Purely accidental first-year councilman David Aebersold famously expounded at depressing length about the weight of his ignorance of the modern world in a September 28 letter to the Courier-Journal.
Today, urban planning is dominated by an anti-auto mentality that overrides common sense. In efforts to discourage driving, planners are willing to accept more congestion – which is what will happen on Spring Street – more air pollution and greater numbers of accidents, a result of changing one-way streets to two-way streets. Traffic speeds are independent of whether the streets are one-way or two-way and can probably be controlled on one-way street through the use of coordinated signals that can be set for almost any desired speed.
What the hell — not everyone can read and research and learn, and the older you get, the less you care to try, although come to think of it, David’s not the only confused Aebersold in town. Jamey doesn’t grasp it, either, but what can we expect from jazz musicians (wink wink, nudge nudge)?
I’m not sure what can be done about the syncopation of auto-centrism, but in my usual helpful spirit, here’s something that might assist the accidental councilman in comprehending little shards of the reality outside his gated preserve — and not only that, it’s completely safe for him to peruse because the publication is called THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE.
I’ve highlighted just one pertinent suggestion. You’re welcome.
How to Brew a Midwest Downtown Renaissance, by John Burtka III (The American Conservative)
1. Infrastructure. Local government music t invest in downtown roads, streetscapes, placemaking, parks, and trails. If you have the vestiges of 1970s urban planning, such as roads turned into walking plazas or one-way bypasses speeding potential customers around and away from downtown businesses, you must remove these impediments to growth now. Many of these projects can take advantage of federal and state incentives that already exist.
See, that wasn’t so bad … was it?
