Reading the Highland Villager #118

[A Villager blows in the wind.]

[Basically the problem is that the best source of Saint Paul streets & sidewalks news is the Highland Villager, a very fine and historical newspaper. This wouldn't be a problem, except that its not available online. You basically have to live in or frequent Saint Paul to read it. That's why I'm reading the Highland Villager. Until this newspaper goes online, sidewalk information must be set free.]


Headline: Highland to unveil new library, updated rec center on Nov. 16
Author: Jane McClure

Short short version: The library is nicer now. [It's OK, they only paved half a softball field for parking.] The architects tried to "connect the building with Ford Parkway."


Headline: Next year's road work may bring a more walkable Snelling Avenue;' District councils push for wider sidewalks, boulevards and lantern lighting
Author: Jane McClure

Short short version: [Horribly unwalkable and deadly] Snelling Avenue might have nicer sidewalks. [Might not.] Article includes blithe statement "Motor vehicles heading to and from the I-94 entrance and exit ramps travel pretty fast generally." The top priority is wider sidewalks near the 94 bridge.


Headline: Proposed river corridor rules are attacked from both sides
Author: Jane McClure

Short short version: The DNR is trying to craft new rules on development for the Mississippi river area. Everyone is worried that they will be too strong or not strong enough. One issue is the number of non-conforming lots that regulations would create.


Headline: Frost owner appeals parking decision for new Salt Cellar
Author: Jane McClure

Short short version: An restaurant that wants to move into a new building might or might not have to build one extra parking space, or might just install a bike rack.


Headline: Public gets glimpse at plans to renovate Palace Rec Center
Author: Jane McClure

Short short version: And old theater downtown is going to be fixed up with city money.


Headline: UPDC delays action on license for Midway Target liquor store
Author: Jane McClure

Short short version: They might sell booze at Target, depending on how far away the distance of the store is from Big-Top Liquors. [Market Pantry® discount vodka.]


Headline: Hearings on proposed St. Paul fee hikes draw sparse turnout [Much to the Villager's dismay, no doubt. There went their front page.]
Author: Jane McClure

Short short version: The city has fees for street and sidewalk improvements, among other things. Nobody really seems to care.


Headline: City to maintain pedestrian sign near Macalester College
Author: Jane McClure

Short short version: A sign that flashes by a bus intersection with lots of college students crossing the street was installed by MNDOT, but the city will pay to keep it working.


Headline: St. Paul seeks applications for 2016-2017 CIB projects
Author: Jane McClure

Short short version: [CIB stands for "Capitol Improvement Budget."] They're due January 16th. [Typically, you have to spend a lot of time building support in neighborhoods and with the committee.]


Headline: City Council sets hearing on plan to improve snowplowing
Author: Jane McClure

Short short version: When it snows, it's hard to drive and Saint Paul spends a lot of time and money pushing the snow out of the way for cars with big trucks.


Headline: St. Paul to leave snow piles on corners for citizens to clean up
Author: Jane McClure

Short short version: When they push the snow out of the way for cars, they push it into piles by the side of the street that make it harder to park. Also it goes onto the sidewalk so you can't walk any more sometimes.


Headline: Plans for the 2015 reconstruction of Randolph, Ford Pkwy. fine-tuned
Author: Jane McClure

Short short version: The county is reconstruction Randolph and Ford Parkway. Sidewalks will be replaced. Ford Parkway will get bike lanes. [Unresolved question: will they try to widen Randolph where it meets Lexington?]


Headline: New use sought for Grand-Cleveland lot; But UST seeks extended permit for parking on site
Author: Jane McClure

Short short version: A parking lot by Grand and Cleveland might become mixed-use student housing,  a "green space," or remain a parking lot. There are a lot of details. [MOAR parking vs. STUDENTSAREHORRIBLE vs. the included quote from the UST person saying "we don't think the [green space] makes sense". Place your bets... PS I admit to not understanding this one. Isn't a building the right thing to do for all parties?]


Headline: Pleasant Ridge moves ahead with plea to replace trees, parking
Author: Jane McClure

Short short version: A development in Summit Hill is trying to re-add lost parking spaces because neighbors asked for the parking spaces back. Also trees.


Headline: City Council blocks plan for self-storage at Schmidt site [really buried this story for some reason]
Author: Jane McClure

Short short version: The City Council voted not to allow a non-conforming use permit for a self-storage facility next to the new Schmidt Brewery apartment complex. [I wrote about this issue here.]


Headline: City committee favors keeping current Sibley Plaza zoning [buried this one too!]
Author: Jane McClure

Short short version: The Planning Commissions' Zoning Committee voted to allow a strip mall not to be re-zoned into traditional neighborhood mixed-use because they want to build mixed-use but also keep all the surface parking lots abutting the street. [See previous three Villagers for more.] Article includes quote from one commissioner who didn't wanted to re-zone it: "It feels like a suburban strip mall to me." [That's exactly what it is.]

