elected.

October 22: ON THE AVENUES: My career as a double naught capitalist.

October 19: ON THE AVENUES REWOUND: Courtesy bicycle to the Hotel Silly (2010, 2013).

October 15: ON THE AVENUES: To the New Albanians, each and every one.

October 8: ON THE AVENUES: There’s an indie twist to this curmudgeon’s annual Harvest Homecoming column.

October 1: ON THE AVENUES: No more fear, Jeff.

September 24: ON THE AVENUES: Almost two years later, Mr. Gahan has yet to plug in this clock, and so it's time for him to clock out.

September 17: ON THE AVENUES: Dear Neighbor: If you’re tired of the same old story, turn some pages.

September 10: ON THE AVENUES: Lanesville Heritage Weekend comes around again.

September 3: ON THE AVENUES: When even Mitt Romney can run to the left of New Albany’s Democrats, it's a very big problem.

REWIND: "Gahan now 'open' to street changes in Speck study initiated by ... Gahan."

Jeff Gahan's failures as mayor are profuse and myriad, but none quite capture the epic quality of his term's sheer cost in opportunity to the city as his mishandling of the two-way streets issues. 

From December 30, 2014, just a taste of how incomprehensibly awful it has been. 

---


Just let it sink in.

The City Hall team that brought Jeff Speck to New Albany, initiated his study of the street grid and then went into hiding for eight months now has signalled an openness to the results of the very same study.

You know: Their own study.

This coy, tepid and trembling message presumably has been transmitted by a series of sputtering flares, emanating from the down-low bunker where Gahan and associates have been huddling throughout 2014.

The fact of the matter is this: NAC and associates have been leading the fight and calling the tunes on the street grid reform issue from the start, and these latest revelations merely reconfirm that ideas in this town are not emanating from the third floor ... at least yet.

Let's examine these emergency flares, point by point.

Completion of Speck street study in New Albany imminent; Gahan “open” to changes in street grid, converting one-way to two-way, by Daniel Suddeath (News and Tribune)

NEW ALBANY — The city's administration was hoping to have a completed plan by the end of the year, but still expects Jeff Speck’s street study to be finalized within the next month.

Based on the planner’s presentation at the New Albany-Floyd County Public Library in January, and his outlook on street grids discussed in his books, Mayor Jeff Gahan anticipates Speck will suggest converting one-way streets to two-way traffic downtown.

The administration also expects Speck to recommend removing some traffic lights to replace them with all-way stop signs, as well as the addition of more bicycle lanes.

For Gahan to "anticipate" Speck's suggestions is tantamount to his attending a Reds game and telling friends that he's hopeful they'll use some bats and balls this time. But, as has been the case all year, Gahan lacks the intestinal fortitude to take ownership of street grid reality -- and so he embraces the art of the demure politico.

But regardless of what is included in the report, Gahan and the New Albany Board of Public Works and Safety have the final say over the city’s public infrastructure.

That's reassuring, given that these same two entities have spend 2014 (a) implementing the dunderheaded Main Street "improvement" project, and (b) denying the deleterious ripple effect it has created on other downtown streets.

No official announcements are expected until after the report is released, public hearings are held and input garnered from officials, residents and business owners, but Gahan hinted last week that he may support changing some of the city’s traffic grid.

Gahan, who has suggested that the Speck report will come to us as a rigorously factual, irrefutable and well nigh Biblical pronouncement, suitable not only for a principled course of action, but also providing maximum political coverage, now cautiously reveals that only "some" of it may be implemented, as though Jehovah permits believers to pick and choose among the Ten Commandments if a Dixiecratic donor doesn't like one or two of them.

“We’re prepared to take steps to avoid gridlock in our downtown,” Gahan said, as the study was commissioned in part to prepare the city for the completion of the Ohio River Bridges Project. The Sherman Minton Bridge won’t be tolled, so officials are anticipating a rise in the amount of traffic downtown as motorists attempt to avoid paying fees to cross the Ohio River.

Note that steps will be taken only after the current neglect-inspired gridlock caused by pass-through and diverted trucks.

Gahan said Speck was also hired because transportation is a quality-of-life issue as it pertains to residency. “The study reflects our commitment to creating an environment where people want to live in,” he said.

No shit, Sherlock. Readers, ask yourselves this simple question: Who's been saying precisely THIS, aloud and for attribution, for months -- NA Confidential, or Jeff Gahan and his team?

That's a slam dunk, and not in the incumbent's favor, as those rumbling semi trailers continue to make clear, each and every day.

Busy downtown roads such as Spring Street and Elm Street are one-way beginning at Vincennes Street to the Interstate 64 interchange. When asked specifically about those streets, Gahan again acknowledged he would be “open” to converting them to two-way traffic.

Just "open." Without them being retrofitted, the entire discussion is meaningless, but "open" is as much as a terrified politician like this can manage.

But he emphasized the city will follow a detailed process before making any adjustments.

