“As we choose our next mayor, it’s more important than ever to ensure that Savannah grows into the future and grows wisely,” said Mark Fitzpatrick, Chair of the US Green Building Council-Savannah Branch. “Through this forum, candidates can express their vision for how Savannah can be a leader by demonstrating responsible stewardship of our environment while incorporating innovative strategies as part of that solution.”

“We’ve seen a tremendous increase in the use of bicycles for transportation in the community. The City of Savannah government has been a positive influence in that growth, and we hope this forum allows candidates the chance to address how they will help continue this trend and also make transit and pedestrian options more viable,” said Drew Wade, Chairman of the Savannah Bicycle Campaign. “Several long-term transportation planning efforts are reaching the point where those decisions become a critical part of the community we live with for the next several decades; we need to make the right decisions.”

The event is free and open to the public. For more information, contact Frank McIntosh at 912-272-1074 or frank@bicyclecampaign.org.

Alderman At-Large candidates will gather to field questions regarding their positions on transportation and sustainability issues. The forum is free and open to the public, will be moderated by Orlando Montoya, news producer with Georgia Public Broadcasting in Savannah, and Jim Morekis, editor-in-chief of Connect Savannah. Candidates will answer formal questions delivered by the moderators during the program before taking questions from the audience and from the media.

More information is available here.

It’s hard to imagine a better example of backwards-looking ideas than House Transportation Committee Chair John Mica’s proposed transportation reauthorization bill, which he announced yesterday. It will eliminate dedicated federal funding for bicycling and walking. Mica apparently deems spending in these areas to be “not in the federal interest.” Meanwhile Sen. James Inhofe, the lead Republican negotiator on the transportation bill in the Senate, has stated one of his top three priorities is to eliminate “frivolous spending” on bicycle facilities, according to the League of American Bicyclists.

These merciless cuts are not aimed at reducing the deficit, reviving the economy, creating jobs, improving transportation choices or serving the American people.

• Did the lawmakers consider a national study finds that bicycle and pedestrian projects create 46 percent more jobs per dollar invested than road-only projects?
• Did they consider the impact of transportation spending that will keep millions of Americans dependent on their cars for every single trip they make, contributing to obesity rates that have climbed at least 90 percent in 17 states from 1995 to last year?
• Did they consider the medical care costs of obesity totaled more about $147 billion on 2008 dollars?
• Did they consider the real economic benefits millions of individual Americans derive from using bicycles for transportation?

It’s clear they did not.

Will the realization that it could come here lead to any action besides the emotionally satisfying, but ultimately useless, railing against BP and the government that has been our only response to the spill? Will the possibility of oil slicks from Miami to Maine cause us to comprehend our role in this cataclysm? Will it help us to finally understand that it’s our unrelenting demand for cheap oil that made deep water drilling a viable business proposition? Will it prompt us to take a hard look at how we have built our communities and the way we choose to travel in our daily lives?

Here’s an excellent list of 10 ways cities and towns can kick the offshore-oil habit. How many of these are we doing locally? Aside from the wonderful expansion of on-street bicycle parking, spearheaded by Sean Brandon of the City of Savannah’s Parking and Mobility Services department, the sad answer is not much. In fact, some of the ideas mentioned in the list, including increased density and reduced automobile parking, are fighting words around here! Having been shown the consequences of our oil dependency via television coverage from the Gulf of Mexico, can we now talk seriously about our problems and begin to make responsible decisions about how to make our communities sustainable and livable? Or will it take oil drifting into Wassaw Sound to get our attention?

I really didn’t want to write about this again, but it looks like the Savannah Chatham Metropolitan Police Department is casting a June 19 car vs. pedestrian crash as vindication of its unpopular crackdown on jaywalking, which was launched last month. With a headline that’s unusually snarky for a police department communication, “Still Think We’re Being too Strict?”, the press release reports the injury of a pedestrian who “was not in a crosswalk at the time of the incident” and promises, “once released from the hospital, the pedestrian will be cited for jaywalking.

I have no problem with traffic crashes being used as cautionary tales to educate the public. However, I’ve heard from some folks who think the police are using this as a “gotcha moment” to challenge criticism of the jaywalking crackdown.

And couldn’t this latest car vs. pedestrian crash just as easily be worked the opposite way? Instead of proving the need for a crackdown, couldn’t it just as easily be spun as evidence that the crackdown hasn’t worked? After all, the police department’s well-publicized and enthusiastically executed crackdown on pedestrians didn’t prevent this incident. In fact, the latest crash would seem offer evidence that citing pedestrians for even the slightest infraction does not generally improve public safety (which is the conclusion of every item of research on the topic I’ve been able to find). Does it also explain why law enforcement agencies that undertake similar enforcement campaigns eventually abandon them?

Please understand that I do not wish to vilify the police nor do I disagree with the enforcement of city ordinances. I imagine the police felt compelled to do something after a foreign dignitary was killed in a downtown crosswalk, generating international attention. Unfortunately, the response has burned through police staff hours, pedestrians’ wallets and public goodwill for the department.

Meanwhile, the opposition to the jaywalking crackdown has turned out to be a pretty big tent, attracting not only those who question the effectiveness of the practice and the potential damage done to the city’s reputation as a walkable destination, but also those who have used it as a base from which to attack parking enforcement, which is beneficial to pedestrians (and something we need more of, not less). Others see the crackdown as a conspiracy to boost city government revenues. Some even view it as a test case for advancing libertarian political ideologies.

