“I have found repeatedly that the person that takes their bicycle on an inhospitable street is trying to do the very thing that many complain those in poverty don’t do: get to and from their job.”

You can read the whole post here.

Bill Dawers  has strong feelings about parking lots, which he shares in his City Talk column, “Another parking lot detracts from downtown’s vibrancy” in today’s Savannah Morning News:

“They tend to rend the residential and retail fabric. They repel pedestrians. They generally generate far less economic activity than more intense uses. They create heat islands. They contribute to problems with drainage and polluted stormwater runoffs.”

And he’s not alone in his thinking. Here’s Donald Shoup quoting Jane Jacobs on how parking lots affect the sidewalks they border and the city at large:

“The presence of open shops and people on the street encourages other people to be out as well. People want to be on streets with other people on them, and they avoid streets that are empty, because empty streets are eerie and menacing at night. Although the absence of parking requirements does not guarantee a vibrant area, their presence certainly inhibits it. ‘The more downtown is broken up and interspersed with parking lots and garages,’ Jane Jacobs argued in 1961, ‘the duller and deader it becomes … and there is nothing more repellent than a dead downtown’.”

John A. Jankle and Keith A. Sculle review Jacobs’ ideas about what parking lots do to neighboring properties:

“A kind of ‘unbuilding’ or running-down process was set in motion. Thus, parking lots were ‘instruments of city destruction that could ‘disembowel’ a city. ‘City character is blurred,’ Jacobs continued, ‘until every place becomes more like every other place, all adding up to Noplace.”

And they offer a quote of their own:

“Nothing over the past century in America has proven as disruptive of the traditional urban landscape as parking. Perhaps nothing has made American cities less memorable…nothing fragmented the urban space more than the parking lot.”

It’s important to remember that the preservation movement in Savannah, which has prevented downtown from becoming “Noplace,” has its roots in a fight over a parking lot.

“Savannah was becoming Anyplace, USA and it was losing its soul. By the mid-1950s, the loss of the Wetter House, beloved City Market and demolition threats to the Isaiah Davenport House sparked the formation of Historic Savannah Foundation. Led by seven visionary women, HSF purchased the c. 1820 Davenport House and thus began the organization’s formal entry into the world of preservation and real estate.”

Why was Davenport House being threatened with demolition? So the land could be used for a funeral home parking lot. The question now is how to promote better uses for spaces left behind by buildings that were not saved.

Dawers offers more thoughts (and photos) on his blog.

On the way out of the Gwinnett Street Kroger store earlier this week, I noticed the cling decal, right, on the window. By saving bags, in this case, Kroger means not giving so many away and fitting more into the bags they do, according to the 2010 Kroger Sustainability Report.

Curious about how the 138,825 bags figure was tallied, I called Kroger headquarters and got the answer. Nationwide, Kroger claims to have saved 159 million plastic bags.

“The way we account for bag savings is pretty simple,” said Keith Dailey, Kroger’s director of corporate communications. It turns out that the 159 million bag figure is derived from some 80 thousand cases of plastic bags the company did not order, based on the previous year figures. “It’s likely they did the same calculations at the store level,” he said, to arrive at the 138,825 bags saved number for Gwinnett Street. Dailey confirmed the reduction in bag use was achieved by promoting (and selling) reusable bags and training baggers to be more efficient.

Kroger’s sustainability report also describes the company’s efforts to reduce its energy and carbon footprint, improve transportation efficiency and reduce waste. While the word “bicycle” does not appear anywhere in the 32 page document (I hoped to see bicycles mentioned in the “Enabling Customer Sustainability” section), it’s worth noting that the Gwinnett Street Kroger provides more bicycle parking than any other store of any kind in Savannah. And it’s right at the front door, not out by the loading dock or on the side of the building. Providing ample and convenient bike parking clearly enables customers to make sustainable transportation choices. They should put that in the next sustainability report.