“It’s also important that people know that none of these changes are going to happen overnight, if they do,” Gahan said.

Once the report is finished, the administration will review it internally, provide an overview to the board of works and schedule at least two public meetings to garner input, he continued.

“Obviously, we’ll make sure that everybody understands what the report is,” Gahan said.

Don't worry, Dixiecrats: Gahan will institute a tangle of bureaucratic obstacles meant to divert speedy action just as surely as the Main Street medians send Tiger trucks down tiny 13th Street, where Warren lies snoring in a hammock as the roadway is chewed up and spit out by extractors -- but what, the Board of Works worry?

Yo: Gahan will protect you Dixiecrats from modernity even as he whispers in modernity's favor to those petitioners of whom he believes there are not sufficient numbers to justify novel approaches like honesty.

Or, in plain English:

"We'll make sure nothing happens until after the election in 2015."

Now THAT's the real New Albany, sadly enough.

Speck meeting required reading list now includes "More than one way to think about urban streets."

The sheer weight of evidence supporting Jeff Speck's conclusions in his Downtown Street Network Proposal is mountainous, and while it is quaintly noteworthy that Jim and Irv found a solitary and widely discredited study financed by petrochemical oligarchs arguing against two-way streets and the like, in reality, the Ten Run Rule of this debate should have gone into effect roughly two years and three meetings ago.

Just this week, Gilderbloom and Riggs were at it again, providing Jim and Irv with more facts to merrily ignore amid the roar.

More than one way to think about urban streets, by John Gilderbloom and William Riggs (Special to The Courier-Journal)

A year ago, The Courier-Journal published our op-ed on the positive outcomes of converting multi-lane one-way streets to two-way traffic flow, and the piece went viral. It became one of the top downloaded pieces by planners, elected officials and public administrators and sparked a movement for citizens to take back their streets.

We found many pluses and no negatives: Traffic accidents, crime and abandonments fell and housing prices had a spike that was higher than any other neighborhood. Mom-and-pop business enterprises had an increase in profits, with more people choosing to move from one-ways to two-ways. Jeff Speck, the author of the New York Times bestseller “Walkable City,” gave a great shout-out on a tweet which likely encouraged thousands more to read it, but we recognized the limitation of our work ...

 ... Obviously, one neighborhood and two streets provide a nice case study but we knew more work was needed to overturn 65 years of city planning that facilitated auto traffic. We needed to go from a micro to a macro analysis.

So we put back on our lab coats and expanded the study for all of Louisville ...

 ... The results of this study not only confirmed our earlier analysis of the positive outcomes of two-way conversion, but were even more compelling.

The following was published here in January, and bears repeating.

---

Go ahead.

Give me that "common sense" perspective.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it?

It's harder for a pedestrian to cross narrowed lanes on a slowed two-way street than wider lanes on a speedy one-way street?

Lanes on Pearl Street, which accommodated two-way traffic for 150 years, are somehow too narrow for two-way traffic in 2015?

You drive on two-way State Street every day, but you think that if two-way traffic were restored to Market Street, suddenly there'd be head-on collisions hourly?

All the parking spaces downtown will disappear overnight?

All these opinions, and yet you're unaware of voluminous sources of factual information designed to provide enlightenment derived from real world experience?

It's your lucky day, because here's a handy visual guide I've put together to help you.

Plenty of articles to read, too.

Destinations Booksellers can help you with Walkable City, the book by Jeff Speck, and you can read about Speck's book here: "Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time” Excerpt.

The city of New Albany has posted Speck's recently released Downtown Street Network Proposal, which explains exactly how these proposals would work in our city, and why they should.

They'd work to connect and enhance progress already under way: Two-Way Streets Can Fix Declining Downtown Neighborhoods, by John Gilderbloom, and Gilderbloom's (and Matt Hanka's) original research. You see, when it comes to safety, Studies Refute DOT’s Claim That One-Way Avenues Are Safer:

"One-way street networks can result in more pedestrian accidents, particularly among children. This effect has been noted in a number of transportation studies published in respected academic journals."

As the streets pertain to independent small businesses, New Albany's jobs generators these past few years, Two-Way Street Networks (are) More Efficient than Previously Thought. Businesses in Vancouver, Washington are well placed to tell Bob Caesar precisely where to put his half-baked, apocryphal engineering theories.

The Return of the Two-Way Street; Why the double-yellow stripe is making a comeback in downtowns, Alan Ehrenhalt (Governing)

... The city council tried a new strategy. Rather than wait for the $14 million more in state and federal money it was planning to spend on projects on and around Main Street, it opted for something much simpler. It painted yellow lines in the middle of the road, took down some signs and put up others, and installed some new traffic lights. In other words, it took a one-way street and opened it up to two-way traffic.

Merchants on Main Street had high hopes for this change. But none of them were prepared for what actually happened following the changeover on November 16, 2008. In the midst of a severe recession, Main Street in Vancouver seemed to come back to life almost overnight.

