Capacity: Your ability to do something, or the amount of it that you are able to do.
Southern Indiana residents are learning a great deal about capacity these days and the lessons are getting more and more difficult.
What we’ve learned over the past several years is that we are living in an attractive area for business development. We’ve seen a boom in new companies coming to the area, established companies expanding or moving and housing for all that growth exploding from Georgetown to Charlestown and everywhere in between.
Sewer pipes have been put down. Buildings have been raised. Subdivisions and apartment complexes have moved in and the figurative seams of our area are about to blow out.
Pick an area in Clark and Floyd counties and you will see cars — lots of them — filling the roadways. It isn’t uncommon to find a line of vehicles stretch from the stoplight at the entry to I-65 south near Sellersburg all the way back to the stoplight at the intersection of Indiana 60 and Charlestown Rd. It’s normal to sit for minutes at stop signs in subdivisions waiting for a break in the stream of traffic to get on your way.
Whether you are traveling from the west into New Albany or east into Jeffersonville, you can be sure of at least two things: lots of construction activity and lots of traffic.
We aren’t complaining about the bustling growth. And we know housing is critically important and more of it is needed. We’re thrilled our area
is the envy of many other communities in Indiana. At the same time, we’re concerned and you should be, too. We’re concerned about the safety of our people and the safe access to and from roadways across the region. Charlestown Road is too congested. So is Indiana 60 through Sellersburg and Indiana 62 between Jeffersonville and Charlestown.
It’s all about capacity. Your 20-gallon gas tank on your car has the capacity of…20 gallons of fuel — not 22, 25 or 30. Same is true about roadways. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that ours are, in many cases, at capacity and are too congested based on original design.
Apparently, it does take a rocket scientist to do something about it. Ask any official about roads and you’ll likely hear this answer: “That isn’t in our jurisdiction. We can’t do anything about it.”
While that may be true in some cases, it doesn’t solve the problem.
Town and city leaders in Southern Indiana are going to have to figure out a way to work with county, state and federal government agencies to expedite roadway planning for this burgeoning area. We are already seeing the consequences of poor or no planning in the past.
Nobody wants to see development slow or stop because we have no capacity for more growth but, we are getting to that point quickly when it comes to infrastructure — specifically roads that can handle the massive increase of vehicles traveling to and fro.
The best example of taking the bull by the horns and doing what needed to be done may be Jeffersonville’s improvements on 10th Street which concluded in 2019. Though it was a pain in the neck for those using 10th Street, it was critically important and, the $20 million project has made that area far more accessible, safe and reliable since completion.
That project started in 2016 with design and logistics before a shovel ever touched the earth. It was completed three years later.
Planning and improvements are woefully behind in our area. Political, business and civic leaders are going to have to recognize that some growth may have to wait for infrastructure to catch up. It isn’t rocket science, after all. It’s all about capacity.
Our figurative cups are overflowing. And, in this case, that isn’t a good thing.
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