Across the Great Divide

Getting There is Also Being There.

Now that I'm committed to driving the speed limit, a round trip to Door County, Wisconsin — which has great country-road biking — is just about the right length for listening to an entire book on CD.

Only one problem. The novel we found available at the library was overwritten, the main character was most unsympathetic and self-centered, and there were entirely too many romance-novel adorations of strong, muscular withers.

But since I was already doing one unfavorite thing — driving to get from point A to point B —  I challenged myself to find ways to enjoy the experience. Based on this trip and an earlier one, I've come to this realization: I'd rather listen to a bad book than ponderous one.

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The Metropolitan Council, which sets transit policy for the Twin Cities, has announced a fare increase to help cover increased fuel costs. To State Senator John Marty, that's exactly the wrong approach when the public should be encouraged to take buses and light rail.

He proposes dropping the fare to increase ridership and stimulate demand for new routes and greater frequency.

The Met Council is being timid when it should be visionary, says Marty.

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Bill Lindeke of Twin City Sidewalks is now contributing to Twin Cities Streets for People, which compiles links to stories about "people-centered mobility" and welcomes reader contributions about local placemaking, biking, walking and urban living. Let's hope he brings the site more of his visual approach to city appreciation.

Here's a link to a story in the Park Bugle that profiles two St. Anthony Park bike commuters. Advice from one:

Start slowly. Don’t assume that you can start out commuting both ways, five days a week, blizzard or shine. Don’t tell yourself when you start that you’re going to do the whole thing at full speed every single day. Try taking the bus to work (with your bike on the front rack), then riding home. Do practice commutes so you know how long it takes and whether you’ll need a change of clothes or a shower when you get there. Don’t expect a quick and easy transition. After a lifetime of getting in a car every morning, it was hard for me to make this change, so go easy on yourself and work up to your goal gradually. A slow start is better than a quick burnout. But most of all, enjoy it! There is so much to see when you’re riding your bicycle.

I've been planning to add profiles as a regular feature here  to show the diversity of riders and to demystify commuting a bit.

In fact, if you're a cycling commuter willing to submit to a Q&A about your ride, you can download this questionnaire  and send it to me. Look for the first profile in a day or so.

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Speaking of Twin City Sidewalks, Bill posted an empty sign awhile back and quizzed readers about its location. This one will be easy to ID for at least one blogger I know, but for others, its stainless steel blankness raises the question — who will step in to fill this void?

A Built-in Disadvantage.

It's not just inefficient cars or $4.00 gas or restrictions on offshore drilling. This is why we are so screwed.

Even if people want to look at alternatives, the unfortunate truth for the vast majority of TC residents is that there aren't any alternatives to the long car commute. Most people live in houses ill served by any sort of public infrastructure, far away from sidewalks, corner stores, or transit. And most jobs have moved away from the kinds of places that can be easily served by mass transportation. For example, the "third downtown" along the 494 in the Southwest Metro is composed mostly of a series of isolated office parks and stand-alone buildings. How will people ride transit to jobs at the Best Buy HQ, to give but one example?

Why So Many Roads Suck.

[Intersection near Mall of America, part of the absolute worst stretch of a four-hour bike ride through the city.]

The Project for Public Spaces (PPS) talks about the qualities of a great street and picks 10 of them in the U.S. to feature each year.

Looking at the list of qualities, it's not hard to see why our freeway-laced cities and suburbs lack greatness. An emphasis on vehicles, carrying capacity and speedy non-distraction creates vast dead zones around our streets and highways. These are not the qualities PPS is celebrating.

Attractions & Destinations. Destinations are off-ramp or set back across acres of pavement. If they're visible from the road, they're represented by over sized signs rendered in corporate-approved, back-lit plastic.

Identity & Image. See one freeway, you've seen 'em all.

Active Edge Uses. This deals with human scale and a safe, inviting transition between indoors and outdoors. The closest thing to an active edge use on a freeway is two people on the shoulder exchanging insurance information.