Within a few weeks, the entire business community was celebrating. "We have twice as many people going by as they did before," one of the employees at an antique store told a local reporter. The chairman of the Vancouver Downtown Association, Lee Coulthard, sounded more excited than almost anyone else. "It's like, wow," he exclaimed, "why did it take us so long to figure this out?"

JeffG (who shared the photo above, courtesy of Revolution News), provides this important postscript.

When dealing with naysayers, it will be important (especially for city officials) to ask for actual evidence, documentation, etc., in support of their position. A random opinion is not the same and doesn't deserve the same weight as well researched, rational arguments. And like Paul, I would ask that anyone's take on the matter be made public. The City can't say, as they previously have, that they've heard from unnamed "people" against it. If you refuse to be counted, you don't count.

Street study? When? Yet again, we turn to Speck himself to receive a straight answer.

In a post yesterday's, Jeff Speck -- he of the the New Albany street and traffic study -- confirmed that his long-anticipated work had previously arrived in town, and was being purged of "typos" and various "errors."

Says Jeff Speck: The New Albany street study has been delivered to City Hall.

Rumored to be among the "typos" removed: "LOL -- what the hell was Rosenbarger smoking when he came up with that Main Street fiasco?"

But seriously, how long ago did it arrive?

The Green Mouse received a second tip yesterday afternoon, this one alleging that the report may have been gathering dust since the first week of November.

Seeing that throughout 2014, and now into 2015, the only reliable source for information about the Speck Report has been Speck himself, I asked him via e-mail: "Yesterday I was told by a municipal employee that the street study was delivered during the first week of November. Can you confirm this?"

Speck's answer, which I appreciate for actually being an answer:

It was, but that was a first draft. The final version should be delivered this week.

There you have it.

Time to turn up the heat, folks.

Says Jeff Speck: The New Albany street study has been delivered to City Hall.

As it turns out, city officials might have partially glimpsed the street study's postmark before reversing course, contradicting themselves, defying the stated wishes of the council, and proceeding with the monumentally counter-productive farmers market buildout.

10 reasons why Jeff Gahan's quarter-million dollar farmers market fluff job is wrong for New Albany.

Could guidance, action and leadership finally be forthcoming?

Main Street IS the truck route. It's City Hall that's the problem.

Despairing of City Hall's congenital game-playing and secrecy, I asked Speck at Twitter:

@newalbanian: @JeffSpeckAICP Rumor has it the New Albany study has been delivered to City Hall; news blackout conditions here. What say you? Thanks.

He promptly replied:

@JeffSpeckAICP: @newalbanian Rumors are true, but there are some typos and other errors to correct before it is released.

See, the truth isn't so hard after all. Speck must not be from here.

If there is anyone in municipal government who'd like to assist the cause of progressive urban thinking in New Albany, NA Confidential would be happy to receive a leaked copy, typos or otherwise. There may even be a beer in it for you.

Gahan now "open" to street changes in Speck study initiated by Gahan.

Just let it sink in.

The City Hall team that brought Jeff Speck to New Albany, initiated his study of the street grid and then went into hiding for eight months now has signalled an openness to the results of the very same study.

You know: Their own study.

This coy, tepid and trembling message presumably has been transmitted by a series of sputtering flares, emanating from the down-low bunker where Gahan and associates have been huddling throughout 2014.

The fact of the matter is this: NAC and associates have been leading the fight and calling the tunes on the street grid reform issue from the start, and these latest revelations merely reconfirm that ideas in this town are not emanating from the third floor ... at least yet.

Let's examine these emergency flares, point by point.

Completion of Speck street study in New Albany imminent; Gahan “open” to changes in street grid, converting one-way to two-way, by Daniel Suddeath (News and Tribune)

NEW ALBANY — The city's administration was hoping to have a completed plan by the end of the year, but still expects Jeff Speck’s street study to be finalized within the next month.

Based on the planner’s presentation at the New Albany-Floyd County Public Library in January, and his outlook on street grids discussed in his books, Mayor Jeff Gahan anticipates Speck will suggest converting one-way streets to two-way traffic downtown.

The administration also expects Speck to recommend removing some traffic lights to replace them with all-way stop signs, as well as the addition of more bicycle lanes.

For Gahan to "anticipate" Speck's suggestions is tantamount to his attending a Reds game and telling friends that he's hopeful they'll use some bats and balls this time. But, as has been the case all year, Gahan lacks the intestinal fortitude to take ownership of street grid reality -- and so he embraces the art of the demure politico.

But regardless of what is included in the report, Gahan and the New Albany Board of Public Works and Safety have the final say over the city’s public infrastructure.

That's reassuring, given that these same two entities have spend 2014 (a) implementing the dunderheaded Main Street "improvement" project, and (b) denying the deleterious ripple effect it has created on other downtown streets.