The Miserable Moments of Bicycling

In the fall of 2012, a friend of mine invited me to his house to watch the World Series. He was a die hard Detroit Tigers fan, and the Tigers had finally made it to the October Classic. The Tiger's ace, Justin Verlander, was starting on the mound for the Tigers against the San Francisco Giants' lowly Barry. It was a tremendous mismatch, and my friend was really excited. Despite the oncoming late-fall chill, I was really looking forward to spending time with a fellow baseball fan.

The only catch? My friend lived in Saint Louis Park, a Minneapolis suburb, and I wasn’t quite sure how to get there on my bicycle. When you get around a place like the Twin Cities without a car, you have to bring with you a bag of tricks. Bicycling is the best way, as long as the weather isn’t too dangerous and you don’t have to ride far into the auto centric suburbs. The bus works well for certain trips, and offers very poor service for others. The most expensive option is to rent a car using my car sharing membership, or borrowing a car from someone, which involves some of what Hardt and Negri (2000) might call affective labor. I was at an impasse, but after I looked up the exact address of my friends’ house, I discovered he lived just only a block or so away from one of the Twin Cities’ best suburban bike trails - the Cedar Lake Trail. So I decided to brace the impending rain and nightfall and ride my bike to the burbs.

Having ridden bicycles around Saint Paul and Minneapolis for almost a decade, you’d think that I would have better known my way around the city’s bike trail system. But, particularly when you’re going someplace new, any bike journey can quickly turn into an epic adventure. Somehow when navigating Minneapolis’ suburban off-street bike trails, I took a wrong turn and would up on the wrong path and searching for the an address I’d scrawled in my notebook, found myself in the wrong separate suburb of Hopkins before turning around. (This was before I upgraded to a smart phone.) The sun set and I was riding my bike in the suburbs, in the rain, lost at night: a trifecta of gloom. Somehow I got it into my head that my friend still lived nearby, perhaps on the other side of the nearby freeway. So I wound up crossing a series of busy on-ramps in the dark in the rain, going down the wrong cul-de-sac, completely lost.

By my soggy revoking, it was around the 4th or 5th inning that I gave up. I found my way carefully back to the bike path, going slow down the narrow suburban sidewalks as car headlights sped relentlessly around me. Cold and miserable, I eventually bike the five miles back to Uptown where I found the nearest tolerable bar and watched the Tigers lose to the upstart Giants. It took over an hour, but I took the bus home.   

The point of the story is that, even for experienced bicyclists, sometimes riding a bike in the city can be a miserable affair. It’s easy to sugarcoat bicycling, to pretend that even in the wintertime, riding a bike in the city is invigorating and fun. It’s tempting to focus on the positive parts of bicycling because, taken as a whole, bicycling is a great experience and most people that I know who ride regularly would never trade their bikes for the drudgery of driving. But the truth remains that bicycling can be miserable from time to time. And when I'm honest with myself, I also remember those moments.

Twin City Bike Parking #15

[Somewhere in Scandinavia.]

 [Turku, Finland.]

[Probably Helsinki, Finland.]

[Turku, Finland.]

 [Turku, Finland.]

 [Turku, Finland.]

 [Stadium Village, Minneapolis.]

[Lowertown, Saint Paul.]

Signs of the Times #96

 EGGPLANT

LOADING

THIS SIDE

OF LOT

[Parking lot. Selby Avenue, Saint Paul.]

SOMETIMES I SITS

AND THINKS;

SOMETIMES

I JUST SITS

[Bench. State fairgounds, Saint Paul.]

MADE

HERE

[Sidewalk. Downtown, Minneapolis.]

WE

ARE

CLOSED

[Doorway. West Side, Saint Paul.]

Darkness cannot drive out

darkness only light can do

that Hate canot drive out

hate only love can do that

-Martin Luther King Jr.

[Concrete. Green Line, Minneapolis.]

I will be

closed tuesdays

for the rest of

the summer because

I am old and feable.

I need 3 days of

rest instead of 2.

Please stay with me

as I need all of you!

thanks

ME

[Door. University Avenue, Minneapolis.]

ride

a

bike

[Ad. Location forgotten.]

NOTICE

RECENT VANDALISM AT

THIS STOREFRONT IS

RECORDED ON SURVEILLANCE

PLLICE HAVE A SSTRONG

LEAD CAUGHT ON

TAPE

IF ANYONE HAS ADDITIONAL

INFORMATION LEADING TO

THEIR  CONVICTION, PLEASE

CONTACT ST PAUL POLICE

A CASH REWARD

WILL BE AWARDED

FOR ANY INFORMATION

LEADING TO THEIR

ARREST & CONVICTION

[Door. University Avenue, Saint Paul.]

The Road Diet Cut-Off

I wrote a piece for streets.mn last week that generated a lot of traction called Four-Lane Death Roads Should Be Illegal. Basically, it was my standard boilerplate rant about street design and the tradeoff between (high-speed) traffic flow and safety for people living in urban neighborhoods.

