Given that certain of the city council members seem sincere about reanimating the somewhat moribund Public Safety and Traffic Committee, to the extend of convening public input/listening sessions, who am I to withhold my POV? This is a letter I sent to the committee members. Also, for those just tuning in, I live at 1117 E. Spring St., half a football field away from HyperCars.
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To the Public Safety and Traffic Committee,
On July 4, we were returning home from an errand when we witnessed the new HyperCars golf cart, presumably a conveyance deployed to connect to the many satellite parking lots where this high-performance “luxury” car lot (which wasn’t ever supposed to be a car lot; thanks a lot, zoning dupes) warehouses its big-ticket wheeled merchandise, go barreling through a four-way stop on Elm without even slowing.
Given that the speeding golf cart was populated by what appeared to be a feral pack of 12-year-old auto exhaust eroticists, perhaps the joy ride made sense.
After all, for the past few years, which only seem like forever, daily life in my residential area on the 1100 block of East Spring Street has been characterized by cacophonous gear shifting, perpetual revving, incessant vroom-vrooming, and those lovely metallic flatulent sounds emitted at each instance of metallic, orgasmic climax, all of which are redolent of the placid confines of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway or the Bonneville Salt Flats.
The ear-splitting farting sounds remind us that when it comes to high-performance cars, “tampered emission controls (are primarily meant to) unlock maximum horsepower, torque, and engine sound,” recalling that famous time in 2023 when the Indiana Department of Environmental Management found HyperCars had sold vehicles with tampered emission control systems, and on more than on occasion.
This malfeasance was attributed to a sales manager, who took the fall, so as not to cast aspersions on the dealership’s presumably virginal owners, but please, don’t make me laugh out loud.
Normal cars do not behave the way these cars do, and that’s the entire point. It’s also what helps make the street outside so noisy. I understand they’re relocating to the State Street Strip Mine, and it can’t come soon enough. But will the space be filled by another misplaced business?
In any case, upon returning home after witnessing the golf cart charade, I cleaned up the litter deposited each day in front of the house, courtesy of New Albany’s last remaining privileged, hands-off higher caste: drivers, and their passengers, passing through New Albany on Spring St. each day as fast as they can, who apparently no longer are subject to traffic laws of any sort, although through it all we continue to levy fines for non-moving violations incurred when parked cars callously interfere with our vigilant weekly resolve to sweep parking spots, though never the street itself, which means that “street” sweeping is an idiotic misnomer.
Then our neighbor texted to report that a slightly disoriented woman was setting up residency on our front porch; smoking, rearranging our shrubbery and pressing her nose against the front window glass, even if she was somewhat unclear as to which continent she was inhabiting.
We gently sent her on her way, back to the sidewalks and alleys of Spring St., where most days a trail of years variant undulates east and west. At least those with bicycles have sidewalks upon which to ride, where of course adults on bikes shouldn’t ever be, except that these people, while afflicted with the trials and travails of their own lives, aren’t crazy, and they know it isn’t very safe to cycle the laughably inadequate and unprotected bike lanes on Spring, which in any event begin and end nowhere.
Hopefully you’ll notice a common denominator here. Actually, there are two.
First, when a street is treated like a high-speed interstate, it is soiled like a high-speed interstate.
Second, and the direct cause of the first, Jeff Gahan and his merry band of municipal lickspittles have chosen Spring Street to serve as a pass-through receptacle for abuse, much like a single toilet in a crowded barroom, aggregating every wheeled that heeds to be flushed from one side of town to the other, lest any of the noise, misbehavior and all-purpose ugliness spill over into those streets ordained with greater need of beautification and enhancement of property values for the right kind of people, of whom my tribe evidently isn’t.
And yet, my tribe is far more numerous than might seem apparent. In reality, a clear majority of Spring St. between Gahan’s “Ghost of Rocky Topped Dam,” and the vicinity of East 4th or 5th Streets, is residential.
Ah, but you’re saying “Wait, Roger, City Hall fixed Spring St. when two-way traffic was restored ten years ago.”
