Saturday morning, 19 March 2022
…At the corner of Baxter Avenue and Cherokee Road cars lined up at Church of the Advent. The occupants queued to pick up boxes of free food. Each car represented a family that had to choose between filling the gas tank and filling the grocery cart.
…Arrival at the bike shop on Market Street (between First and Second streets) required an approach from the west. For several decades all six lanes of Market Street have been one way, dedicated to moving cars quickly eastward – out of downtown.
…The Louisville Downtown Partnership https://louisvilledowntown.org/ emailed a survey to downtown residents and businesses. The survey asks for recipients to share their perceptions of downtown as it is, and their visions of downtown Louisville as it should be.
Those three occurrences of the morning are intimately related. Louisville’s land use and transportation is fatally flawed when filling the car’s gas tank is more important than filling the grocery cart. Louisville’s land use and transportation is fatally flawed when moving cars quickly out of town is prioritized over making a green, quiet, walkable city with excellent public transit. Louisville’s land use and transportation is fatally flawed when surface parking lots dominate downtown.