Have you seen the silliness the Dahlem Family, Davis Electronics and a few uptight white people in Mockingbird Valley are pushing via Bob Gunnell?
Save 42 dot org
HAHAHA.
Because adding sidewalks in an urban neighborhood is a terrible idea. Can’t be having the poors and the non-whites walking any closer to their precious homes. Can’t be allowing the visually impaired to safely walk to Kroger. And can’t be having to drive slower than 65 miles per hour in a residential area.
What businesses, exactly, would LOSE CUSTOMERS because traffic is cut to three lanes and the neighborhood becomes more walkable? It opens the doors to more business. Here’s what’s on the street: gas stations, Kroger, pizza delivery joints, a laundromat, Subway and a two-way radio company that sells business-to-business. And we’re supposed to believe making Brownsboro Road safer and healthier will kill their jobs and drive people away.
Once you stop laughing at it all, you should take a look at their “petition” – it’s a mishmash of Dahlem folks and people who do nothing but speed through Lower Brownsboro Road. Absolutely hilarious.
It’s all being driven by Dahlem and Davis Electronics, which owns Save42.org:
Which is apparently paying Bob Gunnell to push this ignorance on the community.
So let’s call this what it is: white fear. The same thing that drives white flight. A bunch of people pissed off that they won’t be able to treat a residential street as an expressway from their McMansion in a faux neighborhood. They want to speed as quickly as possible through an area that may be a bit more diverse than the East End Ladies Of Leisure (EELOL) they’re used to.
19 responses so far ↓
1 Jason Puckett // Feb 8, 2012 at 2:12 pm
While they’re at it, maybe they can fuel up their flux capacitor, fire up the DeLorean and go back to 1955 to save the clock tower.
2 Mawmaw Beverly // Feb 8, 2012 at 2:18 pm
I don’t get the whole “this will kill business and drive jobs away” mess. How?! I live right in the middle of this section of lower Brownsboro, and I welcome the sidewalks and other improvements, including the narrowing of the road. It is so unfortunate that we have a school for the blind in the neighborhood, yet the residents can’t safely walk to Kroger without fear of getting hit by cars driving well over 40 mph. Bravo to those who have brought this much-needed improvement.
3 jake // Feb 8, 2012 at 2:25 pm
I live in the neighborhood. I’m not visually impaired. And it’s dangerous for me to walk to anywhere on Brownsboro… because there are no sidewalks.
Tina Ward-Pugh got it right by pushing this through and I hope she doesn’t cave to ignorant pressure.
4 Steve Magruder // Feb 8, 2012 at 2:53 pm
I agree with these changes to Brownsboro Road.
That said, efforts like this are likely a direct result of the effort to push these road changes forward that weren’t inclusive of all stakeholders.
When you effectively exclude people from the process, this is what happens.
5 Rosebuds // Feb 8, 2012 at 2:56 pm
My favorite parts are:
“Drivers will be forced to travel the speed of the slowest motorists” – EGADS!!! The horror. This is such a problem on all two lane roads; I can’t *believe* we haven’t outlawed them yet.
“Cyclists will still have to share the road with motorists” – I like the pathetic attempt at couching this as “we’re concerned about bicyclists’ safety and want you to halt the plan to consider adding bike lanes” when REALLY it’s just a way of saying “we don’t give two shits about the cyclists’ safety; really we just want them off the roads so we don’t have to deal with them (they’re so SLOW!) – despite their legal right to be there – but we can pretend to care if that’s what it takes to stop this planned improvement”
Really? Seriously?
Come on, man.
When can we legislate that ignorantly intolerant, self-absorbed people with too much money should shut the hell up and get out of the way of improvements for all?
Whoops; I forgot. That’s the American way!
6 jake // Feb 8, 2012 at 3:12 pm
Everyone was included in the process for years.
The “other side” has refused to show up to public meetings for months.
That isn’t an issue in these circumstances. No one is being disenfranchised.
7 Studs Turkle // Feb 8, 2012 at 6:39 pm
This kind of change has already been rolled out in several places across town. On Southwestern Parkway, between 264 and Broadway being the first. It works well. There is a turn lane that prevents traffic from being backed by left turns and the bike lanes mean that there are fewer motorist and bicyclist conflicts. It is much safer fro people on bikes.
Several years ago there was a proposal to put Eastern Parkway on this kind of Road Diet. If that area of Brownboro is going to cause a freak out, heads are going to explode if they ever institute it on Eastern.
8 G'town Reader // Feb 8, 2012 at 7:07 pm
Kroger fears loss of customers? Twenty (20!) years ago I learned of a very low-income Irish Hill resident with an adult son confined to a manual wheelchair who opted to WALK TO A MID CITY MALL GROCERY, pushing her son’s chair, because it was safer than trying to walk to the much closer Lower Brownsboro Rd. Kroger. (Then she had her first heart attack at an early age.)
