Heavy Bicycles?

Let’s call it Ugly. The Ugly Bridge.
 
The new wood cattle fence wonderully enhances the bridge’s oversized unattractiveness. Putting the ugly side out, for all to see, is an especially thoughtful touch. Since it’s a competition to see how ugly and expensive we can make the bridge, I suggest that the bridge’s cement floor, which is merely unattractive, be covered with a red plaid fabric from Honduras to make it truly hideous. Red plaid mixed with blue plaid seems an appropriate clash with the striped rails.
 
What a lovely Gateway to Granville is being created! Cut down big trees. Plant small ones. Build an ugly bridge — oops, The Ugly Bridge. Rezone the land for Pizza Huts, fast food and parking lots. 
 
Such vision.  Why didn’t people in Granville think of this before! Good enough for Pataskala. Good enough for Gahanna. Good enough for Granville.

Jack Lucks is moving forward because he wants to move forward. It has nothing to do with zoning or other land owners or the phase of the moon.

You can’t claim the Village hasn’t done its job on paths if you know anything about the history of the issue. By contrast, the Township has been hostile to paths for years.

The Village has built paths and improved sidewalks consistently for decades. The Newark Granville Road path is the best known example. But there are many others, such as the paths through Bryn du (repaved by the Village last week at a cost of $45,000). The sidewalk to Wildwood Park is another. So is the path connecting South Pearl to the T.J. Evans bike path. The Village has required developers to build paths and sidewalks as part of site plan approval. (The Township has not done this.)

Let’s go back to the last time the Township built a sidewalk or path — 1972.

After the high school was built on New Burg in the 1960s, the Village worked studiously to get a sidewalk out there. The Village hired a consultant, had numerous public meetings and built a sidewalk on N. Pearl Street (over the opposition of some homeowners). Current Village Council member Deb Tegtmeyer’s father headed the effort.

The Village’s sidewalk couldn’t make it to the high school. It had to stop at the township border. The Trustees twiddled their thumbs and finally, looking foolish, reluctantly finished their small stretch to the high school.

That was in 1972. The Trustees haven’t built a foot of pathway since. Not one foot. It is absurd to claim any practical equivalency between the Village and Township on the issue.

Two years ago, I asked a Trustee about the much-discussed pathway on New Burg (in the township) to connect Granville Middle School to Granville Intermediate School. The Trustee told me: We don’t do pathways. (I gave him points for forthrightness!)

The Village has worked industriously on paths forever. The Township has done nothing — literally, nothing — for 37 years.

Trustee Fred Abraham has promised to give pathways a fresh look. I’ll believe it when I see it. The Trustees acquired Raccoon Valley Park 20 years ago. GIS has been open for 8 years. As usual, paths and sidewalks stop at the township border.

When are those paths coming, Fred?

This bike bridge is an example of how the Ohio Department of Transportation has been an enormously wasteful and destructive force in Ohio — and how Granville has worked tirelessly, often at considerable expense, to counteract ODOT’s obsession with thoughtless planning.

Here’s the story:

When ODOT rebuilt the Main Street bridge a number of years ago, it removed the sidewalk from the bridge. The Village said, hey, why are you getting rid of the sidewalk? ODOT said, because. The Village said, hey, we’ll pay the extra $30,000 to keep the sidewalk. ODOT said, no can do.

Fast forward a decade.

Village finance director Molly Roberts successfully wins a federal grant, administered through ODOT, to build a bike bridge at the crossing where ODOT wouldn’t allow a cheap sidewalk. The grant calls for the federal government to pay 80% of the cost ($400,000) and the Village to pay 20% ($100,000). (The actual bid came in slightly under the $500,000 estimate.)

Because the bridge was funded by federal highway money, it had to be built in the highway right of way. That’s why it couldn’t be built further eastward, at a potentially more suitable location.

ODOT required that its engineers design the bridge based on traditional ODOT specs. That’s why the bridge was built so it could survive Hurricane Katrina, a nuclear blast and a meteor strike simultaneously. The bridge is too big, too wide, too expensive, too much of everything. It should arch over the creek and have no environmentally punishing posts intruding on the creek’s flow. But there wasn’t a darn thing Granville could do about it. ODOT had dictated: “Granville, you can never ever, safely get people across Raccoon Creek unless you do it our way.”

ODOT planned to make the bridge its typical, ugly, functional design, compatible with its ugly rebuild — Ode to Cement — of the Main Street vehicular bridge. The one thing ODOT let Granville do was pay an extra few thousand dollars for the bike bridge’s arched railing, which look rather nice, I’d say. (FYI: The bridge will keep the rusted iron look, by design, and isn’t scheduled to be painted.)

In other words, everything right about this bridge was done by Granville. Most communities give up because of the cost, the hassle, the stupidity of state and federal regulations. Granville doesn’t quit, and that’s why we’re the prettiest, most livable community in ODOTland.

Let’s remember what this Bridge to Somewhere connects. It doesn’t just link the Village to Lake Hudson, although that is enormously important. (Let’s not forget that Lake Hudson is the biggest lake in Licking County, excluding Buckeye Lake, which is 75% in other counties. Our county has very few natural resources and what we have needs to be treated like a treasure.) The bridge creates a path that will lead to the upcoming shopping center on the Shurtz property, to the River Road coffee shop and to our two major day care centers.

Most important of all, it links the community to Raccoon Valley Park, our largest sports facility. What type of community builds its ballfields at a location where not a single kid can get there unless driven in a car? (If you’re cynical, you might say, the same foolish community that builds a school in a soybean field on Burg Street where not a single kid can walk to it — but that’s another story!)

An 11-year-old kid on a bike should be able to get to Granville’s baseball fields. Plain and simple. And for an affluent community to take 20 years to get a path there is inexcusable (and a failing of the Granville Township Trustees. The connecting routes are in the township).

The exhaustive effort and ridiculous cost required to get this bridge built teaches us a lot about sprawl, childhood obesity and other issues. The fact that Granville persevered, at least through this phase, is a tribute to how we haven’t given up on making a community work.

The developer of the Shurtz property will extend the path to River Road (next year if things go well) at his expense. Then it’s up to the Granville Trustees to bring the path down River Road to the park. The new Granville Rec District has responsibility for extending the paths within the large park.

Long-term…the Rotary has pledged seed money to belp design a second bridge over Raccoon Creek to the park. That would connect the east side of town, along Newark Granville Road, to Raccoon Valley Park and create a loop connecting to the T.J. Evans bike trail.

Tiger Woods could hit a 5 iron from a home on Vill Edge Drive to the soccer field at Raccoon Valley Park. But for a kid on Vill Edge to pick up Tiger’s ball would require a three-mile drive in a car. You can’t get there from here, as New Englanders would say. Granville has hundreds of homes along Newark Granville Road, yet no kid has access to the nearby sports facility. Ridiculous.

The new bike bridge is one of Granville’s great successes. But it’s also a lesson in the many obstacles that are placed in the way of common sense, frugality, environmental sensitivity and simplicity.

For some reason the first picture reminds me of Spinal Tap.