I have been both encouraged and inspired to pick up writing on this blog again.  If, only for a little while, it allows me to focus my thoughts and develop insights that I might not have otherwise had, then it will be well worth the effort.

Here's something I'm relatively excited about.  For years on the City Council and Plan Commission, we have been struggling with some mistakes of the past in our downtown design scheme.  It suffers from a schizoid desire to have both a pedestrian-friendly downtown core area and yet have a four-lane highway running through it.  Someone once suggested a compromise to the situation by proposing "speed bumps" on the highway to slow down the traffic to which I snarkily suggested that we already have them and they are called "pedestrians".

Anyway, a new consultant looked at the situtation with a new set of eyes and recognized that we could accomplish the pedestrian friendly goal not by going parallel to the main drag, four-lane highway but perpendicular to it with only one major crossing point on the 4-lane.  It works....at least on paper.

You can read the story here

Well,  I'm back again.

It's going to take some getting used to ....again.... I was gone so long this time that I couldn't even find my old, old password....jeeeeshhhh....that's downright embarrassing......