No official announcements are expected until after the report is released, public hearings are held and input garnered from officials, residents and business owners, but Gahan hinted last week that he may support changing some of the city’s traffic grid.

Gahan, who has suggested that the Speck report will come to us as a rigorously factual, irrefutable and well nigh Biblical pronouncement, suitable not only for a principled course of action, but also providing maximum political coverage, now cautiously reveals that only "some" of it may be implemented, as though Jehovah permits believers to pick and choose among the Ten Commandments if a Dixiecratic donor doesn't like one or two of them.

“We’re prepared to take steps to avoid gridlock in our downtown,” Gahan said, as the study was commissioned in part to prepare the city for the completion of the Ohio River Bridges Project. The Sherman Minton Bridge won’t be tolled, so officials are anticipating a rise in the amount of traffic downtown as motorists attempt to avoid paying fees to cross the Ohio River.

Note that steps will be taken only after the current neglect-inspired gridlock caused by pass-through and diverted trucks.

Gahan said Speck was also hired because transportation is a quality-of-life issue as it pertains to residency. “The study reflects our commitment to creating an environment where people want to live in,” he said.

No shit, Sherlock. Readers, ask yourselves this simple question: Who's been saying precisely THIS, aloud and for attribution, for months -- NA Confidential, or Jeff Gahan and his team?

That's a slam dunk, and not in the incumbent's favor, as those rumbling semi trailers continue to make clear, each and every day.

Busy downtown roads such as Spring Street and Elm Street are one-way beginning at Vincennes Street to the Interstate 64 interchange. When asked specifically about those streets, Gahan again acknowledged he would be “open” to converting them to two-way traffic.

Just "open." Without them being retrofitted, the entire discussion is meaningless, but "open" is as much as a terrified politician like this can manage.

But he emphasized the city will follow a detailed process before making any adjustments.

“It’s also important that people know that none of these changes are going to happen overnight, if they do,” Gahan said.

Once the report is finished, the administration will review it internally, provide an overview to the board of works and schedule at least two public meetings to garner input, he continued.

“Obviously, we’ll make sure that everybody understands what the report is,” Gahan said.

Don't worry, Dixiecrats: Gahan will institute a tangle of bureaucratic obstacles meant to divert speedy action just as surely as the Main Street medians send Tiger trucks down tiny 13th Street, where Warren lies snoring in a hammock as the roadway is chewed up and spit out by extractors -- but what, the Board of Works worry?

Yo: Gahan will protect you Dixiecrats from modernity even as he whispers in modernity's favor to those petitioners of whom he believes there are not sufficient numbers to justify novel approaches like honesty.

Or, in plain English:

"We'll make sure nothing happens until after the election in 2015."

Now THAT's the real New Albany, sadly enough.

ON THE AVENUES SUNDAY SPECIAL: How many businesses already have died because of City Hall’s street grid procrastination?

ON THE AVENUES: How many businesses already have died because of City Hall’s street grid procrastination?

A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.

Oh where oh where, can our Speck study be?
(There’s no hope if Duggins is the addressee)
Speck’s gone to Portsmouth, so we’ve got to be good
So we can see the study before we’re dead

Let's go all the way back, a full 200+ entirely wasted, squandered and lost civic days ago – not to mention the 730 ones ticking past before these – to April 18, 2014, and what should be required reading for owners and employees of each and every independent small business located in downtown New Albany.

Grace Schneider’s article in the Courier-Journal on that day was about Jeff Speck's then-ongoing (and since forever-impending) streets study.

The streets study was supposed to have been finished in September, but now it's almost Christmas, and if the city of New Albany actually possesses a copy of the study, not one of its supposed "proponents" at City Hall is saying a single word about it. “Coy” hardly does the silence justice. “Gag order” comes closer.

I’m holding out for “sheer primal terror.”

In fact, when the topic of Speck’s streets study is publicly raised, the muzzles come out faster than Wyatt Earp’s six-shooter, with those who claim that Speck’s recommendations are their first priority are transformed into inward and outward censors, seeking only to suppress discussion of what they purport to support.

Luckily, a Third Floor insider explained it to me last week in plainer English:

Two way streets? You won't get them from Jeff Gahan. He doesn’t think there’s a problem, and if there is, he thinks it will just go away and solve itself. He’s scared to death – and he’s getting most of his information from Duggins. All the trust is gone.

Strong words … but so far, amply buttressed by observable reality and the administration’s own bizarrely frank admissions. For the benefit of those readers who own and operate businesses downtown, only one brief pull from Schneider’s article is necessary.

Walkability advocate studying New Albany street grid

(Speck) said he expects to recommend removing all one-way streets and converting them to two-way because "the data shows very clearly (one-way streets) hurt businesses."

Granted (and ranted), we’ve known since the Reagan administration that mayoral teams in New Albany simply do not have economic development plans for downtown, although it is striking that in the past, “lifer” luminaries like the since-deposed Carl Malysz would at least offer periodically creative lies to the contrary: “That’s DNA’s job,” or “Mainland Properties should do the trick for a mere $15 million.”

