St Paul's Hamline Avenue Mill and Overlay is a Street Safety Betrayal

[Aftermath of a recent car crash on four-lane segment of Hamline Avenue.]

The maddest I ever saw Barb Thoman was at a Transportation Committee meeting in 2014. I was a Planning Commissioner, and had just joined the Transportation Committee, a city-led group started under Mayor Chris Coleman (and then Council Member Russ Stark) which was intended to offer public input and guidance for the city’s Public Works and Planning departments.

[Thoman at the Grand Avenue parking meter meeting.]

If you don’t know her, Barb Thoman is a long-time St. Paul transportation advocate. She started Transit for Livable Communities (TLC) back in 1996 (!),  a literal lifetime ago. Back then, it was literally the 20th century, a stone age for transportation advocacy, the era when building freeways and parking garages was still pitched as climate action, before either city had a bicycle coalition.

Thoman's, TLC (and its successor, Move Minnesota), and her other efforts have improved transit, sidewalks, and bike lanes for so long by now, laying the groundwork for whatever change has happened over the last two decades. On top of that, Thoman is an incredibly kind, even-keeled person, the epitome of thick-skinned practical criticism. I once watched her get boo’d by a room full of rabid St. Paul drivers during a public meeting about parking meters, taking a gamut of criticism for having the gall to invoke climate change. She dealt with it all a cool, calm way, though I'm sure she was deeply upset.

[Link to source documents.]

My point is that she's not an angry person, but on this occasion, in the City Hall Annex, I was astonished to see Barb yelling full-throated at St Paul engineer John Mazko (and calling him “John”, no less). Furious, she accused him of lying directly to her face, saying something like “this bridge is going to last for 50 years, and now it’s locked in.”

(Maczko, a genial-but-old-school, i.e. condescending, transportation engineer, looked like he’d been run over by a truck. Deservedly so, it turned out.)

The issue was this: St. Paul Public Works had funded, designed, and bidded out a new bridge for Hamline Avenue (over Ayd Mill Road) without bringing it to the Transportation Committee as had been promised. Instead, the bridge was built as a four-lane road without bike lanes. The city moved ahead without considering whether or not a three-lane “road diet” might have worked better for the city and its communities. 

[See the letter at right from 2012/2013 transportation advocates, explaining the issue in great detail.] 

Instead, as multiple neighborhood groups pointed out at the time, the city designed the bridge and its road for the benefit of drivers, keeping a dangerous design in place despite low traffic counts and policies calling for safer road designs.

Well, Barb Thoman was right. St. Paul's 2013 mistake is coming back to haunt.

What Goes Around

Thirteen years later, you can read about the recent spat in the Pioneer Press, where the city repaved Hamline Avenue without doing anything to make the street less dangerous. Here’s the relevant situation, along with the surprisingly on-point pushback from the adjacent District Councils:

The Hamline Midway Coalition and Union Park District Council have sent a joint letter to St. Paul Public Works requesting a “4-to-3” lane conversion on Hamline Avenue between Selby and University avenues. The proposal calls for reducing the roadway from four travel lanes to two, adding a center turn lane and installing bike lanes. Supporters say the time is now because the street is already scheduled for repaving, which means new striping will be needed either way.

The groups cite a history of crashes, speeding concerns, pedestrian crossings near Concordia University and the lack of a direct north-south bike route as reasons for the change.

A full reconstruction of Hamline Avenue is expected around 2035 to 2039. The groups argue their proposal will improve safety until then.

However, city officials described the proposal as “not possible or practical.”

In a letter responding to the neighborhood groups, Public Works Director Deb Barber said the city would have to conduct a broader public engagement process and studies on traffic, business and public safety impacts.

Not much has changed in the last 13 years, other than that Hamline Avenue has been repaved more than once, and the thinking on road diets has vastly improved. The street remains an ideal candidate for a four-to-three conversion, with 15,000 cars a day. Furthermore, Ayd Mill Road is now smaller and traffic has been reduced. Also, the Green Line is up and running. 

Meanwhile, countless people have been impacted by a street that’s difficult and dangerous to cross. According to the (inadequate) city crash data, there are three or four bike and pedestrian crashes on this stretch of Hamline Avenue every year; I would guess that at least 50 people have thad their lives transformed for the worse since the road diet was first squashed by city staff.

The other significant disappointment from this recent repaving  decision is that it signals a walking back of St. Paul's commitment and leadership on four-to-three conversions. Also called “road diets,” these are by now a fairly straight forward safety improvement. I have some thoughts...

[The deadly four-lane design of Hamline Avenue in 2013, when it was repaved by Mayor Coleman.] 

Four-Lane Death Roads and Road Diet Conversions

Ten years ago, busy streets were thought to be impossible for a "four-to-three conversion", aka "road diet." In the Twin Cities, that changed thanks a specific tragedy on St Paul’s Maryland Avenue. It took courageous leadership from Ramsey County elected officials and Public Works staff, but it also took a terrible tragedy. I had thought we'd moved beyond blindly accepting these deadly streets.  

