It’s important to remember that some people don’t have that option. Because of financial, health or other reasons, bicycles are not alternative transportation, but transportation plain and simple. The rest of us, who do have the option to drive, may be curious about the beneficial aspects of riding a bike to work. If there’s one day to give it a try, it’s this Friday. National Bike-to-Work Day will be observed in Savannah with a 2Wheels 2Work bicycle convoy, sponsored by the Savannah Bicycle Campaign, The City of Savannah and the Chatham Environmental Forum. Bicycle commuters will enjoy free coffee from Jittery Joe’s and the company of other cyclists. Full details are available on the Savannah Bicycle Campaign Web site.

Standing in Ellis Square yesterday evening, it was a little difficult to remember the ugly parking garage that occupied the square for decades. It was even harder to imagine more than 1,000 parking spaces below all the grass, trees and people having fun. And there were plenty of people having fun.

A ribbon cutting, staple of dedication ceremonies, followed remarks by Mayor Otis Johnson and other government officials. However, instead of sticking to the usual script in which the audience observes dignitaries cutting the ribbon, scissors were distributed to the crowd allowing the public to take part and producing hundreds of instant souvenirs of the event.

There’s a lot to like about the new Ellis Square, including the elements that make it “the most environmentally friendly of Savannah’s squares,” according to city officials. These include “water-efficient plants, energy-efficient lighting and HVAC system in the glass-walled visitors center, and a green roof on the public bathrooms.”

Truly, one of the best things going for Ellis Square is its location and the types of land uses nearby. In “The Death and Life of Great American Cities,” Jane Jacobs describes the neighborhoods surrounding Philadelphia’s Rittenhouse Square and how they influence the way the park is used:

“Does anything about the physical arrangement of the neighborhood affect the park physically? Yes. This mixture of uses of buildings directly produces for the park a mixture of users who enter and leave the park at different times…In short, Rittenhouse Square is fairly busy continuously for the same reason that a lively sidewalk is used continuously: because of the functional physical diversity among adjacent uses, and hence diversity among users and their schedules.”

The functional diversity of adjacent uses around Ellis Square is represented by shops, restaurants, office buildings, galleries, nightclubs and hotels. These attractors will bring Jacobs’ “mixture of users” into the square at different times of day. Contrast this with Savannah’s beautiful Forsyth Park, which most folks avoid after sundown, unless a concert or other event is scheduled.

Longtime Sustainable Savannah may remember my grumbling about the fact that most of the money spent on the project went toward the parking garage, with only a fraction remaining for the square itself. I’m still not happy with how much public money we spend to provide storage for private automobiles, but I am pleased with the wonderful new public space that citizens can now enjoy.

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.

On Thursday, Dec. 3 at 7 p.m. the “preferred concept,” produced by the recent Project DeRenne charettes, will be unveiled in a former auto parts store at 131 W. DeRenne Ave. I’m interested to see what the folks from Kimley-Horne, working with city officials and citizens of all walks of life, have created. In a recent column in the Savannah Morning News, Project DeRenne coordinator Susan Broker explained how fortunate we are that previous ideas for the corridor never became realities:

“Imagine if we had built the first concept proposed to solve DeRenne’s traffic problems. The mid-city gateway into Savannah would now be an elevated expressway, greatly devaluing some of Savannah’s best neighborhoods and closing dozens of existing businesses. The second round of concepts was no better: Expanding lanes of pavement would have consumed the very neighborhoods they were intended to support. Neither of these concepts was deemed acceptable to the communities surrounding DeRenne Avenue.”

The common element between both the plans Broker mentions is that they focus on only one thing: Moving more cars at faster speeds. Cities around the country are currently spending mountains of money to undo the damage done to their communities by similar projects.

Project DeRenne presents an opportunity for our community to look toward the future, instead of repeating others’ past mistakes. It offers an opportunity to ensure that Savannah neighborhoods remain livable for years to come, instead of aiming solely to shave a couple minutes off the commutes of folks who don’t even live here. It provides an opportunity to understand that Project DeRenne has implications beyond traffic, including public health.

For more information, visit the Project DeRenne Web site.

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.

Now let’s take these poachers and transplant them from our state’s waterways and forests into our city. Instead of stealing wildlife, the urban poacher takes public space “that belongs to you and all other Savannahians.” While these poachers are not technically “stealing” sidewalks and bike lanes by using them to store their cars and trucks, while doing so they exclude the intended users of these spaces. This happens all over the city of Savannah every day, rarely attracting attention from law enforcement or other government officials.

In the photo above, the Isuzu Rodeo’s (or is it a Honda Passport?) rear end blocks the sidewalk adjacent to a busy street. Its owner could not pull it any farther into the driveway because that space is occupied by another car that’s sleeping in an “auto cocoon,” much like the one Lane Meyer’s dad complained about in a popular teen comedy from the 1980s. Thus, making room for an apparently immobile automobile comes at the expense of pedestrian mobility. The owner of the Chevrolet truck has, for whatever reason, concluded that the sidewalk is a better place than the street to park. His choice forces pedestrians to walk in the street.

When I set out to capture images of sidewalks being used for parking, I knew exactly where to go. That’s because “sidewalk poachers” are terrifically dependable. Once they start using part or all of a sidewalk to store part or all of a car, it becomes routine. I suppose pedestrians who regularly encounter these vehicles simply get used to walking around them. Or perhaps they start taking a different route. They shouldn’t be forced to do either.

Another fascinating phenomenon about the poaching of public space is how quickly contagious it becomes. The photo above depicts a car parked — against traffic — in the Habersham Street bike lane yesterday morning. It was among many left in the city’s only north/south pavement marked bike route, while its owner shopped at a garage sale. Once one person decided to park in the bike lane, a dozen more followed suit. Eventually a Savannah Chatham Metropolitan Police Department officer stopped to clear the lane. Yet shoppers continued to arrive and park in the bike lane, seemingly unfazed by her presence and her cruiser’s flashing lights.

The phrase “complete streets” is being uttered with increasing frequency within the Metropolitan Planning Commission’s Mendonsa hearing room. That’s very good news. As we move toward this worthy goal of making our thoroughfares safe and accommodating for all users, why not also focus on reclaiming the sidewalks and bike lanes we already have?