In today’s Down Low New Albany, various functionaries can do little better than make limp excuses, assuming they can be roused to so much as even try. In fact, they seldom do.

The polar Inuit have fewer words to describe "snow" than Mr. Duggins possesses excuses as to why a downtown economic development plan isn’t only implausible on his watch, but impossible.

But please, read Schneider’s paragraph again.

If one-way streets hurt businesses, then removing them helps businesses.

And, by readily logical extension, if helping businesses is a function of economic development – and this seems both reasonable and widely accepted – then simply removing one-way streets and retrofitting them into two-way streets is a function of economic development.

Are you still with me, Mr. Duggins? I know, I know ... books, reading and all that shit.

Two-way streets are economic development tools of the precise sort this administration persistently denies it can manage to conceive.

Two-way streets stand to lift all boats, pro-actively, without the need for selective interpretation and random political awards.

In short, the Gahan administration need only calm and retrofit the city’s streets to rightly lay claim as steward of the only discernible downtown economic development plan in recent memory.

And yet, not only does it obfuscate and delay consideration of Speck's streets study, owing almost surely to the coming election cycle, it also refuses to speak aloud about any of it, seemingly terrified of its own shadow ... or, perhaps, more pathetically, of its own Luddite supporters among locally unreconstructed Dixiecrats.

But there’s even more.

Walkability is a key component of any rational definition of “quality of life,” providing “better access” to all users and enhancing “public safety” in the process.

The ripple effects of any and all measures promoting walkability, as forcefully advocated by Speck (traffic calming, complete streets, two-way traffic and other measures to support increased levels of walking and bicycling) would extend into the neighborhoods nearest the city center. Walkability actively supports other revitalization efforts, not negates them in the fashion of the defeatism inherent in one-way arterial streets.

According to Richard Florida, just last week:

Walkability is no longer just an ideal. The evidence from a growing body of research shows that walkable neighborhoods not only raise housing prices but reduce crime, improve health, spur creativity, and encourage more civic engagement in our communities.

As an aside, kindly note an instance of supreme irony: In their zeal to defend the Main Street Improvement Project beautification boondoggle, some friends among home owners living on the street have taken to contesting my assertion that they’ve been the prime beneficiaries of selective largesse, in the sense that any street changes benefitting walkability, even those botched as thoroughly as John Rosenbarger’s use of state money to butcher theirs, still will have the effect of raising property values. If not, the “improvement” project is more indefensible than we reckoned, correct?

The opportunity cost of Jeff Gahan’s neglect is irrefutable, and the evidence to support my position is overwhelming. 

When cornered periodically into stating a position, Gahan’s team insists it believes the evidence, and intends to implement every last one of Speck’s recommendations – when, and if, the study ever materializes to provide them with requisite political cover.

However, it is precisely this interminable wait for political cover, and damningly, this element of wasted time, that should be at the forefront of each downtown business person’s and surrounding neighborhood resident’s mind, because contrary to the administration’s feeble protests, there most certainly is something it can do in terms of economic development downtown: Remove one-way streets.

At a time when times are tough, can there be any excuse for a doctor waving a prescription before an ill person’s eyes, all the while saying, “I’ve got just what you need to help you feel better, but you can’t have any just yet, and we’d rather not talk about it, so don't ask. Maybe later. Try to stay alive, okay?”

One month ago, David Duggins told me that if City Hall publicly touted the benefits of two-way streets for independent small businesses, the mayor’s team would be blamed for the failure of just one business.

But if City Hall already knows the answer and perpetually procrastinates, then how many businesses has it already caused to die?

Tell us, Mr. Duggins.

How do you defend such abject and purposeful neglect of the “economic development” brief you pretend to carry?

Not to be giggled away like a hung over frat boy over a recuperative Miller Lite longneck, but for attribution?

Not privately, but aloud.

To the very business owners you’re so poorly serving.

I hope Speck is right, even if the political facts in New Albany suggest otherwise.

I'm not sure if my friend and colleague Jeff Gillenwater always approves my quoting him, but the way I see it, we're trying to accomplish something here, and to do so by means of words, sentences, paragraphs and essays intended to espouse and advance, and also by recording local events for posterity. At this blog, we're writing about the bits of New Albany that are important, but otherwise neglected by other more conventional sources.

I accept help, support and succor anywhere I can find it. Frankly, we're engaged in a form of political struggle against institutionalized mediocrity, and it isn't a genteel game.

Earlier this week, Jeff G and I corresponded briefly with Jeff Speck, proponent of walkability and the street grid reforms designed to institute and enhance it. As most of you know, Speck is authoring the study of New Albany's traffic and streets which (as we're told so often privately) will serve as the blueprint for our city's transportation future.