The Greening the Southeast Regional Summit

• Farming and Forestry
• Non-traditional Funding Sources
• Climate Change, Renewable Energy Sources, Food Access and Watersheds
• Successful Grassroots Models
• Green Action Plans for College Campuses

For more information, visit the summit Web site.

What can a business do to become truly bicycle friendly?  The first step might be to correct policies that discourage bicyclists from patronizing an establishment. Providing secure bicycle parking is another way to attract those who shop by bike. To truly make the leap from bike tolerant to bike friendly involves rewarding cycling customers and supporting groups that promote bicycling.  B Street Salon in Savannah is leading the way. According to Savannah Bicycle Campaign Chairman Drew Wade, the partnership with the salon is important for a number of reasons.

“We’re thrilled about the concept. We are encouraged to see more businesses taking voluntary steps toward sustainability, including more sustainable forms of transportation like bicycling. A large proportion of  people who ride bikes regularly are men, and we are especially pleased to have this connection with B Street to promote bicycling as a safe and healthy activity for women as well.”

Read more about it on the Savannah Bicycle Campaign Web site.

As reported by the Savannah Bicycle Campaign last week,  The Savannah-Chatham County Metropolitan Planning Commission and the Savannah Development and Renewal Authority are holding a three-day public workshop and charrette “to examine feasibility of removal of the I-16 exit ramps at Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd and Montgomery Street, and to address redevelopment along the 52-block corridor.” The event is scheduled for Feb. 17, 18 and 19 at the Con-Ed Resource Center Ball Room, 714 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. A flier for this event can be downloaded here.

Eric Curl wrote about the potential for flyover removal in the Savannah Morning News last year. He quoted Lise Sundrla of the SDRA commenting about the economic impacts of the flyover:

“There are social and cultural reasons that support the removal,” Sundrla said. “From an economic perspective, (property values) drop drastically from south of the flyover to the north.”

And Christian Sottile described how removal of flyover would position the city relative to other communities grappling with the negative effects of highways on urban areas.

“The flyover would be another model project,” Sottile said. “In this point in history (its removal) would place Savannah in vanguard of cities reclaiming their urban centers from world of high-speed travel.”

All sessions are open to the public. For more information, call Ellen Harris, I-16 Study Project Manager, 651-1482; or Lise Sundrla, (SDRA)  at 651-6973.

From coverage of last night’s Project DeRenne concept unveiling last night provided by WSAV, WTOC and the Savannah Morning News, you might get the idea that the mood  in room was particularly contentious. I didn’t get that impression. And I was sitting a couple chairs away from a local business owner, who rose during the question and answer session and demanded to know why she felt everything had already been decided. She asked why she was distrustful.

Tough questions. Explaining to a person why they feel a certain way is difficult. Naturally, reporters were lining up to talk with her afterward. Other questions centered on how the project would be funded and if “government money” would be necessary to realize some of the impressive developments depicted in drawings. Another good question.

This kind of skepticism is understandable. When you are looking at one of the most dysfunctional streets in the city, which is edged by some very shabby commercial properties, it’s difficult to imagine a safe, attractive street that’s framed by architecturally distinctive buildings and even parks and monuments. When you have an area that most people want to escape as soon as possible, it takes some imagination to think of it as a destination. Yet getting past what it is to what it could be  is the type of mental exercise that will be necessary to transform DeRenne Avenue from a community liability to a civic amenity. Savannah deserves more great places. DeRenne could be one.

Materials presented at last night’s meeting will become available on the Project DeRenne Web site in the coming days.

A summary presentation for the recent Project DeRenne charrette is scheduled for Thursday, Dec. 3 at 7 p.m. at 131 W. DeRenne Ave. The location, a former NAPA auto parts store, is fitting. The nearby intersection of DeRenne Avenue and Montgomery Street is—as one of the charrette facilitators from Kimley-Horne called it—one of the most caustic in Savannah. It certainly is scary to move through on a bicycle. This past Sunday a letter to the editor of the Savannah Morning News ponders some important questions:

Participants in the planning process as well as the affected commercial and residential neighborhoods need to be aware of measures of success of the proposed plan. Unless plans are tied to outcomes, there is no way to judge either the viability or the effectiveness of any particular part of Project DeRenne or the project as a whole.