Indeed, I’m compelled to make a rare concession here, in that I’ve absolutely no idea how it is even possible to revert a one-way, high-speed, pass-through, refuse-collecting street into a two-way, high-speed, pass-through, refuse-collecting street and actually make the situation worse, but somehow, against all odds, Gahan and his chief minion, city engineer Larry Summers, have managed it.
And now Summers has enabled a profit-making traffic engineering consultancy, claiming expertise in what he failed to achieve or implement (this being calmed and multi-modal complete streets), and in effect monetizing himself for what we paid him to do, which he failed at doing, and never happened.
That’s glorious, isn’t it? Perhaps when asked to prove street calming stress, city functionaries resort to AI images sourced from those AI Data Centers we’re currently seeking to outlaw.
But soon adoring automobile imperialists nationwide will be donating to the Gahan-Summers Car Supremacy Go-Fund-Me Political Patronage Campaign, except that amid all the sheer stupidity, buffoonery and subterfuge, quality of life for Spring St. residents is extremely low, and plummeting.
We’d love to have our property values fluffed up as commensurate with those resulting from the flower-strewn pampering of Main St., where more than one city official who stood to reap the benefits of calming and beatification enthusiastically helped implement those reforms, and didn’t do a damn thing for Spring St.
(Mr. Rosenbarger and Mr. Wood, step forward please and be recognized for your contributions.)
As a side note, we as a city can operate Spring St. in just about any way we please. We don’t, and even though the most recent comprehensive plan contains all the requisite propaganda points, even those minted by national renowned streets expert Jeff Speck, when will these be implemented in reality, given that when Speck included them in his street study, Warren Nash and Jim Rice (HWC Engineering) used them as “ain’t he cute” toilet paper?
Meanwhile, here on Spring St., we’re left with the dregs, like half-assed unprotected bike lanes and non-muffled emissions sound effects courtesy of the Guinness Book of World Records’ number one choice as “World’s Longest Continuous Interstate Ramp,” beginning at the bridge over Silver Creek above Dear Leader’s beloved killer dam, and extending all the way through a still-fragile city desperate for revitalization to the I-64 interchange, with city officials remaining willfully oblivious to the fact that choosing to keep their hands off this street, and allowing anything and everything to “go,” not only precludes contemporary urban revitalization, but actively thwarts it.
But who am I to question one of HWC Engineering’s enduring gifts (not really; we paid dearly for them) to the city: the single worst collection of pedestrian street-crossing flashers devised by the collective mind of engineering monopolists. It’s been ten years now, and just about each week I watch as a well-meaning human presses the beg button and stands confused and cowered as drivers speed blithely pass, utterly unconstrained by their own errant brain-wave patterns or even the tiniest city enforcement effort.
It’s sickening. If city officials were as sickened, maybe they’d act.
Spring St. is a transportation cesspool as currently allowed to exist, in effect, by its own devices without supervision.
On and on our Gahans and Dickeys blather about quality of life, as their engorged sycophants nod approvingly. But the non-policies they pursue in a vacuum aren’t improving the quality of life for those living on Spring St. The time-servers well know it, too. It’s just the depths to which these ward-heelers have sunk absent even the mildest check or balance.
Every single day, the value of my investment as a homeowner on Spring St. is being reduced, or at best, suppressed by the city’s refusal to follow the dictates of its own comprehensive plan.
Now as ever, I fail to grasp why the interests of pass-through motorists, who have absolutely no intention of appreciating New Albany apart from ready and untrammeled access to the other side, and should be driving on I-265 in the first place, should rank above my own interests as a city resident and property owner.
And, as it pertains specifically to HyperCars, I’m guessing there is not a single elected or appointed official who’d tolerate test track behavior on their cul de sac, or in their subdivision. They certainly wouldn’t allow semi-trailers parked in a residential area, sometimes at odd hours, idling while another batch of cars about to have their emissions systems castrated are offloaded to make outsiders profitable.
But they’re fine with it on toxic-ass Spring St.
The trashing-by-design of Spring St. needs to stop. It can stop. We possess all the tools to compel it to stop. What we lack is informed, motivated leadership, and a fair, equal application of governing principles to all districts of the city.
Previously:
City officials giddy as New Albany finally makes Guinness Book of World Records
Welcome to Nawbany, Episode 1: Let’s all fight for something, anything, whatever