Amenities. Well, having a place to pee and buy beef jerky every so often is certainly covered.

Management. They don't mean Minnesota Department of Transportation.

Seasonal Strategies. Attracting people year round? I wouldn't say drivers are attracted, exactly, but we certainly do linger more in the winter.

Diverse User Groups. "Mixing people of  different race, gender, age, and income level"? Check, as long as they can go at least 50 miles per hour.

Traffic, Transit & the Pedestrian. This one is about lack of auto dominance and ease of access to places  regardless of mode. Have you looked for a place to walk or bike along a busy street lately?

Blending of Uses and Modes. This relates to blurring the edges of public spaces (like sidewalks), commercial spaces and private spaces (like front yards and apartments in upper stories). Development is slowly heading back in this direction, but the last 50 years of road building was based on a different model.

Protects Neighborhoods. They're talking about design, not sound walls and speed bumps.

Santa Fe's Canyon Road is an example of artists transforming a street and then managing to keep it, unlike the usual free market pattern of artists reclaiming an under-loved place, giving it charm and character, and then being pushed out by developers and the gentry who love it to death.

Some might argue that is Canyon Road today, but as a welcoming and intriguing outdoor public space, it still works for me. However, it was helped along by some interesting extant buildings — most of our suburbs have nothing worth reclaiming — early government protection and probably more than a few artists with trust funds.

Bridge Closing Leads to News and Geography Lesson.

A whole passel of commentators have taken a shot at the same thing, pretty much in the same way — the irony of Minnesota closing a bridge across the Mississippi that is currently being celebrated with a commemorative stamp.

News Cut's Bob Collins, however, moves beyond the irony, asks a more interesting question and answers it. Where's Wisconsin in all of this?

If We Build it, We Will Sprawl.

I heard a policy guy today on the subject of Minnesota transportation and infrastructure investment. Because the legislature passed a transportation bill last session over the governor's veto, there may be a public perception that, okay, we fixed that problem. And legislators, who know better, have a low appetite for revisiting the battle, at least until after the election.

The public would prefer simple answers, and depending on where we sit, the answer that resonates is: more lanes or more transit, privatization or public investment, lower gas prices or higher gas prices. Land use, regional development and density also come into play.

But all that still frames what we face as an "infrastructure" problem, matters of steel and concrete. The trouble is, if we build it, we will sprawl. Eighty percent new road capacity is quickly consumed by new driving. At least, it was in the era of $2.99 gasoline that Dodge would like us to believe still exists.

We can't build or drill our way out of this. The change has to come from within us.

Although I've always been greener than most, and have never owned an SUV or a lot of gasoline powered toys, I confess to having gone through a series of fast cars that I drove as their makers intended. Until the last year or so, I broke the speed limit every time I got behind the wheel. I biked for transportation, sure, but in the words of one of my readers, it was to prove a point, not to start a chain reaction. Biking to work was as much "about me" as was driving a 5 Liter V8 convertible.

No more.

I'm planning my movement across the earth now, and driving only as a last resort. I'm staying at 55 on the freeway. I'm not sacrificing or doing it to save money; I'm just rethinking my old life.

Via Matt at Two Cities Two Wheels, I checked out the Two Mile Challenge site yesterday. Put in your address, and it draws a two-mile circle around your house. The idea is that anyone could cover two miles and back on any bicycle with a minimum of time, effort and sweat.

The first step is recognizing how much of your world is accessible within that radius without a car. As simple as it sounds, that circle was still a revelation, despite all the miles I've logged around here on foot and two wheels. It made me realize how I thought west and south in my travels, ignoring amenities to the north and east that were actually closer.

If you want to make a start, you don't have to sell your car or move your residence. Just look at your world in a new way.

There's not enough oil, concrete and steel in the world to save people who can not reconsider old habits and redraw their  mental maps.