I’m confident that city staff and citizens, who’ve been involved with Project DeRenne, understand that a  host of metrics must be used for selecting a design and that those same criteria can be used to evaluating its success.

However, I fear that many may be looking for only one result and that is increasing the street’s capacity to move more cars  at higher speeds. Viewing DeRenne Avenue through the windshield neglects the potential for the corridor and worse, ignores the negative effect the current situation is having on surrounding neighborhoods and the city as a whole. A solution aimed solely at shaving a couple seconds off a commuter’s return trip to Effingham County will surely be even more damaging.

What should the Project DeRenne plan accomplish? Leave your thoughts in the comments section.

As cars and trucks droned by outside, citizens streamed into a former auto parts store at the corner of DeRenne Avenue and Montgomery Street. The purpose of the gathering tonight was the launch of a week-long design charrette focused on the DeRenne Avenue corridor, arguably one of the most important yet troubled streets in the city. Factor in its use by commuters from outlying areas and its importance and troubles become regional in scope and severity.

Facilitators from Kimley-Horn and Associates described the work they had done in Phase One of the project and outlined the goals for Phase Two and, in particular, the schedule for the charrette. Before the presentations and during breaks, participants browsed maps and visual representations of the streets, buildings and other components of the DeRenne Avenue corridor.

In his remarks, KHA’s Stephen Stansbery repeated a mantra that came from the project advisory committee: “Doing nothing,” about the current state of DeRenne Avenue, “is just not acceptable.” Further, he suggested the widening of DeRenne, which has been floated as a cure for traffic congestion, is not the easy solution some imagine it to be. “Adding lanes,” he said. “is rarely the solution in an urban context.” Still, the audience was cautioned, moving automobile traffic must be a central part of the final product.

But what is to be done about DeRenne? Stansbery issued a challenge of sorts, referencing Savannah’s world famous streets, which attract millions of visitors from around the globe. “Why can’t we build a street today that’s great today and will be great 100 years from now?” He said doing so would take courage and vision.

As part of that vision, charrette attendees were given small sheets of paper and asked to complete two phrases:

Right now I think DeRenne Avenue is …

and

In the future, I visualize DeRenne Avenue as…

How would you answer each question? Respond in the comments section.

For more information and a complete schedule of the week’s events, visit the Project DeRenne Web site.

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

The photos above were taken on a rainy Sunday morning in January 2008. I took my camera to Savannah’s DeRenne Avenue to see what it looked like, without the cars. In the public imagination, DeRenne is perpetually clogged with traffic. But, as these photos show, there are times when the street’s six (and sometimes seven) lanes are entirely vacant.

It’s difficult to imagine a streetscape more forlorn. The awfulness of DeRenne Avenue is amplified by the fact that it is a “gateway” to the city and its proximity to residential neighborhoods. In it’s current state, it’s understandable that motorists would want to speed through it as quickly as possible. Of course, the quest to shorten commutes to the western suburbs is the very thing that produced the current sorry state of affairs.

But we, as a community, can and should do better. We could have a street that is safe for all users — including pedestrians, cyclists, transit riders and motorists — instead of one that endangers them. We could have an attractive boulevard lined with prosperous businesses, instead of a street that’s blighted by vacant and poorly maintained commercial structures. We could have a civic amenity of which we can be proud, instead of a dreary urban limbo that people try to escape as soon as possible. We could have a DeRenne that unites Savannah instead of one that divides it in two.

A vision of what DeRenne could be will be on display at a week-long design charrette from Nov. 2-6 at a former NAPA auto parts store at 131 W. DeRenne Ave. More information is available on the Project DeRenne Web site.