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.

I ride my bike past Scott TV repair just about every workday. Sometimes there are television carcasses sitting out front on the sidewalk. Sometimes I can see people moving around inside. Sometimes it’s open. More often it’s not.

A bigger mystery than Scott TV’s business hours is this: Who takes a television in for repair anymore? And perhaps an even more important question: Can a modern television set even be repaired by a local shop?

When ride past Scott TV, I usually think of Mr. Jalopy, who I wrote about last year on my other blog. A leader in the “Makers Movement,” and creator of the “Maker’s Bill of Rights,” Mr. Jalopy has become the standard-bearer for a new generation of workshop tinkerers and inventors. There’s one passage in the Maker’s Bill of Rights that speaks to everyone, even those of us who can’t read a schematic or turn a wrench or use a soldering iron without making a subsequent trip the to the ER. This is it:

“Ease of repair shall be a design ideal, not an afterthought.”

That means even if I’m not capable of repairing something I buy — if Mr. Jalopy’s standard is followed by product designers — there’s a chance someone in my neighborhood probably could. And this presents business opportunities for local folks, who have the skill and equipment to repair consumer products. I think it’s much better than the alternative, which is fretting about how to recycle unrepairable (at least locally) consumer products.

What if these items were designed and manufactured to be serviceable and even upgradable, instead of disposable? What if a slight malfunction meant a trip to a local repair shop instead of a trip to the landfill? Clearly there are many high technology items that cannot be serviced outside of very exacting environments. But there are many others that could be, if they were designed with serviceability in mind.

Knowing that a product could remain functional and useful with locally sourced repair and maintenance would allow consumers to follow another of Mr. Jalopy’s maxims: “Buy your first to be your last.”

Monday: A walking tour of downtown Savannah was led by staff from the City of Savannah and Metropolitan Planning Commission, along with volunteers from Pedestrian Advocates of the Coastal Empire. On the tour were attendees of the Governors Highway Safety Association convention including Tom Vanderbilt, who’s done critical work to help America understand Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us). Vanderbilt wrote about his experience in Savannah here. Also on the Tour was Dan Burden, the nation’s leading expert on walkable communities.

Tuesday: Burden met with a group of City of Savannah staff representing a range of bureaus from the fire department to Park and Tree. Later, Burden and neighborhood association members visited areas of the Southside that have been seriously degraded by automobile traffic volume and speed that are incompatible with neighborhood streets. Burden explained how traffic calming could address these problems and suggested ways to modify poor street design that stands in the way of greater walkability. The neighborhood visits were covered in the media here and here.

Wednesday: At a public forum, Burden presented a program on traffic calming to about 150 citizens at Armstrong Atlantic State University. Burden used photographs taken earlier in the week to demonstrate problems and solutions, such as on-street bicycle parking.

Thursday: Burden conducted a workshop for members of the city’s new Traffic Calming Committee, which is made up of neighborhood association leaders and facilitated by the Citizens Liaison Office. They were joined by personnel from the Savannah Chatham Metropolitan Police Department, Parking and Mobility Services and other city departments.

Friday: Savannah Mayor Otis Johnson led the September edition of the Savannah Bicycle Campaign’s 2 Wheels 2 Work monthly bicycle commuting convoy. He spoke at a press conference in Johnson Square, emphasizing how bicycles fit into the city’s Thrive and Healthy Savannah initiatives.  A new public service announcement, aimed at educating motorists on how to share the streets with cyclists, was screened at the press conference. Bicycle-friendly businesses Jittery Joe’s and Blue Goose Cafe provided coffee and breakfast for bicycle commuters.

Saturday: More than 400 cyclists turned out for the Savannah Bicycle Campaign’s Midnight Garden Ride. It’s always thrilling to see bicycles greatly outnumbering cars on Savannah’s streets, if only for a couple moments. Even bikes at rest provided an important visual clue about how increased bicycling can help Savannah. At the Distillery, where the ride began and ended, hundreds of bicycles were parked in the space required to store only a dozen or so cars.

Sunday: The Savannah Morning News was full of stories on walking and bicycling. City Talk Columnist Bill Dawers wrote an insightful column on Burden’s visit. Adam Van Brimmer wrote about the link between walkability and higher property values and Arek Sarkissian covered the Midnight Garden Ride.

Still, in order to get more citizens out of their cars and on their feet and bikes, we need an environment that is safe and friendly. Other news, this week, of a pedestrian injured and a cyclist killed underscores how far we have to go. Progress toward more livable streets can help reduce the frequency of these troubling and tragic occurrences. Does this week represent the beginning of Savannah’s new era of livable Streets?

According to the 2004 City of Savannah Neighborhood Demographic Profiles report, there are 1,236 households in my neighborhood. How many of these contain at least one adult who is physically capable of  a quick and comfortable bicycle commute to a workplace in the Historic District? Dozens? Hundreds?

What would happen if these folks — joined by residents from other neighborhoods — commuted by bike? What would this look like? How would this affect demand for parking? Traffic congestion? Air quality? Public health? Public safety? Wear and tear on streets? A significant increase in bicycle commuting could really go to work on these problems.

H.G. Wells said, “Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race.” When I see adults riding their bikes to work, I feel a lot better about Savannah’s future. I hope to see plenty National Bike to Work Day.