News Flash: Investigation is Biased Because Kersten Says So.

Katherine Kersten has a blog, which must be a great relief to her Star Tribune editors. That gives their columnist an outlet for her more thinly supported pieces, like this one in which she criticizes findings by a law firm hired by a legislative committee to investigate how MnDOT policies and decision-making processes might have been a contributing factor in the I-35W bridge collapse.

Are you curious about their previous experience with bridges or transportation issues? Among the legal eagles at the lawyers’ “presentation” yesterday, according to the Star Tribune, were Bob Stein, who describes himself as “a nationally recognized authority in the areas of estate planning, trusts, and decedents’ estates.” And of course Tom Johnson, a former Minneapolis City Council Member and Hennepin County Attorney who, among other things, describes himself as an “advisor to numerous political candidates.”

— "News flash: Law firm hired by DFL legislators to investigate bridge collapse finds DFL was right!," Katherine Kersten's Think Again

Of course, if you're curious and expect more than perfunctory and partisan perspective, Kersten is not the source you would rely upon.

Here she hauls out her "quotes" technique to give an impression of "impartial research" to her "investigation." But check the link to Bob Stein's bio. You will note it lists two areas of practice, including "Complex Investigations." Tom Johnson's bio, should you click on the link, lists his political advising under community involvement. One wonders which former public officials do not advise numerous political candidates and why leading a large county attorney's office would not be relevant to investigating a highly politicized state department.

The knock on these gentlemen, in Kersten's book, is that they were paid out of DFL-controlled legislative committee budgets, and they have not larded their resumes with mention of bridges and transportation issues.

Never mind that the investigation they led was not into the direct cause of the bridge collapse, but is into management and organizational systems that may have contributed to overlooking technical problems. Never mind that the leaders of this sort of investigation don't do the technical heavy lifting. And never mind that the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigation is starting from the other end of the telescope.

And never mind that the NTSB that Kersten seems to think should have the final word built its reputation investigating airplane and rail accidents, not bridge collapses.

Although, the NTSB is world renowned in airline investigations, the last bridge collapse they investigated was in 2004 in Oklahoma when a tugboat rammed a bridge support -- not much question as to cause. Prior to that, you have to go all the way back to 1990, in Pocomoke City, Maryland. So, "gold standard" might be a little exaggerated in this case; actually, the jury is still out on "medal" awards.

According to House Transportation Committee chair Rep. Jim Oberstar, "there is huge skepticism about the objectivity of the board in conducting this inquiry." 

Oberstar's criticism of the agency comes at a time when the NTSB is stretched thin. The highway division of the NTSB that is investigating the 35W bridge collapse is the smallest unit of the agency. The agency's overall budget hasn't been increased in several years, but Chairman Rosenker didn't ask for an increase in funding for next year.

Both Rosenker and his predecessor have been criticized for politicizing the agency. It's also been criticized for its lack of expertise in transportation.

None of the current NTSB members has a background in engineering. Chairman Rosenker is a long-time Republican loyalist, going back to service on Nixon's Committee to Re-Elect the President. His official bio neglects that detail but plays up his decades-old experience as a lobbyist for the "American Safety Belt Council, the Motorcycle Safety Foundation, and the Safety Helmet Council of America. He later served as Director of Communications for the American Moped/Motorized Bicycle Association." whose safety expertise appears limited to lobbying for seat belt and helmet manufacturers. Dave Mindemann has more about politicization of the Board under President Bush.

Kersten also neglects to note that:

The day after the bridge collapse, Gov. Tim Pawlenty hired the firm of Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates (WJE) to conduct a "parallel" investigation. This firm is now working hand-in-hand with the NTSB, under a contract administered by MnDOT. However, WJE is also under obligation to represent MnDOT in any litigation stemming from the collapse -- a clear conflict of interest that undermines the work of the NTSB.

The Office of the Legislative Auditor has also investigated the department and found it lacking. The non-partisan OLA findings helped push Molnau out the door as head of MnDOT.

