By the way, the other day I deliberately walked from Federal at North to Downtown in as straight a path as I could manage, just to sort of make mental notes about what was bad about that and what I thought could be improved. Obviously the asphalt plaza and mall as they stand are a huge barrier, and this plan looks like a big improvement if not exactly what I would have wanted.
But there were a lot of other problems too. One obvious one is those crappy triangle intersections at N Commons and S Commons. Those have got to go.
I also thought the path from N Commons down to Buhl Park could be much better:
The way this is set up right now is strange and I think discourages exploration. Imagine if that lawn space on the left (behind the dude on the phone) was another path, with the trees next to the existing sidewalk as a sort of median strip. That new path could actually be laid out as a bike lane, in fact. If you did that, I think suddenly that would look like an inviting bike/ped boulevard.
That would also solve another subtle problem I noted, which is that there is an odd juncture when you get to Buhl Park/Ohio. The existing path dead-ends into a statute, and a new, different path offset to the right takes you to the plaza/mall area. It may not seem like a big deal, but if you get that far from N Commons, it again communicates you are entering private space if you continue to the south (and vice-versa, in fact, if you have arrived at Buhl Park from the south, east, or west, and are contemplating heading north):
But the new path I suggested above would more or less line up with that existing path into the plaza/mall area. Again, I would love to incorporate a bike path, but even without that it would do a lot to create continuity and invite the public along.
So roughly speaking, you could be looking at this:
Now I don't know anything about land rights or easements, but I am pretty sure this is all well within the footprint of the former Federal, and I don't really see that strip of grass serving much purpose as of now. So hopefully it is something everyone around could get on board with.
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