"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.

Strong Towns Week: A hat trick by Marohn (autocentrism's cost, invasive semi-trailers and insidious Wal-Mart).

I'm a member of Strong Towns, and suggest you take advantage of this week's "greatest hits" output ...

This week, we are focusing on exposing new people to the Strong Towns message. That’s why we’re posting some of our best content of all time and asking YOU to share it. We’ve set a big goal — doubling our weekly audience — and we need your help to do it.

Sharing our content is one small but vital step you can take to help build a world of a million people who care about our mission. If this article inspires you, please take a moment to share it with someone else.

... to familiarize yourself with the organization's mission:

"For the United States to be a prosperous country, it must have strong cities, towns and neighborhoods. Enduring prosperity for our communities cannot be artificially created from the outside but must be built from within, incrementally over time."

Here are three conceptually linked articles by the organization's founder.

1. "A simple comparison of traditional & auto-oriented development styles. Guess which is more financially productive."

THE COST OF AUTO ORIENTATION, by Charles Marohn

In the United States we've spent the last sixty years reconfiguring our public spaces to accommodate the automobile. The built-in assumption of this approach, especially when it comes to commercial property, is that the more cars driving by the better. In our haste to modernize, what we've overlooked is the lower return on investment we get from this approach, even under ideal conditions. Today we need the humility to acknowledge that our ancestors, who built in the traditional style, may have known what they were doing after all.

2. "No, semis are not a valid reason to build dangerously wide streets."

TRACTOR TRAILER TRADEOFF, by Charles Marohn

... During Big Box Stores Week, I received the proverbial semi-trailer comment. Chuck, I agree that we need to look at street design, but we can only change things so much because we need to accommodate semis.

So logical yet so wrong.

.. Efficiency is one of the core values of our economic system. We don’t care if we’re doing the right thing or not – or, more precisely, our economists assume we are – so long as we do it more and more efficiently. Hauling one big load of merchandise is far more efficient than hauling multiple, smaller loads. Thus whoever can configure their operation to take advantage of this efficiency should win, right?

3. "If cities did the math on these kind of developments, not another one would ever be built."

THE WALMART TROPHY, by Charles Marohn

Walmart builds cheap buildings in order to sell Americans cheap stuff. Joe Minicozzi has documented brilliantly how, the cheaper the store and the more land it wastes, the lower the taxes. The Walmart land development model has taken the concept of "buying in bulk" and applied it to the land in your city. Their goal -- lower every cost -- is directly at odds with the financial health of your community ...

... Walmart buildings are designed to last 15 to 20 years. Simply the city's commitment to maintain the necessary infrastructure extends generations beyond that, let alone the cost of policing and other needed services. If cities did the math on these kind of developments, not another one would ever be built.

"Lorry driver who killed four while using phone jailed for 10 years."

I'm just going to leave this here.

Lorry driver who killed four while using phone jailed for 10 years, by (The Guardian)

Tomasz Kroker was scrolling through music on his mobile when he hit car carrying woman and three children

A lorry driver who killed a woman and three children when his vehicle ploughed into their stationary car while he was scrolling through music on his mobile phone has been jailed for 10 years.

Tracy Houghton, 45, her sons, Ethan, 13, Josh, 11, and stepdaughter, Aimee, 11, died instantly when Tomasz Kroker drove his lorry into their car at 50mph. Their car was shunted underneath the back of a heavy goods vehicle and crushed to a third of its size.

An hour earlier, Kroker, 30, had signed a declaration to his employer promising he would not use his phone at the wheel.

Why must the city of New Albany wait to take control of its own lawless street grid?

Over at The 'Ville Voice, Jake makes a comment quite applicable to New Albany's seemingly unreformable one-way street grid. It begins innocuously ...

Hoping to slow traffic and make the ride easier and safer for bicyclists and pedestrians, city officials are putting a handful of local streets on a “road diet.” 

 ... before honing in for the kill:

Since these streets aren’t used by East Enders trying to speed through what they perceive as the ghetto, it shouldn’t be too big of a deal. [C-J/AKN]

That's the essence of it: Those who don't actually live there, complaining vociferously because they've been slightly inconvenienced during the daily speed-through.

And yet, even as we await the forthcoming Jeff Speck street study, the city of New Albany is unable (read: unwilling) to so much as attempt enforcement when it comes to daily ordeal of phenomenons such as the escalating heavy truck traffic on Spring Street.

Granted, an attitude of "let's wait for Speck" is reasonable if (a) the study he produces will be taken seriously, apart from the sniffing of Democratic Party grandees -- by no means assured given the terrified timidity of the ruling elite -- and (b) if it means waiting just a bit on political patronage projects like the farmers market payback.

But the current daily situation on Spring Street is patently unsafe, and getting more so by the day ... so, must the city "wait for Speck" to discharge its bare minimum obligation to ensure that its citizenry isn't squashed like bugs on an unregulated arterial street?

Or must we wait ... again ... for uncounted years? The city can take control of the streets as they are, right now, anytime it chooses. It does not choose.

Why is that?

Just your basic everyday "planned" occurrence on Spring Street -- right, John?

As the East Main Street Deforestation Project progresses, we're seeing more and more of these.

The truck was moving so quickly that even after spotting it a block away, I almost was unable to squeeze off an iPhone image before it passed. Contrast the hurtling steel overkill on a residential streets with the quaint poignancy of that bike lane in the foreground, of which John "My Way IS the Highway, So Long As It Is Your Street and Not Mine" Rosenbarger was so inordinately proud when recounting his many lifetime planning achievements at the FAN Fair earlier this year.

Of course, it's the second of two bike lanes, both pointed in exactly the same direction on opposite sides of a one-way arterial street intended to enable this truck's excessive speed, and to utterly defeat livability in a neighborhood in desperate need of federal stabilization funding -- bike lanes leading from nothing, to nothing, as enabled by the nothingness of the third England Doug regime.

Think of this truck at 50 mph on an unenforced street as the cascading storm water eroding one's nice garden plot, and thus washing away any megabuck efforts at stabilization, and then ask yourself this question: Is it really the sort of photo you'd point to as evidence of your career achievement?

Ah, the blessings of one-party rule.

By the way, are there any?

Monster trucks and the street grid.

I was walking westbound on Spring Street this morning, approaching Sweet Stuff, when I saw three Padgett Inc. trucks in a row turn onto Spring from 4th.

Each of the trucks was as long as Spring Street is wide, meaning that to navigate the turn, the cabs very nearly were onto the sidewalk on the south side of the street.

Rather obviously, a two-way street would complicate this maneuver. It wouldn't make it impossible, just more difficult.

Watching this prompts a few observations. They may or may not be related.

I've no beef with Padgett, even when all the GOP signs are merrily festooned on its expansive fence during election season. Funny, but one time there were Irv Stumler placards there, and he was a Democrat.

Yes, it's a free enterprise kind of country (except when it isn't, right Kerry Stemler?), and we've also had many discussions in the past about which sort of businesses are appropriate in a downtown setting -- more specifically, in a revitalizing downtown setting.

When and if the city gets serious about its street grid, which increasingly looks to be long AFTER it's already too late, what clout will a company like Padgett bring to the table?

Will we be compelled to adapt a pedestrian-friendly downtown to the needs of businesses like Padgett?

I don't know the answers. But questions are good.