Of course transportation funding and MnDOT itself are highly politicized; they simply became more so under Lt. Gov. Molnau's leadership and Pawlenty's approach to underfunding. And when all the reports are on the table, Minnesotans should have a pretty clear picture of the extent of the damage.

Advance News Flash: Kersten won't see it.

They Teach History There, Don't They?

It was really a great speech on public life and public space, and hizzoner threw the note-laden pages into the air after he read each one, clearly in his element and relishing the moment. And he ended with a defense of planning, saying that people often asked him why he spent so much time thinking about little details like sidewalks and parks when there were so many larger, more pressing problems at hand ... things like the war in Iraq, climate change, or deepening economic inequalities. He said that he tells those people to "connect the dots", that we're fighting a war for oil for our cars, that climate change is going to demand walkable streets and less intensive lifestyles, and that economic growth starts with strong neighborhoods. You could tell he really meant it when he said, "together, we're going to rebuild the American city."

Last week, Bill Lindeke recapped Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak's speech to the American Institute of Architects  Reweaving the Urban Fabric: Minneapolis Great City Design Teams gala April 10th. And today he decodes the University of Minnesota's position on Central Corridor light rail.

The University argument against running the line down Washington Avenue seems to consist of "it will have serious adverse consequences," primarily by cutting down Washington Avenue's usefulness as a car-choked thoroughfare that divides the campus.

One particularly amusing rationale trotted out is how a light rail line and its overhead wires would destroy the integrity of the Northrop Mall Historic District, a culturally significant area "possessing integrity of location, design, setting, materials, spirit and association" that just happens to be passed by a concrete-wall-divided, four-lane,  bus- and car-filled trench.

The original design for the mall, part of a campus master plan that was never fully executed, was begun informally in 1907 by architect Cass Gilbert, commissioned a year later and built in a reduced form some 20 years after that.

In 1890, the Washington Avenue Bridge was reinforced to accommodate streetcars, and the Twin City Rapid Transit Company soon connected Minneapolis and St. Paul over the bridge with the area's first inter-urban line. The company issued a painting of the streetcar system in 1904 and updated it in 1916 [here in section] showing the Washington route through the campus connecting with University Avenue. The "historic" overhead-wire-free vista down the mall came only after 1954, when the streetcar line was dismantled.

Going Carless?

The contractor doing some work on my house had set up shop in the garage, covering my car with sawdust over the last two months. Today, he asked me if I wanted to sell it.

Last year, I put fewer than 2,000 miles on the car, a 2002 Jaguar with fewer than 50,000 miles total. Until he asked, I'd figured to drive it into the ground as I have with virtually every car I've ever owned, but at the rate I'm going that may never happen.

Suddenly, the idea of going completely without a personal car has a lot of appeal. I may have found a painless way to pay for that new roof and painting, not to mention better parking for the bikes.

70 Million Wise, Billions Foolish?

Is Gov. Pawlenty's line-item veto exclusion of $70 million for the Central Corridor light rail project a stick in the DFL's eye or some kind of ploy to negotiate something else?

Generally a light rail supporter, can the governor seriously think cutting the transit-related funds from the state bonding bill is a smart move? According to Minnesota 2020, lack state of funding will scuttle the project by forgoing billions in federal funds. (Minnesota is a net donor of taxes to the federal government compared to other states; we rank 46th and get back about 72 cents per dollar we pay in.)

The $70 million, plus another $4 million in high-speed rail planning money, could be restored and Pawlenty would still have a bonding bill under the $825 million he said he would accept. This guy is a smart politician, so he must have a grander scheme in mind. Too bad the good of the state doesn't seem to be part of it.

Taking the Rest of the Day Off.

Seeing if I can still hit a golf ball. Here are a couple current posts from my other blog, in case you don't get over there often.

Will suburbs pay for urban development?

Birth has a bearing on economic mobility