An addendum to yesterday's curious case: "Are we supposed to be sympathetic for a driver who was traveling at 144% of the speed limit?"

And ...

We'll continue posting these charts until all our readers have had the chance to learn from them.

In the meantime, let's have a look at another side of the issues discussed in yesterday's post.

GREEN MOUSE SAYS: The curious case of the speeding ticket, the honest cop, his fuming chief and the city's abject failure to calm downtown traffic.

 ... (The police officer) comes to the window and says “Ma’am, you were going 36.” After I said ok, he said he has to give me a ticket because the chief of police for Floyd County told him he had to write 5 tickets in that spot tonight.

A regular reader raises this interesting point.

Interesting story. Are we supposed to be sympathetic for a woman who was traveling at 144% of the speed limit? I realize that's not the point, at all. But, still. 144%?

When I was tagged onto the driver's original Facebook post, it occurred to me that (a) when the police monitor traffic on Spring Street, they generally do so from one or the other location, and (b) one of these locations is situated where the posted speed is 25 m.p.h., not 30 m.p.h.

It occurred to me to gently make this point on the driver's post, but before I could get back to it, the post had disappeared. Now we know why; the chief of police intervened and the whole matter was swept safely under the rug.

Still, our reader's point is valid: 144%?

36 m.p.h. in a 25 m.p.h. zone works out to 144% higher. Speed kills, and the case we've made time and again in these pages is that in densely populated areas, the very least we can do is have uniform 25 mph speeds, because with the requisite traffic calming measures as suggested by Jeff Speck and others, speeds might be brought far closer to the safer, lower m.p.h. than what passes for safety now.

By the way, when's the last time you saw a semi or a wrecker being ticketed for speeding on Spring Street? Yeah, me either.

Unfortunately, another undisputed fact we've reported time and again in these pages is Mayor Jeff Gahan's complete inability to understand any of this. His interpretation of the two-way streets project was to affix a shoddy veneer of action atop an underlying "business-as-usual" version of nothingness.

Or, to claim victory, monetize, rinse and repeat.

We can fix this in 2019.

Until then, yes, it is fairly common to receive speeding tickets when you're traveling 11 m.p.h. above the limit, whatever the source of the police officer's political directives.

GREEN MOUSE SAYS: The curious case of the speeding ticket, the honest cop, his fuming chief and the city's abject failure to calm downtown traffic.

The Green Mouse leaned back and drank deeply from his gunmetal flask, the one with the engraved inscription by Gilby Clarke, former guitarist for Guns 'n' Roses.

"You know, Rog, maybe this one's so bizarre even by New Albanian standards that you tell the story straight, with the minimum of embellishment."

Well, I'll give it the good ol' college try.

As with so many modern morality tales, it begins on Facebook. The post, since deleted for reasons which are about to be discussed, became known to the NA Confidential newsroom when I was brought into the ensuing conversation by a mutual friend.

Good thing I had the presence of mind to make a screenshot.

Here's the text:

I never do this, but I can’t help myself.

As I was driving down Spring Street in New Albany, a cop pulls out behind me and turns on his lights. I pulled over to get out of his way. He pulls over behind me. I thought maybe I had a tail light out or something because I wasn’t speeding. He comes to the window and says “Ma’am, you were going 36.” After I said ok, he said he has to give me a ticket because the chief of police for Floyd County told him he had to write 5 tickets in that spot tonight. He said others were driving the same speed in front of me, but there was space for him to pull out and pull me over. The officer proceeds to tell me that the Mayor of New Albany is up for re-election and there are tons of political reasons why they do things like this. He said he never gives tickets, but had no choice tonight per the chief. AND for 36mph, my ticket was $165 !!!!

Folks, this is a joke!!!!! If these are the people running the county I live in, I don’t want them to have their positions any longer!!!

So frustrating ......

Shocking, although it makes perfect sense in a demented, distinctly New Gahanian way.

Having failed to implement a panoply of traffic calming measures over and beyond two-way traffic, as suggested by Jeff Speck and others, and with increasing numbers of neighborhood residents along Spring Street beginning to grasp the sheer extent of the engineering debacle, City Hall's improvised damage control is to do what not one street grid reform advocate ever wanted done, which is use police officers better deployed elsewhere to operate speed traps to facilitate the enforcement that might have been achieved with better results through design -- had city officials not been so woefully ignorant of the design principles involved, and determined not to learn anything from the many studies they'd commissioned.

It didn't take long for the post on social media to rouse the ire of Todd Bailey, chief of police.

