Friday, April 11, 2014

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?

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