And Yet

On new Year's Eve I had occasion to go over to Louisville in the late afternoon. I exited I-64 at the Ninth Street Exit. A general pre-revelry torpor was in place. The one-way street, Market headed east, was fairly deserted. I thought about the on-going discussion of converting one-way streets to two-way here in new Albany.

In relative terms, Louisville  places higher on the happ'nin scale than does New Albany. They have an orchestra,  theaters, a minor league ball park, a major league bat museum. They have a Nineteenth Century steamboat named after the city. They have lots more people than we do. They are the Possibility City. And yet, sitting in my car, at a red light, on New Year's Eve 2013, the sinew of the city seemed to show through more than usual, and it didn't present a particularly attractive picture of the city. That Ninth Street exit from the interstate highway is a MAJOR entrance into the city. That is the location of what was once seen as an innovative catalyst for downtown revitalization in Louisville, the Glassworks. And yet, aside from the seasonal, temporal, ghost town vibe at that exit, I glimpsed, however fleetingly, the poor choices the city planners had made in Louisville when they threw  the city's prospects overboard to accommodate the automobile.

Ninth  Street/Roy Wilkins Boulevard and the intersection with Market Street is little more than pipes to get people off the expressway or onto the expressway. It is the transportational equivalent of plumbing. Quick, where's most of your plumbing? It's in the basement, or behind the walls. It's out of sight. That's because it's ugly. It's functional, and necessary, but it's ugly. House builders could have chosen, when plumbing replaced outhouses, to simply put bath tubs and toilets in the living or dining rooms, since that provides the most convenient access to those necessary utilities. But the builders knew that if they forced residents of the houses they built to share those rooms with the hygienic functions, of bathing, and so forth, the rooms would soon be seen as unattractive, and would, therefore, fall into disuse, thus devaluing the houses they had built.

Downtown Louisville is so completely given over to the one-way street pattern that it seems nearly beyond rescue from the ill-effects of that traffic mindset. And yet, one hopeful enclave, the eastern section of Market Street, (the name of which I recoil from using, because it grates on my brain, like fingernails on a blackboard-Nulu) shows strong signs of vitality. Is it coincidental that this section of Market Street is also the section of the street with two way traffic? Is it coincidental that pedestrians make that part of downtown attractive to entrepreneurs and independent businesses?

I drive in, and through Louisville a lot, nearly every day. I can't begin to name all of the streets that are limited to one-way traffic. It seems to be a virus that sprang up in that city long ago, and one which was deemed incurable. Because the one-way virus is so widespread, I can sympathize with Louisville's transportation people to some extent. And yet, so much of the city's real estate is held back by the dominance of the car that, surely people can see it. They must see that while block after block of the downtown has been razed to provide resting space for cars, the yawning gaps kill the desire to walk around the town. They also must see that the one way pattern of arterial streets makes it difficult and unpleasant to walk around the inner city. Is it any wonder that the city has such a hard time recapturing its vitality, which is so closely tied to accommodating pedestrians?

Were Louisville to try to unwind the knot in which one way streets has tied up the downtown, it would face a  daunting task because of the sheer size of the city.  And yet, across the river from this example of a large city held back by poor transportation planning, sits a small town also held back by some of the same decisions.

New Albany made, arguably, a rational decision to shift its streets to one way traffic back in the days before the interstate highway was built. Some may have seen that it was necessary to funnel traffic more efficiently onto the new highway on the Sherman Minton Bridge. New Albany's task of untying the knot of one-way traffic is so much easier than the task facing Louisville. And yet, we appear content to hold onto the traffic patterns of the past, long after the dubious need for one way streets receded.

New Albany's downtown, back then, was holding its own, it didn't face competition from the sprawl malls. It offered a variety of goods and services, so much so that planners may have felt the commercial strength of the downtown would remain unchallenged and that people would continue to go there because it was really the only game in town.

Now, that's no longer the case. The downtown has staged an impressive revival. And yet, it  still needs all the help we can give it. It is still the heart of the city. Because of the newer bypassing opportunities of the interstate, the downtown no longer needs to be buzzed through to maintain traffic efficiency. We now need to put the plumbing back in the basement, and let the downtown recapture its place as a pedestrian oriented center. We need to return the city's streets to two way traffic. We need to encourage walkable commerce. And, we need to provide an environment that invites further, broader, entrepreneurial development of the downtown in order to keep the city in its current upswing.

We need to recognize, facilitate, and capitalize, on the strong, and sensible trend to buy locally, as people see how such local commerce builds a sustainable, place-specific, prosperity for small towns. This trend is salvation. And to the extent that our street patterns, the leeway we cede to automobile convenience, undermine that trend, they must change, or we might miss the opportunity before us. Who can say when another trend will come our way?    

New Albany, as those of us with long histories here know, is slow to change or even recognize the need for change. And yet, Thursday, January 16, a nationally known proponent of reasserting the primacy of pedestrian-centered cities, Jeff Speck, will speak in town to preach his gospel. We should listen.