The problem, as I explained most recently here, is that we've been persistently unable to locate elected or appointed officials who are willing (or able) to say aloud what they claim privately to embrace, as whispered in darkened back corridors. I've frequently pointed out that my personal ethos differs with this approach, because my world works like this: If it's true, fair and you embrace it, then you're obliged to own it, sell it, and accept the credit or the consequences, come what may.

It is unimaginable to me that any of us in the better beer business ever would have advanced the cause of "craft" beer by fearfully huddling terrified on the down low.

Back to Jeff G, who phrases it this way:

Official statements about the street grid in question:

• Police department says there is no speeding problem.
• Planning department says there is no heavy truck problem.
• Development/Redevelopment Director says no one is interested in talking or hearing about it.
• Mayor/Board of Works say nothing.

If these folks are correct, sincere. and working in my interests as is, then what is Speck doing here anyway? Isn't it all fine? If it's not, why so many city statements denying problems and dialogue? Which part of this is trustworthy, the denial of problems or the hiring of Speck to solve them?

You'll notice that I'm not divulging exactly what thoughts we exchanged with Speck earlier this week. I don't have his permission to do so.

However, it might suffice to say that his view of the situation here differs somewhat from ours (i.e., he takes their word for it), and that I sincerely wish that he is right, and we're wrong -- although the evidence on the ground here in town doesn't support the faith of Pollyannas of any dimension, from any academic or geographical perspective.

In fact, I'm reminded of an episode of television's M*A*S*H (Season 4; Episode 92). In "The Novocaine Mutiny," Hawkeye is accused of mutiny against temporary camp commander Frank Burns. In Burns' testimony before the tribunal, he is the unquestioned hero and Hawkeye the pernicious villain.

Hawkeye's recollection is the polar opposite, and naturally it is the factual one. He is found innocent.

My point?

Until Wednesday, I'd never considered the similarities between New Albany's public projects honcho John Rosenbarger and the TV character of Frank Burns. Since Wednesday, "The Novocaine Mutiny" is playing out in real time, right here, as the semis and dump trucks whiz past unchecked on Spring Street.

In my heart of hearts, I know that the same old failed suspects are going to botch this Speck reform plan, just like they always have and always will botch reform plans. It's because they have no interest in reform, because they've never been compelled to pay a price for their disinterest. They've forfeited our trust again and again, even if it may not seem obvious from afar.

But maybe Aesop's "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" is a better example.

This time around the dance floor, with the Speck plan looming, Rosenbarger swears he is being genuine about the helpful principles of street grid reform. He (and others) are all on board. They're for it and not against it, and yet they cannot bring themselves to say this for attribution. What I want to make clear in rebuttal is simple.

"Sorry John, but nobody believes a liar ... even when he is telling the truth."

Except that I don't believe he is telling the truth. Why start this late in the game?

---

Drinking Progressively: Let's make it Tuesday evenings, 6 to 8 p.m. at BSB

City Hall is forever mum, so what about the Jeff Speck street study? "Hopefully December."

City Hall is well on its way in delaying any substantive implementation of street grid reform until after the next municipal election cycle.

It's almost as though it was planned to be this way.

Will Jeff Speck's "10 not 12!" axiom apply to Spring Street?

Previously, setting aside legitimate and persistent concerns as to whether there exists within City Hall the requisite political courage for implementation of street grid reform, we speculated as to the future configuration of Spring Street, as reconstituted via Jeff Speck's forthcoming recommendations.

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

 ... Presumably, Speck will advise them to correct the idiocy, and perhaps they will. I'm guessing a Spring Street fix involves two-way traffic lanes at 10 feet, with a slightly wider turn lane in the middle, and the removal of biking lanes, which are largely useless. Should there be lanes for bicycles? Yes, somewhere. Just imagine if we had an actual plan for them, in the sense of actually leading from and to a destination ... but then a traffic lane might have to be changed, and we know how THAT inconveniences Democratic Party grandees.

The photo above tells the rest of the story. Speck himself recently has crusaded very publicly as to the street grid reformer's equivalent of "Remember the Alamo":

It's "10 not 12!"

Not since "Fifty-four forty or fight!" has there been a numerical equation so compelling.

Why 12-Foot Traffic Lanes Are Disastrous for Safety and Must Be Replaced Now: Let's make "10 not 12!" a new mantra for saving our cities and towns

... States and counties almost always apply a 12-foot standard. Why do they do this? Because they believe that wider lanes are safer. And in this belief, they are dead wrong. Or, to be more accurate, they are wrong, and thousands of Americans are dead.

With this background established, yesterday the Green Mouse was fed an interesting rumor: Main Street project lanes soon are to be striped at 11 feet (a namby-pamby Rosenbarger compromise in itself), which is the same lane width proposed for a future two-way Spring Street -- not by Adam Dickey, but by Speck.

Noting that the number 11 does not even exist in Speck's "10 not 12" slogan, how could it be that I've been reading the 10-ft lane width fighting words all across the Internetz, and then see 11-ft lanes proposed for the de facto interstate trucking route currently operating right outside my front door?