9 Conservative Kentuckian // Feb 8, 2012 at 9:23 pm
Interesting to see the term “road diet” used above because that is the term I was going to use. I’m not fully familiar with this section of US 42, but if it has four lanes with no center turn lane, then turning it into a two-lane road with a center turn lane will definitely improve any congestion issues. This was done to US 127 in Harrodsburg and it has really helped.
10 jake // Feb 8, 2012 at 9:35 pm
It’s nothing like 99% of 42. It’s really a neighborhood street. Never, ever should have been four lanes.
11 Steve Magruder // Feb 9, 2012 at 8:55 am
“The “other side” has refused to show up to public meetings for months.
That isn’t an issue in these circumstances. No one is being disenfranchised.”
I’m going to have to disagree.
When meetings are held principally in the vicinity of the changes, and people who are especially interested in changes like this (road diet enthusiasts) are heavily recruited to attend such meetings, these meetings are not exactly inviting to others who may want to question the change, such as motorists who use this section of road as a major artery to get across town.
12 jake // Feb 9, 2012 at 9:08 am
No offense, Steve, but you haven’t a clue what you’re talking about. And not just because I’m pretty sure you’re rarely if ever in that area.
One meeting was held in the vicinity of the project. One. In a span of two years.
You’re talking out of your rear on this one.
For two years, the other side has refused to attend meetings. Have refused to take part in the process. Have refused to study the area.
13 Rplant // Feb 9, 2012 at 1:20 pm
My area is begging for sidewalks to fill in the gaps – three or four houses with a sidewalk, then two or three without, then another couple of houses with one. COMPLETE THE SIDEWALK!!! And in our case, the city already owns the right of way so all they need to do is start construction. We have had multiple meetings and consistently, the neighborhood wants a sidewalk on the one side that already has partial sidewalks – but we never seem to get anywhere.
14 M. E. Bartley // Feb 10, 2012 at 3:54 pm
LOL why are Davis Electronics complaining? The entrance to their business is accessible from Mt. Holly.
I’d love for one of these petition signers to try and walk on the Pizza Hut side and see how it is for people who are blind or visually impaired (such as myself) to try and get to Krogers, much less people who have young kids/babies in strollers. The argument that business will be lost is ignorant. Perhaps hindered some for the time of construction but afterwards they will be gaining MORE business from people who live in the area who will be able to GET to their businesses easier and more safely.
Traffic will be fine if not improved. People who have the luxury of driving complain over one or two extra minutes of driving time make those of us who have to walk everywhere in the freezing cold and burning heat laugh and roll our eyes.
15 Tom Armstrong // Feb 19, 2012 at 10:23 am
Why would meetings NOT be held principally in the area of the changes? It’s a local issue–being able to patronize businesses local to one’s home by walking instead of driving is important to a lot of folks.
The meetings I heard about (yeah, I was “recruited” as one interested in the area’s transit options) were public meetings, held by Councilperson Tina Ward-Pugh as neighborhood “here’s what is happening” meetings. There was nothing private about the agenda–a presentation by the local LMPD liaison regarding crime in the district, an update on Breslin Park, and an update on the reconfiguration.
I even spoke at that session, asking what valid concerns were being presented by folks who were against the idea of the road diet. Nobody there could tell me anything more than, “If you start talking about slowing traffic from 65 in that 35 zone, opponents are immediately against the road diet!”
Steve Magruder, if you have evidence that this was done on the down-low or that it ignored supportable claims that it would be a bad idea, please show support for those assertions.
16 Adam Stephens // Mar 11, 2012 at 1:32 pm
My understanding is that this is NOT about SIDEWALKS. This is about Planning and Zoning approving the elimination of a driving lane on lower Brownsboro Road to CREATE a TURNING LANE into a NEW KROGER GAS STATION BEING BUILT BETWEEN EWING AND JANE streets. Is this not correct?
17 jake // Mar 11, 2012 at 2:19 pm
This project has been in the works for, quite literally, years. If not a decade. Long before Kroger had gas stations. (Something that would benefit Dahlem’s bullshit excuses, as the landlord for Kroger, actually, and they’re fighting the project)
18 Pissedoff@u non wrking leeches // Mar 12, 2012 at 1:25 pm
Well. I do live in the area. for 0ver 30 years. There is a sidewalk and crosswalks. You npeople kill me! You can’t take a major road (Emergency route) and bottleneck it because IT MAKES YOUR NIPPLES HARD TO WALK AROUND… AND GASS GUZZILG TAX PAYING PEOLPLE WHO USE THIS ROUTE GET IN YOUR WAY. pISS off AND MOVE TO CALIFORNIA. PEOPLE WORK HERE aND PAY TAXES! YOU SHOULD TRY. “THE END OF AN ERROR IS COMING jAN.2013. get A job!
19 jake // Mar 12, 2012 at 1:45 pm
Uh, no, there aren’t sidewalks in the area. That’s why they’re being built.
Emergency route?
Bottleneck?
What the fuck planet are you living on?
You’ll need to prove you live in the area to be believed. Unlike you, hack Bob Gunnell and a few racist twits in Mockingbird Valley, I’ve lived in the neighborhood for twelve years.
Put up or shut up, folks.
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