If you read the comments on Savannah Morning News stories about the proposed removal of the I-16 flyover, you’ll get a strong dose of windshield perspective. It’s clear that many critics of the plan use one main criteria for evaluating its feasibility. Those who believe removal of the exit ramp will cause traffic congestion and extend their commutes by extra seconds (annoying) or even minutes (intolerable) downplay the advantages of removal or deny there are any advantages at all.

Bill Dawers does a fine job on his blog of addressing this oft-repeated objection to removing the flyover:

“The single weakest argument against the removal is also the one that I hear the most, at least among those objections dealing with traffic. As I noted in the column, I’m constantly hearing people say that MLK can’t handle the additional incoming traffic, but every single car leaving the city via I-16 has to travel on or across MLK already.”

Read more here.

A forum for Savannah’s at-large aldermanic candidates is scheduled for Sept. 27 from 6-8 p.m. at the Coastal Georgia Center. The event is organized by the Savannah Bicycle Campaign and The Savannah Branch of the U.S. Green Building Council. Details from the Savannah Bicycle Campaign:

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.

A family embarks on a "purely recreational" car trip.

A Sept. 6 story in the Savannah Morning News, “Regional body considering transportation tax projects Wednesday,” contains an interesting quote from a Georgia Department of Transportation official describing why the Coastal Georgia Greenway does not qualify for TSPLOST funding:

David Spear, spokesman for the department, said the tax is meant to fund transportation projects and the bike trail did not qualify because it was “purely recreational in nature.”

This is, of course, untrue as CGG leader Jo Claire Hickson points out. As in other parts of the country, where similar facilities have been built, they are used by commuters and are never “purely recreational.”

Sill, Spear’s quote got me thinking. If trips that are “purely recreational” are not appropriate uses, then a lot of traffic should be banned from roads and bridges that would be funded by TSPLOST. Recreational vehicles would be prohibited from using transportation facilities, right? After all, their purpose is “purely recreational.” It’s right there in the name of the thing. Passenger cars carrying families on vacation or even local folks heading to a picnic in Daffiin Park or a day on Tybee could be excluded, too. Again, these trips are “purely recreational” in nature. Savannah would lose millions of visitors and the local tourism industry would evaporate overnight, but at least we can be confident that TSPLOST funding won’t be wasted to facilitate “purely recreational” trips.

Drew Wade, chairman of the Savannah Bicycle Campaign, has conceived an idea that has grown over the last three years into one of Savannah’s most unique events. It doesn’t really happen at midnight, but the Midnight Garden Ride will get underway at dusk on Saturday, Sept. 3 and allow many participants to do something they might not normally: ride their bikes at night.

There are cyclists on Savannah’s streets at all times of day and night, of course, but the spectacle of 700 or more people riding bicycles as night falls is something else altogether. As I wrote in this week’s  Savannah “News Cycle” column, “It’s sociable and empowering at the same time. The sight of hundreds of bicycles with blinking lights and other decorations makes it more like a parade than anything else.” This year’s event has moved to Forsyth Park and expanded to include a concert cospresented by Savannah Stopover. Back again are the popular costume and best lighting rig contests and raffle.

While the event is certainly fun, it also allows import efforts to make our community better. Funds raised through registration and other event activities help the Savannah Bicycle Campaign toward its mission:

“Our primary objectives are education for cyclists and motorists about the best ways to share the road, advocacy for improved bicycle facilities in Chatham County, and promoting bicycling as a healthy, safe activity for recreation and sustainable transportation. Ultimately, through an inclusive approach, we will make our communities more livable, connected & safe. These are our goals, and we hope that you will join us.”Our primary objectives are education for cyclists and motorists about the best ways to share the road, advocacy for improved bicycle facilities in Chatham County, and promoting bicycling as a healthy, safe activity for recreation and sustainable transportation. Ultimately, through an inclusive approach, we will make our communities more livable, connected and safe. These are our goals, and we hope that you will join us.”

Does that sound like something you support? If yes, you know where you should be on Saturday night.

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.

In a July 5 article called “How the Great Reset has Already Changed America,” for the Atlantic, Richard Florida describes how our elected leaders are lagging behind and even moving in directions that suggest a disconnection from our current reality. He writes, “… our political and business leaders continue to look backwards, wasting precious time and resources on futile attempts to resuscitate the same dysfunctional system of banks, sprawl, and inefficient and energy-wasting ways of life that brought about the crisis in the first place.”

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.

