Charleston, SC- A Charlestonian's question for this half century shall ever be: where are we: where are we going: and how shall we be saved? Our next three days may tell. Can we prosper or shall we drown? Lincoln speaks to the Holy City yet.
"The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present."
Twenty-five years ago I awoke to the humid, still air in my Mother in Law's home, West of the Ashley in Charleston where my wife and I had stayed while Hurricane Hugo ground over the Holy City. Aggie asked for batteries. Since the yard was blocked by downed trees, I walked to the Piggley Wiggly Supermarket to get some. Nothing was recognizable. Power lines lay on the ground like spaghetti after a High School cafateria food fight. All the light poles at the shopping center had been torn from their bases. The windows of the Grocery store were shattered and looters were climbing through the openings. I returned to my now deceased mother in law's home to tell her that the store wasn't safe to enter and we would have to make do with the batteries we had that day.
As I was heading back, the police pulled into the parking lot in two black and white cruisers. A fire truck with firefighters and chain saws and men from public works could be heard clearing a single lane on the highway. Shortly thereafter, an aging SCE&G Transit Bus on the North Bridge route began pushing it's way along the littered road.
What I learned, as a strong, young lawyer whose house took only modest damage is that people have to help each other. I threw myself into the recovery effort doing everything from helping clear historic graveyards to providing legal assistance at the emergency center. It was my great and cherished privilege to be a witness to the last time that the grand old city of Charleston stood up and defied disaster. I learned that the stone and brick of the old city was not held together with mortar, but with memory. Life is a journey a community takes together, like people on the bus.
I felt that city push itself up from the wet, leaf covered pavement before the leadership of Mayor Joe Riley, in view of the world. Two weeks after that trip to the grocery store as he read the words on Aaron Copland's Lincoln Portrait at a concert by the Charleston Symphony. The moment was broadcast to the planet from the satellite trucks around the old customs house mentioned in the last scene of the Opera Porgy and Bess.
Our Mayor, Quoting a President whose leadership in the Civil War brought disaster to Charleston, read the great man's words in the aftermath of our disaster and the city stood up. "The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves and then we will save our country."
That is when Charleston stood up. I felt the moment. Everyone did.
"The occasion is piled high with difficulty and we must rise with the occasion."
We would rebuild the Charleston over ten long years. However we never saw the terrible power of money and how the desire for and lack of it could transform our old town. We had survived three wars, an earth quake, a dozen major hurricanes, long periods of economic privation and epidemics. After the hurricane, everything got renovated. The world came to visit and stay. Autocentric transportation planning enabled the metropolitan ares to sprawl out from the city center another ten miles, consuming more raw land for houses, strip shopping centers and roads than the entire city had used in the previous 300 years of settlement and development. Downtown gridlock appeared at the holidays, then tourist season and now several times a week nearly all year round. Porgy couldn't afford to live on "plenty of nothing" and his goat cart wouldn't be safe on our streets.
The SC Dpt. of Transportation completed an enormous Mark Clark Expressway around the city, a new bridge to James Island, and six laned Johnnie Dodds Blvd. into something which looks like an Interstate through Mount pleasant. They are currently engaged in a bitter fight about extending I526 across John and James Islands.
We stared a new Transit Authority, CARTA and shut it almost completely down for two years after a series of failed referendums. We've developed a nasty set of statistics about pedestrian and cyclist fatalities, which includes losing the lives of the fastest South Carolinian to ever mount a bicycle and the city's preeminent cycle transit planner. Less remembered are the men and women attacked, robbed and killed during long night time walks home along roads without sidewalks after the buses stopped running.
Road construction here is fantastically expensive due to our wetlands and rivers. The Ravenel Bridge cost nearly a billion dollars. In most places there is nowhere for more road to go. There is a rising call to end all further economic development, residential construction and tourism development and just pull up the welcome mat to settle down to a future or stagnation and gridlock.
The Automobile cannot take Charleston where it needs to go in the time remaining before carbon driven sea level rise puts this cherished city under salt water for good.
"We must think anew and act anew"
Monday is the 25th. anniversary of the morning I climbed over trees to go to the broken store and it beins a process of attempting to disenthral ourselves from old dogmas
Better bus stops for Public Tranist are endorsed in today’s Sunday Edition of the Post and Courier, with a call for stops which are lighted and contain police call boxes. (Our proposal also calls for bus pullouts and bike racks at stops). Hungryneck Straphangers thanks everyone who has assisted in the month long effort to prepare our community for Tuesday’s 25 year planning meeting on Daniel Island with the SC Dpt. Of Transportation.
Three upcoming events create a powerful opportunity to sieze the wheel from the snoozing drivers which are steering our region towards sprawl, gridlock and what for Charleston will be a disastrous carbon driven rise in sea level. It’s been 25 years since Hugo. We’re looking 25 years ahead.
Monday, 11 am – We’ll gather at intersection of Market and Anson Streets in downtown Charleston (the most congested spot in the entire city) to hold a media and press conference announcing our plans for Tuesday and the results of our Transit Priorities Survey. George Hopkins, Loreen Myerson & Rev. Thomas Dixon, among others, will speak. The conference will be held on the patio in front of Café Paradisio. Full details at http://hungryneckstraphangers.com/...
Monday, 6 pm- Gabe Klein, the visionary mobility planner who has remade Washington DC and Chicago will speak regarding mobility on the Charleston Peninsula on Monday, September 22 at 6 pm in The Charleston Museum Auditorium, 360 Meeting Street. In this second public presentation, Gabe Klein will focus on his perspective and recommendations for Charleston, to include specific ideas for the Charleston Peninsula and the Historic District. Facebook signup https://www.facebook.com/...
Tuesday, 4 – 7 pm- We’ll provide a bright, red shuttle bus to take Transit Riders and Cyclists from CARTA Superstop in N. Charleton to the SC DOT 25 year planning meeting at the Daniel Island School on Daniel Island. The meeting is from 5-7 and provides an opportunity for public input into the plans for SC’s entire transportation system for 25 years, now until 2040. Full details at http://hungryneckstraphangers.com/...
The Editorial in Today’s Post and Courier can be found at http://www.postandcourier.com/...
"We will save our country."
Hopefully, starting Monday, the Holy City will realized "The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present." We know, "The occasion is piled high with difficulty and we must rise with the occasion." A walkable, connected city which enables travel on foot, by bike and on transit can liberate Charleston so that even those still in a car spend less time standing still. "As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves and then we will save our country."