DO NOT under any circumstances tell a violator I have directed you to write citations. It is YOUR job and to enforce statutes and I will not tolerate any officer giving violators excuses that it is my order that they are getting citations. It is simple to determine who is doing this and in the event you do so you WILL face severe disciplinary action. You enforce traffic laws because it’s your job, not because you have been directed to do so. I have no idea what insanity has led to telling people this but it stops today.

Wow. The pre-election panic by the Democrats may already have started.

The Green Mouse was told that Bailey called the aggrieved party, apologized, trashed the speeding ticket in return for the original post being deleted from Facebook, then had pointed words with the ticketing officer. The memo reprinted above soon followed. 

Let's hope the officer in question, whose inadvertent honesty is appreciated in dissident circles, isn't cashiered. We're already short on police man (and woman) staffing, aren't we? It's a shame available officers are used at speed traps when properly implemented street design might have turned the trick.

Here's another thought.

Gahan's City Hall famously placed Speck's street study in the hands of favored contractor (and huge mayoral campaign donor) HWC Engineering, which fed the report into a nearby sausage grinder and emerged with a plan that has failed to slow traffic, failed to make streets safer for non-automotive users, and failed to enhance walkability.

As such, when the necessary changes eventually must be made, whether during the current occupant's tenure or by whomever follows, will taxpayers foot the bill -- or HWC?

Jackie Green: 'I am not a scofflaw.'

Face it, Jackie; all of us who dare to challenge the established disorder are scofflaws.

scoff·law

ˈskôfˌlô,ˈskäf-/

noun

NORTH AMERICANinformal

1. a person who flouts the law, especially by failing to comply with a law that is difficult to enforce effectively.

Speaking only for myself, I embrace it. In fact, just last week I contested a parking ticket for blocking the street non-sweeper.

The Resistance, Jackie. The Resistance.

Biking advocate: 'I am not a scofflaw', by James Bruggers (C-J)

If there's a bike lane, bicyclists better use it, or they may find themselves in jail.

That's the message a Louisville Metro Police officer gave to bicycling advocate and former mayoral candidate Jackie Green on Friday in the form of a double citation for blocking traffic and running a red light.

Police spokesman Dwight Mitchell said bikes are expected to follow traffic laws and that means respecting stop lights and stop signs. He also said cyclists in Louisville generally must use bike lanes when they are available unless they need to be in another lane to make turns.

"Man Gets Ticket For Not Riding In Bike Lane, Films Himself Crashing Into Things In Bike Lanes."

An old one, but a good one.

This guy tried to explain to the cops that he had to leave the bike lane for valid reasons but they did not want to listen and issued him with a $50 fine.  He made a little movie about riding his bike in the bike lane and this is the result.

Credits: CaseyNeistat and TrueActivist.com.

ReStartled: Without so much as a street sweeper in sight.

Could it be true? A dump truck, actually pulled over by a policeman? I just hope the cop wasn't asking the drive for a job application.

I'm giddy -- giddy, I tell you. Thanks to Mikey for the photo.

The NewAlbanist is jacked up on speed.

And appropriately so.

In the ongoing design vs. enforcement scrum, I've always assumed that someone in the city's upper administrative echelons is able to formulate the arguments in the design vs. enforcement scrum. If the best possible world would be street design serving as an impediment to speeding and recklessness (and making enforcement less of an issue), the worst outcome would be a street designed to encourage speeding and recklessness -- and no enforcement at all.

Admittedly, it might get even worse than the latter, as in Ypsilanti, Michigan, where state highway officials not only did nothing about one-way streets, but actually proposed raising the speed limit.

Seems to me that better design leads to better ways for the police to use their time.

Don't forget the $60,000 hike, coming November 10 to a dangerous arterial near you.

Here are two recent NewAlbanist posts, with survey results soon.

Casablanca on the Ohio

 ... In an earlier post I asked you to guess “How Many Speeding Tickets Were Written by the NAPD Between 10/1/2012 and 9/30/2013.” Before seeing this report, my over/under would have been 100, a number that would have been truly a scandal if it had been accurate. Little did I know that I have been an eyewitness to almost one-third of all tickets written in New Albany. But more on that later.

And:

Do You Feel the Need for Speed?

If the number of speeding citations issued by the New Albany Police Department is any measure, we have some of the safest streets in the world.

Last week I told you about a meeting of New Albany’s Board of Public Works and Safety at which Maj. Keith Whitlow said, in essence, that there is no speeding problem on Elm Street. In “response” to a request by Grace Transue, a resident on that street, the Major ordered one of his officers to conduct a (very) brief survey of traffic speeds on Elm.