Complete Streets ordinance to improve roadway safety

Per usual, more symbolism and chatter about the future than actually doing something to deal with current pedestrian and cyclist safety issues, about which I have complained loudly and frequently to East Lansing government and been given the usual treatment toward anyone who complains—my contempt for East Lansing government, which has been extended to learning about development delusions and so on, originally stems from frustration getting city government to pay attention to blatant, easily fixable, pedestrian safety problems.

City (and state) government still denies that pedestrian walk light at Michigan and Harrison (crossing Michigan) is mistimed, even though pedestrians ignore it, because it is stupid, and the whole thing is a dangerous mess that would be much less dangerous if the stupid government bureaucrats simply set the walk light to fit with reality.

Nothing has been done about pedestrian crossing places between Harrison and Frandor on Michigan Ave., an important bus route where elderly neighborhood residents cannot use CATA because they can’t cross Michigan Ave. (and even nimble college students are forced to dart across—I get a scare almost every time I drive to Frandor). Cross walks and push button walk lights would have little impact on traffic flow but would greatly increase safety. But instead of doing anything, Michigan Ave. is some long term project (like most of these big projects, something on which much money is spent, then forgotten) waiting for some sugar daddy to fund, when fixing the basic problem would cost little.

Then there’s the icy sidewalks problem—the Michigan Ave. skating rink, for example, on which many people fall every year, mostly college students, since they use it the most, but debilitating to the elderly. Not only is this dangerous, it is a liability problem for the city, because it knows about the problem and deliberately has decided to ignore it.

When it comes to icy sidewalks in the neighborhoods, in my more than 25 years in East Lansing the city has never made an effort to inform the public what the ordinances are, and things have gotten worse and worse. There needs to be a public information campaign—East Lansing, we have a problem, here’s what you need to do. But the current East Lansing government, which is run as a propaganda machine, won’t admit to problems and won’t won’t do a publicity campaign that might make it look like it isn’t the great city government it tells everyone it is. (A big publicity campaign for Google high speed internet is worth spending lots of money on, as is One Book, and so on, but not calling public attention to problems that could be solved by citizens behaving like better citizens.) They could also enforce ordinances against irresponsible landlords and commercial property owners, who are the worst violators.

Then there is the dangerous broken sidewalks problem. Unlike the other problems, this one costs money to fix. Councilmen Beard called dangerous sidewalks “low lying fruit” when it came to budget cutting. I suppose he doesn’t use sidewalks so he doesn’t trip and doesn’t watch joggers with strollers forced into the streets. Even with recent budget cuts, the city squanders millions on the DDA TIF district and on failed development projects and on pretend economic development initiatives that it refuses to assess for effectiveness, so there actually is plenty of true low lying fruit, if we had a city government that prioritized public services over its development fantasy world that is supposed to turn East Lansing into a “great city.” (My estimate is I could trim at least $3 million spent on the Staton-Loomis agenda.)

I’m big on bikes, but when you put bike lanes on major streets, the result consistently is vehicles shortcutting through neighborhoods. In Chesterfield Hills, we have complained for years about what happened when they reduced the lanes on Grand River (plus built up Coolidge, etc.). In fact,the first time I became aware of Ted Staton was when one of my neighbors complained that his children were being endangered by short cutters—Staton was showing off blueprints for some fantasy project (a rare opportunity for angry citizens to confront him face to face) and his response was incredibly rude. Many places in the country designate bicycle routes through safe neighborhood streets, which is a good alternative when the main streets aren’t wide enough to accommodate bike lanes without hampering traffic flow.

East Lansing loves to pretend to be green and to encourage walking and cycling. In reality, like most of what comes from city government (City of the Arts?—yeah, right—Technology Innovation Center?—a costly generic office building with a pretentious label) East Lansing talks loudly and refuses to listen and refuses to solve problems that could be solved with competent management. They are only looking for excuses to get some big grant and generate publicity.

I was at the meetg. last night for the whole thing. It’s got a lot more detail and specifics in it than any other CS policy in place or being proposed according to the consultant, so I don’t think this is just “symbolism and chatter about the future”.

Below is a link to the City’s Complete Street survey:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/NY9QCTZ

You can do a rather short version of the survey letting the city know your general preferences or you can do the all out policy wonk version that looks at the specific language.