Since I was only at the town hall meeting and bouncing between rooms at one of the three charettes, I imagine the SDAT team itself will do a better job than I of summarizing and synthesizing the recurrent themes that Albanians came up with in terms of sustainability and Albany, but I will note a few things that I heard repeatedly:
- We value our local businesses and want to support them
- Albany is in desperate need of some help to become more bicycle friendly
- 787 should come down so we can have access to our waterfront
- We need mixed income housing, and housing downtown
- We need to buck up and be willing to give up some parking spaces or travel lanes in order to get things like better transit or bike lanes.
- Our history is an asset and we should find ways to preserve it and celebrate it
- We need a way for our elders to age in place, and get about safely
Andrew Harvey, the irascible head of the Park South Neighborhood Association made a stirring speech about catering to the people who want to be in an urban setting, and giving them a good one rather than trying to convince the knuckleheads who really like Clifton Park to come downtown. (I'm paraphrasing here, but I'm not exaggerating the sentiment.)
In the transportation discussion, DOT and CDTA got down to brass tacks over the implementation of bus rapid transit along Route 5, while the neighborhood development group covered every topic you could possibly think of.
Amusingly (to me at least), while at the charette I saw the neighborhood room unable to keep from sliding into complaints when asked for strengths (despite everyone there loving the city and being quite able to come up with assets when put to it), at the town hall meeting when people were asked to tell the team about Albany-specific issues they wanted addressed, a large number of people instead proposed their favorite sustainability solutions, from green roofs to energy efficiency. I have to admit that from time to time I found myself thinking, "OK folks, I'm pretty sure they've heard of that idea already. They are, after all, experts at this. Maybe we'd do better to be trying to help them understand Albany better." No transportation planner worth her salt needs to be told about Curitiba, Brazil's bus system, for example. It's legendary.
But then I decided I was being curmudgeonly and inconsistent. Generally I would give my eye teeth for a room full of Albanians to be talking about solutions, possibilities, upbeat things. And there was definitely some Albany-specific info in there (including, sadly, the observation that some of the public feels so unheard in other public contexts that they were thrilled just to see the SDAT team actually taking notes on what they were saying, and occasionally asking follow up questions).
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