Since Speck invariably has been responsive, a trait hitherto unknown to the likes of John Rosenbarger and the majority of cloistered city officials, I thought I'd ask him directly.

Here's the exchange on Twitter.

Roger A. Baylor: Rumor has it that in New Albany, 11-ft lanes for Spring are advised. True? If so, how does it jibe with your 10-ft advocacy?

Jeff Speck: I'm surprised of rumors, since recs are in flux. That said, every street has to make best use of it's existing curb-to-curb.

JS: And I would generally keep bike lanes at 6 feet max so cars don't use them. This may lead to 11-foot lanes.

RAB: City's been talking about sharrows, so I assumed the bike lanes would be ditched. As constituted now, they are useless.

RAB: High-speed, pass-through heavy truck traffic is killing us. Looking for relief any way we can.

JS: Yes, very aware and concerned!

RAB: Thanks; it has been highly stressful.

Interestingly, the Green Mouse's same informant stated just a few weeks ago that the city's real and abiding secret wish is to inflict medians on Spring, as have been built on Main, seemingly precluding bike lanes, and replacing them with the dreaded, ineffective sharrows.

That's insanity, but then again, this is New Albany.

To be sure, these are no more than bits and pieces, leaks and rumors, and they only hint at broader outlines, which we'll not be privy to until the moment, at long last, when the Speck report is finished and the city decides to share it with us prior to doing whatever City Hall already had decided to do -- because that's the way this administration has chosen to operate, and by extension, that's why it has broken faith with those supporting it.

As Speck wrote, it is in flux, and we must wait and see.

The frustrating thing is that bike lanes should have been on Main Street, period. Now that Main Street has been ingloriously (permanently?) botched owing to changes there being conducted politically without consideration for their connectivity to our current dysfunctional street grid, or to any future street grid rendered functional, what is the ripple effect for subsequent alterations?

Apparently one of them is gifting Spring with 11-ft lanes, so as to allow for bike paths that lead nowhere and shouldn't be located where they are, and with all due respect to Jeff Speck, doesn't this only compound the perpetual foolishness rather than ameliorate it?

After all, as most of us can see all too well, the compounding of foolishness is this city's historic mission and legacy. New Albany fails because it refuses to begin at the beginning, and to decide what it wants to be prior to spending millions of dollars on incompletely implemented plans that tend to change with the prevailing seasonal (and political) winds.

As the Complete Street project recently tweeted:

Before we talk about transportation we have to ask what city we want and how we want to live!

That never happens here, does it? You see, what it comes down to is Abraham Lincoln.

If I could calm this street grid without changing any lane I would do it, and if I could calm it by changing all the lanes I would do it; and if I could calm it by changing some and leaving others alone I would also do that.

But it makes a fairly good campaign platform plank ... almost as good as "10 not 12!"

With Main Street's botched deforestation plan almost complete, soon we'll be turning our lonely eyes to Jeff Speck.

When this or any other mayoral administration trumpets its achievements, consider the notion of opportunity cost. Given that there never will be enough time and money to go around, what opportunities were ignored in order to implement those chosen?

Might the time and money have been expended for other more important opportunities?

Shouldn't weighing these pros and cons be a prime determinant in measuring job performance?

If you're wondering why this matters, see Jeff Speck's first of three announcements below. It has taken Lowell, Massachusetts four years to revert the city's one-way streets back to two ways.

In New Albany, we've been talking about this for at least a decade, as three successive mayors have elevated foot-dragging on city streets to the level of Olympic sport ... or, at the very least, to that of synchronized swimming, assuming the aquatic center allows it.

If one feels, as I do, that completed and calmed two-way streets are the single best coordinated grassroots strategy for encouraging the overall revival of downtown New Albany, then numerous other uncoordinated projects ostensibly intended to achieve the same end, while perhaps classifying as "wants", have not been "needs", and have cost us the opportunity to get our streets right following fifty years of suburban-inspired doltishness.

Among other reasons, this lot opportunity is why the Main Street project's Ceausescuesque, grandiose waste is so appalling, but trust me ... Main Street's epic fail goes much further.

Although it seems as though the release date for Jeff Speck's street study keeps being pushed back, some day it finally will land. Even if the current administration honors its understated pledges and agrees to implement Speck's findings, Lowell's experience shows that this might take many years.

And New Albany has wasted these same four years, three consecutive times.

OK, you know I only write when I've got some important news ...

Three neat things to report this time:

1. Well it took 4 years -- a blink of the eye in Planner Time -- but Lowell, MA, where we did our 2010 Downtown Evolution Plan, has reverted the majority of its one-way system back to two way.  The switch went off "without incident," and merchants are already seeing a difference.