Then this weekend, the Pioneer Press picked up the thread. Mara Gottfried talked to me about my ideas, and on Sunday a column front page (below the fold) story came out about walkability, safety, and street design in Saint Paul.

Saint Paul Walks?

[Grand Ave surrender flags.]

This is a long-term issue in Saint Paul, and all across the city people have been working for years trying to figure out how to improve safety for people trying to walk around their neighborhoods, visit businesses, and cross the street. For example, I've been an on-and-off collaborator with the Saint Paul Walks group, which started a "stop for pedestrians" pledge campaign last year, among other things. And there's the crosswalk flag situation going on along Grand and Snelling Avenues.

I'm not really a fan of these approaches, because I think they place too much responsibility (and blame) on the pedestrians instead of the automobile drivers, who are the real danger in this situation. In my experience, enforcement (more police) and education campaigns (like the pledge) have marginal impacts. In the face of a dangerous street design that tells drivers it's OK to speed, text, or eat a burrito, these things won't accomplish much and won't help Saint Paul become a thriving, safe, walkable city.

4-3 Road Diets

I've written a few times now about why 4-lane undivided (or "Death Roads™") are unsafe and frankly, in my opinion, should be banned throughout the city. I suppose that's an extreme position (though it shouldn't be), but even if you're not willing to prioritize walking and neighborhood safety over traffic flow, we can still have an intelligent conversation about when and where 4-3 conversions might make sense.

For example, here's a comment from someone on the streets.mn post about White Bear Avenue, which I mentioned as an exemplary Death Road™ in my piece:

We have had long discussions in the neighborhood about White Bear Avenue and if it would be better or worse if it was changed to 3 lanes. The bottom line issue is that White Bear Avenue is the only north/south through street between Johnson Parkway and McKnight there aren’t any other options for drivers to choose if they live in that area there is no place else to go. In the District 2/Greater East Side neighborhood there are 28,000 people living between Johnson Parkway and McKnight and between Minnehaha and Larpentuer…. and there are 2,000 jobs. That means its a bedroom community with almost no employment in the area. To live there you work somewhere else and if you do, in the morning and in the afternoon you drive on White Bear Avenue… its the only way out. If we made stacking times longer than they already are the fear is nobody would want to live in the neighborhood.

I don't think this commenter understands the problem very well, particularly since there are many examples of streets that got 4-3 conversions throughout Minnesota and the rest of the country without seriously changing traffic flows. (I'll post about some of these examples soon.)

I'm glad the conversation same up, but I'd be willing to bet that whoever gave a presentation on this topic years ago over-emphasized the congestion and de-emphasized the safety, quality of life, and local economic benefits of the three-lane design.

[White Beat Avenue is not safe.]

Where is the Cutoff?

[Minneapolis examples.]

The Federal Highway Administraiton says: 

Under most average daily traffic (ADT) conditions tested, road diets have minimal effects on vehicle capacity, because left-turning vehicles are moved into a common two-way left-turn lane.^(1,2) However, for road diets with ADTs above approximately 20,000 vehicles, there is a greater likelihood that traffic congestion will increase to the point of diverting traffic to alternate routes.

But here in Saint Paul, as quoted in the Pioneer Press article, the Public Works' department claims:

"In St. Paul, roads with more than 15,000 vehicles traveling on them daily aren't good candidates because that can lead to traffic congestion and backups. Rice Street, in the area of Hoyt Avenue, has average daily traffic of about 15,000 vehicles."

Why this difference? As it turns out, changing the traffic threshold by 5,000 daily cars makes a huge difference because the majority of the unsafe urban streets in Saint Paul and Minneapolis fall into this traffic sweet spot. For example...

Some 4-lane Death Roads™

[St Paul examples.]

• Hamline Avenue (North of Summit): 14-17,000 cars per day
• Cretin Avenue (South of Marshall): 7 - 17,000 cars per day
• White Bear Avenue: 18 - 23,000 cars per day
• Maryland Avenue (West of Jackson): 10 - 15,000 cars per day
• Rice Street (where the kid was hit): 14-15,500 cars per day
• Franklin Avenue (central part): 13-20,000 cars per day
• Cedar Avenue (between the lake and I-94): 14,000 cars per day
• NE Broadway Avenue:14-15,000 cars per day

Safety vs. Speed

As opposed to some really low-traffic streets, fixing these streets might involve changing the balance between high-speed traffic flow, safety, and quality of life. As a city, we need to have an intelligent conversation about what these trade-offs are, and how to value them.

Saint Paul and Hennepin County should increase the threshold where they're favor 4-3 conversions on streets. Even if some traffic conditions become more congested, the trade-off in terms of pedestrian safety, neighborhood quality of life, and improving access to small businesses is well worth it for often struggling urban neighborhoods.

This is the difference between accommodating and prioritizing walking and biking. This is the difference between walkable cities and cities that you want to escape as quickly as possible. Saying that these road diets only make sense for low traffic (under 15K) roads is a cop-out, and fails to adequately value our urban neighborhoods, who are paying the price for dangerous high-speed road designs.