Now into the fray, I’m afraid, comes a third group comprised of motorists, who think the pedestrian’s sole role is to stay out of the way — even in environments that were designed for pedestrians.  You might call it a “a gradual shifting in the balance of responsibility for safety onto the pedestrian” kicked into overdrive and it’s something Bill Dawers predicted some time ago:

“I fear that this recent high-profile campaign targeting pedestrians only reinforced many drivers’ misplaced sense of entitlement on downtown streets.”

When enforcement efforts are aimed almost exclusively at people on foot, it conveys the idea that pedestrians belong at the bottom of the urban mobility food chain. I detect many people are responding to this as references to “idiot pedestrians” and similarly derogatory terms seem to be on the uptick in both online and in-person conversations locally.

All this has distracted attention from the questions we really ought to be asking as a community: What are the best practice models for reducing injuries and deaths and how can we implement them here? Here’s hoping we can take a deep breath, develop sensible strategies for addressing the problem and support the police and other agencies as they work to make Savannah’s streets safer.

Illustration from “Jaywalking and the Invention of the Motor Age Street,” by Peter Norton.

“While driving declined, subways, buses, commuter rail and light-rail systems have reported record increases in ridership. Amtrak, the nation’s intercity passenger railroad, said it carried the highest number of passengers and brought in the most revenue in fiscal 2008 in its 37-year history.”

The cause of the driving decline, it was widely agreed, was the struggling economy. Yet that wasn’t the complete story, the USA Today story pointed out:

“I think when we probe these numbers we’ll find that a lot of people have figured out how to telework or how to go into the office fewer days. And having experienced that and made that work, I think they’ll continue to save the money and the time and effort and reduce some of those trips.”

While the biggest decreases in driving have been seen in Western states, Georgia also saw declines and it’s against this backdrop, yesterday, that Georgia Department of Transportation Commissioner Gena Evans was sacked. According to a Savannah Morning News story GDOT Board Chairman Bill Kuhlke said Evans was fired because she wasn’t cranking out new roads quickly enough.

“Kuhlke said the attitude of the board was that Gena Evans had not done enough to get the agency building roads fast enough. ‘The attitude of the board is: We’re not moving as fast as we think we can, and we needed to make a change to start getting projects out the door,’ he said.”

It’s worth noting that when Evans took the helm of the agency, the staff she inherited was unable to tell her exactly how many projects it had on the books. By April of last year it became clear that GDOT had promised $1 billion more in projects than it could hope to deliver.

There are, of course, opinions about why Evans was dismissed that diverge from Kuhlke’s explanation.

Even before the City of Savannah began disclosing the details of its single stream curbside recycling program late last year, the complaints started rolling in. Additional grumbling ensued after the launch of the program earlier this month. From insistence that the program should pay for itself to griping about the color and size of the carts to fretting about the environmental impact of the trucks that would collect the materials, Vox Populi callers and message board posters and letter to the editor writers took their shots.

Most of these critics, it appeared to me, were subjecting the recycling program to rigorous criteria I doubt they would apply to any other local government activity or service.

Are they outraged that the Truman Parkway is not generating a profit? Of course not. Are their aesthetic sensibilities, so offended by the the recycling carts, similarly aggravated by dreadful streetscapes, invasive billboards or eviscerated tree canopies? They probably didn’t notice. Are the folks concerned about the carbon footprint of the recycling collection trucks also worrying about local parking and transportation projects that encourage automobile use? Don’t be silly.

No, recycling is held to a higher standard that is conveniently relaxed when it comes to almost everything else our local governments do. Me, I had only one expectation of the recycling program: that it would happen. And yesterday, one 311 report, one phone call to the recycling center and more than two weeks after the scheduled pick up date, the contents of my completely full recycling cart were collected. Things can only get better.

There is a bright spot.  Once again, Chatham County, our little coastal enclave of relative progressivity, bucked state-wide voting trends.

The central legal issue before the Court was whether development on land adjacent to coastal marsh, rather than just in the marsh itself, is covered by the CMPA.

You can read more background on the case and the Coastal Marshlands Protection Act HERE.  Savannah Morning News coverage is HERE.  Summer Teal Simpson’s excellent piece of journalism about a related case is HERE.  And if all that isn’t enough, check out the Court’s final order HERE.

Reading about the decision in the Savannah Morning News, I was struck by a quote from the CEO of Cumberland Harbor developer, Land Resource.  He said, “We are pleased with the court’s decision and look forward to working with the DNR and Army Corps of Engineers to finalize our permits so the residents of St. Marys and Cumberland Harbour can finally get the marina they deserve.”

The marina they deserve?
The Marina = the largest on the GA coast at approximately 3.5 miles of floating docks

They = people who are able to afford 2nd homes in the area

Deserve = be entitled to, have a right to

I don’t think that I am totally against coastal development,  but putting our unique, productive and irreplaceable coastal marshlands at risk to create more luxury coastal developments for deserving 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc. property buyers seems like such a ridiculous proposition -especially given the recent state of our economy.

When, if ever, is coastal development okay?
Would love to hear from readers on this . . .

On Nov. 17, within the span of two hours, I received two very different e-mails expressing displeasure with a certain television network for very different reasons. The timing of the e-mails and the common target of their complaints are telling, I think.

Reason One

Reason Two

We face serious challenges that will require cooperation to confront and overcome. When considering these two e-mails, I’m reminded that we are still very divided when it comes to the issues that push our buttons, or at least what compels us to push the button that says “forward.”