It happens in every college town at the end of the academic year. As students move out of their apartments for the summer, possessions that are no longer needed or that won’t fit in the car are left on the curb. Or in Savannah’s case, in the lane. While some of these items will be claimed by passers-by, a summer showr can render upholstered furniture, electronics and other things pretty much useless. A program underway now will help divert some of what’s left behind from the landfill to a more beneficial destination

“In coordination with the City of Savannah and Keep Savannah Beautiful, the SCAD design for sustainability program is co-sponsoring an end-of-the-year collection of furniture, clothes, appliances and other household goods from all students who live off campus. All collected items will benefit Goodwill Industries. Donate from 9 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. each day until June 4 at the old Sears building on Henry Street between Bull and Drayton streets. Also, look for dump trucks that will make rounds from Habersham Street to Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., and Henry Street to East Waldburg Street.”

For more information, call the City of Savannah Public Information Office at 651-6410.

Imagine, if you will, public reaction to a law enforcement press release like this:

Police are encouraging car owners to lock their cars inside their garages. A secure car is OUT OF SIGHT!!! The Downtown Pct. is experiencing a rash of car thefts. On average 5 cars a week are stolen. In the past you could simply secure your car by locking it. Now reports show 90% of stolen cars were locked. We are attempting to encourage motorists/residents not to leave their cars outside. Remember a secure car is OUT OF SIGHT!!! Keep your car INSIDE!!!

How would citizens respond? Would they perceive that the police force had abdicated its role in fighting auto theft? What about those without access to locking garages? Would they feel abandoned by law enforcement? Probably so.

The  excerpt above was taken from portions of a press release issued by the Savannah Chatham Metropolitan Police Department on Tuesday. I substituted references to cars for references to bicycles in the original, which you can read here.

Obviously there are big differences between bicycles and cars and the difficulty in storing each. And recovering them, should they be stolen. Bicycles are easier to bring inside a building, but harder for police to track when stolen. Most of the time (but not always) bicycles are less expensive to replace than cars. Bicycle theft presents a difficult challenge for law enforcement agencies and the SCMPD has tried to inform and involve cyclists through educational events that stress theft prevention techniques and bicycle registration.

Nonetheless, the department’s latest suggestion that bikes should be kept inside and out of sight won’t be much use to those who are not permitted to bring their bicycles into their residences. Or into their workplaces. Or into stores. Or into any other destination at which a person may need to park his or her bike. Take my coworker, for example. His bike was stolen from where it was locked. To a bike rack. Adjacent to his office. On a busy street. On a sunny morning. Just hours before the SCMPD press release went out. But that doesn’t matter because he couldn’t have followed its recommendation anyway.

For the recreational cyclist, who takes a bike for a spin around the neighborhood and then returns it to the garage or storage room, the police department’s advice is viable. But for people who depend on their bicycles for daily transportation, it’s undoubtedly discouraging. For such a person, the experience of having a bike stolen is similar that of the motorist, who comes out of a store to find his or her car missing from the parking lot. It severely restricts personal mobility, disrupts daily life and can cause missed classes, appointments and work shifts.

Again, the press release is an earnest effort to alert the public and reduce bicycle theft, even if it fails to account for the ways many people use their bicycles. And its central premise is 100 percent correct: A bicycle stored inside will almost always be safer than one locked outside. For those whose circumstances make it impossible for them to follow to the police department’s recommendation, learning how to properly lock a bicycle to an immovable object is essential.

Early adopters of reusable grocery bags probably remember the reactions of confounded cashiers and baggers, who weren’t sure what to make of shoppers who wanted neither paper nor plastic. But the practice has become so commonplace, shoppers rarely have to ask a bagger to stop shrouding their groceries in plastic before placing them in a reusable bag. Pretty much everyone’s gotten with the program, at least from the store employee side of the equation.

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.

Forsyth Park will be home to the City of Savannah’s annual Earth Day Festival again on Saturday, April 23. The long-running features individual events and programs that have become immensely popular. The Savannah Bicycle Campaign’s Earth Day Wheelie Bike ride, which attracts hundreds of cyclists, departs from the park at 4 p.m. Earlier in the day, the RecycleRama begins at 8 a.m. and offers drop off service for folks who want to recycle paint, batteries, cooking grease and other materials. Last year’s RecycleRama collected 8,500 pounds of paint and 1,000 tires. It ends at 11 a.m. on the dot. More than 100 exhibitors will offer information on topics from beekeeping to bicycling to green roofs. More information is available on the festival website.