Here's are some excerpts from my talk there this month:
http://www.lowellsun.com/todaysheadlines/ci_26655793/downtown-redevelopment-hailed-at-lowell-plan-breakfast

2. We submitted our Downtown West Palm Beach Walkability Study in September.  This is our best yet.  Read it here:
http://walkablewpb.com/reference-documents/downtown-walkability-study/

You can also see my full presentation here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04Rh_pmu7tE

3. Finally, just dropped this week, my first article in ages.  I wrote it because I had to:  Ten Not Twelve!  A design mantra we can all support.  It's gotten a lot of attention, but it needs more.  Please share it if you agree:
http://www.citylab.com/design/2014/10/why-12-foot-traffic-lanes-are-disastrous-for-safety-and-must-be-replaced-now/381117/

That's enough for now.  There's more good stuff on the website:
http://jeffspeck.com

Thanks for listening.  Let me know if you don't want any more of these emails.

Ten Not Twelve!
JBS

Speck speaks: When will the street study be finished?

Yesterday morning, it occurred to me that since more than one city employee has asked me when Jeff Speck's New Albany street study would be finished, I might as well ask him, myself, give that city hall has been silent about the study from the moment it was commissioned.

I replied.

He noticed. I hope his people are noticing the trucks, too.

U of L Prof. Gilderbloom on Mayor Fischer's minions: "They will never use this research; they will instead belittle our efforts."

This is a fascinating juxtaposition. Insider Louisville's piece on the beneficial effects of two-way streets, as documented by Dr. Gilderbloom's team in an exhaustive two-year study, was so encouraging that I read excerpts of it to the seven of nine city council members present during last week's meeting. Now Gilderbloom suggests that New Albany's experience with dumbed-down politicos and self-interested planners isn't at all unique.

U of L Prof. Gilderbloom slams Mayor Fischer for ignoring his research, by David Serchuk (Insider Louisville)

Earlier this week we posted a story about how Louisville converted a pair of one-way streets into two-way streets, which had mostly beneficial effects: fewer accidents, increased property values, and reduced crime.

These results were measured by a team led by Dr. John Gilderbloom, who directs the University of Louisville’s Center for Sustainable Urban Neighborhoods. In 2013 he also won the Presidential Medal for Distinguished Faculty Award for Research.

We asked Gilderbloom a few logical follow-ups via email, including: What does the city make of his research? Is the city planning on using his research? And does he know of any additional two-way street conversions to come?

To our surprise, Gilderbloom fired back what sounds like a salvo in an ongoing (but until now hidden) feud between the city and the main urban planning research body at U of L. Or at least it’s a feud from Gilderbloom’s point of view.

This is noteworthy in a city that often seems to bend over backwards to cater to U of L’s needs, especially when those needs pertain to its basketball team. But, according to Gilderbloom, his team has not benefited; in fact, he claims the city is thumbing its nose at it.

Why is it that any time someone speaks of anti-intellectualism in the context of Louisville municipal government, Mayor Fischer's name invariably appears in the headline?

However, in fairness, note that the charges being made by Gilderbloom ("They will never use this research; they will instead belittle our efforts") make reference to the mayor's office and team in relentlessly plural ways. Only the title points directly to the top dog. Perhaps Fischer is like the Tsars of old, detached from reality, and sheltered from the hard truths by conniving, Machiavellian underlings.

You know, just like Kerry Stemler.

Are there any additional plans to make more two way streets in Louisville based on your research?

Who knows? I know that the Mayor’s staff at a public meeting told me that the speedy multi-lane one-ways moving through struggling neighborhoods in west Louisville, Portland, Old Louisville and Smoketown will not be changed. The traffic engineer for the City said: “This is not part of the discussion.” I am glad to hear that NuLu will get improved, calm streets. I think there might be a few more streets downtown but it’s got to extend into nearby neighborhoods. Louisville has the potential to be one of the greatest comeback cities in the nation; yet the Mayor’s staff is driving away from this opportunity and acting like it’s the 1950s.

Jeff Speck in New Albany: “I’ve never seen anything like that in America."

Jeff Speck's reconnoitering of New Albany eluded the News and Tribune's grasp, although the more "local" of our two chain newspapers did manage a bold pitch for Christianity.

Fortunately, the C-J's Grace Schneider catches the priceless moment when Speck repeats the timeless question most asked about this city in general terms:

OMG, what were they thinking?

(Incidentally, the answer is pure Ockham: They weren't.)

As a side note, given the historic obliviousness of the populace, Grace's piece will be the first inkling for many that such a concept as walkability even exists. The reaction may be instructive. Or, this being Apathy City, it may not.

Walkability advocate studying New Albany street grid

City planner and architectural designer Jeff Speck stood in the middle of Market Street in New Albany last Wednesday, making notes and puzzling over something he claims he’d never seen before in his travels to dozens of cities each year.

Two short blocks between his position at Hauss Square and State Street feature a grassy, shrub-filled median dividing Market Street — with both lanes of traffic running eastbound.

“I’ve never seen anything like that in America,” Speck said, because medians imply two-way traffic.