English: Traffic calming island maintenance (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
RFP Staff
♦What will downtown Salisbury appear like a thousand years hence under the “theory of ruins”? Or will it take that long, considering city hall’s visionary activity over the past years? The Salisbury Mall, just yesterday approved for purchase by our forward thinking County Commissioners, is alleged by certain quarters to be part of a predatory plan to completely denude the downtown area of human life. While that idea was never entertained by any county commissioners, Salisbury is always hatching schemes with little care about tomorrow that are more than likely to double or triple the downtown vacancy rate in the year ahead.
If Fibrant only got us halfway “cooked” through reducing the amount of money to fund city services, what could the city visionaries embark on next to complete the process? Constructing administrative buildings to magically attract downtown investment? No, the next big wrecking ball is city hall’s ”traffic calming” initiative to bring hoards of bicyclists into downtown and erase the need for parking spots.
“Make street trouble spots safer with crosswalks, signals, medians,” experts say. This was a headline article on October 9th issue of city’s alternate paper. The article depicted a submitted ‘rendering’ by consultants who recommended narrowing the five lane section of Long street to two lanes and adding parking, bike lanes and a median as a means to make the downtown more pedestrian friendly and safe. The consultants call their recommendations “traffic-calming” measures. The study—”Complete Streets”—was part of a $120,000 study for traffic safety in the wake of two pedestrian deaths in recent years on Innes Street—one involving a pedestrian clutching a brown-bagged beverage as he darted through busy traffic near AutoZone, in which the driver was determined not to be at fault.
While City Council held the workshops regarding the study, mostly nearby residents have crowded the meetings, where commuters along the thoroughfare mostly do not live in the area, and have stayed away. The appointed steering committee will make a recommendation to City Council, and the NC Department of Transportation will examine City Council’s recommendations before moving forward with any changes to the existing street layout. Of the $120,000 cost of the study, 80% was paid by the Cabarrus Rowan Metopolitan Planning Organization.
In September, it was reported that the title “Complete Streets” was selected, according to one of the experts paid by the grant, to include pedestrian, bikes and buses. Does this not sound familiar? Recall back in August 2012, after at least a year of focus groups, committee meetings and fluff-piece articles in the local alternative paper, NC DOT examined the city’s “experts” recommendation for turning Statesville Bouldvard into a three-lane road, with a center turn lane, one lane travel in each direction, and—to comport with the City of Salisbury’s “Comprehensive Bicycle Plan”—dedicated bike lanes on both sides of the reconfigured road. The commuters and nearby residents came to the evening meeting required at the conclusion of that process, where NCDOT officials gathered to receive final input. They were overwhelmingly against the ‘road diet’ as creating more traffic congestion on an already congested artery into town—and angered that a ‘road diet’ was being considered primarily for the purpose of opening up recreation for bicyclists who didn’t want to share the road with the vehicular traffic for which it was designed.
Well, they’re BACK now, proposing among other things, left turns at the Square, and only three lanes on East Innes Street: One lane of travel in each direction, and a center turn lane, for an as-yet undefined distance from the Square and eastward. Making those changes would enable the City to offer wider sidewalks downtown, and enable a more vibrant downtown dining and pedestrian venue. Amazing courage was displayed by City Council person and local architect Karen Alexander, who opined that ‘traffic calming’ using the tools recommended by the paid consultants would create traffic backups and cause motorists to avoid traveling near the Square, and that may deter national chain stores from locating in Salisbury due to the decrease in traffic count. Yo! Ms. Alexander apparently brought an amazing amount of clarity to a meeting where NIMBY’s and “Buy Local” disciples are determined to use the $120,000 study to foist their version of a recreational and aesthetically bucolic downtown plan on commuters looking for a convenient route between point “A” and point “B”.
With the results of the study certainly predestined to come back recommending left turns at the Square, one lane of travel in each direction for an indeterminate number of blocks in each direction on Main and Innes Streets from the Square, and bike lanes, there is also an inconvenient chunk of copper in the current median on the second block of West Innes Street. Sources within the community have reported that if the City implements what appears will become the recommendations of this steering committee, they may need to relocate the iconic Confederate Statue from its existing location, over to the old Lutheran Cemetary off the 600 block of North Lee Street. That is across from the site of the old Freight Depot that some of the same tired players in the movement against progress fought a losing battle by refusing to dismantle and relocate it for so long that the railroad came in and demolished it one sultry August morning in 2012. The stubborn anti-progress folks were invited to salvage the building, but stood their ground, preferring demolition to not getting their way. So the old freight depot is now gone.
What about the bad intentions the city has toward an overwhelming portion of its tax base and what draws shoppers into our badly tottering city: the ’evil corporations’ that build mega stores allegedly importing goods from third-world countries made by forced labor and children with nimble little fingers? Will they be a thing of the past, as they pull up stakes and leave the city’s comprehensive bicycle lane paradise for less ‘calm’ traffic patterns elsewhere. It will be a victory like no other victory for the ‘buy local’ movement. And best of all, the ‘buy locals’ will have about 40% of currently-occupied downtown building space that they can buy for pennies on the dollar to use for local efforts. Imagine using all of those empty buildings for never-ending fringe festivals, amateur plays, independent film festivals shot on cell phones by street warriors, and re-education camps for those who could not make it selling over-priced bric-a-brac and junktique, under the former downtown business model? Bingo!
There’s one rather large and mean-spirited fly in the ointment. A number of larger chain stores have magnificent legal teams and love to sue any eight-ball city who attempts to decimate their traffic. Lest we forget: one deep-pocketed big box chain from Arkansas, now parked in Salisbury, arrived here via an armored column of attorneys more than willing to sue not only the City of Salisbury for its insolence, but each individual city councilman and anyone signed onto the city management team. In the name of curiosity some of our associates contacted the home office in Arkansas back in October. Within days notification arrived stating that corporate would willingly protect the interests of their buying public anywhere on Earth. In retrospect downtown might get a sudden spike in tourism from corporate’s legion of private detectives fanning out through the burg.
As chain stores like Autozone, Advance, Family Dollar, Office Depot, Big Lots, Kmart and an array of fast food giants exit the East Innes when their customer base stops struggling with the road diet on that end of town, perhaps the city can set up locations for the huge influx of high-technology jobs that will follow the city’s fiber-to-the-home enterprise. Maybe those closest to the shelter can be converted into overflow for the homeless shelter? Perhaps even expansion of the nearby dry cleaners operation off Long Street, which is surely destined to prosper when traffic is choked down to a ‘calm’ little trickle. Perhaps even certain dry cleaner could benefit by purchasing a large commercial cappuccino machine, and extending his business’s patio and parking area with tables and ornate wrought iron chairs. Imagine being able to drop off one’s weekly dry cleaning, buying a $6 cappuccino, and sipping it with local elected officials and bankers as you enjoy watching the amateur pharmaceutical sales going on along the extended sidewalks of Long Street. If successful, perhaps street mimes will follow the demand for something more than “ladies of the night” entertainment at Long and Innes. Do we hear cappuccino glasses clinking? The downtown merchants collectively shout, “Yes! We Can!”
Now is an exciting time to be part of Salisbury’s progressive and unique model of vibrancy! Special thanks to the city’s mind-hive for proposing the road diet and left turns at the Square. They have once more broken the “Genius Code”.