[worst offender "death road" streets as of 2016.]

Here’s the longer explainer: Hamline Avenue through its central section — from University Avenue south to Summit — is what I call a four-lane death road, a term I coined an antiquated, obsolete, wildly dangerous, 20th century road design that out to by now be synonymous with engineering malpractice. 

I have written about this so many times at this point, I need only cite myself:

When a decision maker says “we can’t do that because of traffic,” to me they are really saying that they value traffic volumes over safety. To me this is morally indefensible, and is not a choice we should be making as a society.

In the 20th century, four-lane death roads were common practice for engineers, who looked at busy urban arterial streets and only saw congestion. Back then, the focus was on car "stacking" and intersection efficiency (also called LOS). The result were streets that were crash magnets.

[Traffic Counts.]

Sadly, someone usually has to die before change happens. In this case, the reform movement around four-lane death roads came to a head in 2016 after a woman named Elizabeth Dunham was killed by a driver on a four-lane undivided stretch of Maryland Avenue. The details of the story are sickening: a kid saw his mother get killed by a driver out of the window of his school bus. 

As I wrote then, streets did not have to be this dangerous:

The other option is to “go smaller” with a 4-3 conversion, trading out two through-lanes for a center turn-lane. I’ve written about this many times before. (And then a few more times.) You’re trading speeds and complexity for a simpler-but-slower urban environment. This change also gets left-turning cars out of the way, to create continuous through lanes with more constant speeds. Many studies show that this kind of design improves safety for car drivers, and especially for people on foot. (Sometimes, this change can have minimal effect on overall automobile through-put.) More importantly, a road diet prevents exactly the kinds of situations that killed Dunham.

Crashes on four-lane death roads are as predictable as a thunderstorm, a straightforward outcome. Left-training cars stop, forcing / encouraging high-speed weaving between the lanes. Drivers stopping for pedestrians create the conditions for a fatal crash, which is exactly what happened to Elizabeth and many others. These risks and dangers happen constantly, every day; the only countervailing benefit is less "stacking" of traffic during rush hours, but that's a terrible tradeoff. In the meantime, these streets sit in our cities causing havoc, especially anytime pedestrians are present.

To me, it's engineering malpractice, and only the intentional obfuscation of design manuals keeps cities from being financially liable. These kinds of roads should be removed from service as quickly as is feasible.

Thankfully, the conversation around this has shifted a lot in my time advocating for street safety. Both Minneapolis and St. Paul have examples of what this looks like: The St. Paul case, Maryland Avenue, was a pioneering street design reform led by the Ramsey County Public Works, which, at the time, took a risk because the traffic counts (called ADT) were so high. 

Following that lead, other local Public Works’ engineers have followed suit: NE Broadway was converted around 2018 by the City of Minneapolis. Lyndale Avenue was converted by Hennepin County about four years ago. North Dale Street was converted by Ramsey County last year. There are many other examples.

In each case, streets became more congested during rush hours, but much safer at all hours of the day and night. These are all clear wins for public health, public salty, justice, and equity, especially for their local communities.

Compared to those higher-volume streets, Hamline Avenue is a no-brainer. Its dangerous design should be treated in the same way as these other clear policy wins, and more so given the history of crashes and advocacy. 

But it’s really hard to shift engineering practices and the automotive myopia of some decision makers.

"Just Pave It"

Incoming mayors tend to adopt a “just pave it” attitude, looking for quick solutions to problems where they can put their imprimatur on the city. This is the kind of thing that, for example, Zohran Mamdani has been doing in New York City. In his first few weeks in office he was out there personally shoveling asphalt onto a long-standing problematic bike lane bridge entrance.

St. Paul is trying to copy Mayor Mamdani, only they're doing it wrong. Mamdani has been choosing projects that advance equity and justice in New York City: A dedicated bus lane. A bike lane fix. Removing unnecessary roads through parks.  

Instead, Mayor Her’s administration here is literally repaving the status quo, using a short-term fix to paper over what should be a long-term solution. 

In her defense, this is a common mistake. It repeats the short-sighted solution that Mayor Chris Coleman once made with some penny-wise repaving back in 2014. He launched a campaign against what he called the “Terrible Twenty,” replacing the surface asphalt -- and just the asphalt -- on the city's most pothole'd arterial streets. 

(Particularly ironic, Mayor Coleman's dramatic asphalt gesture did a "mill and overlay", i.e. surface repaving, on exactly same stretch of Hamline that Mayor Her has just completed.)

There were two problems with Mayor Coleman's “terrible twenty” approach. First, it was a short-term fix to a long-term problem. It looked good for a few years, but the aging streets quickly degraded worse than before. In the meantime, the long-term street reconstruction budget had been drained. 

The second problem was that the mill and overlay projects did not fix any of the pedestrian sidewalk or safety measures, terrible situations that the city has been desperate to resolve. This was a borderline violation of ADA laws, but it was also the wrong thing to do from a social justice, climate action, or equity perspective. 

In fact, Mayor Coleman's blinder'd repaving was so egregious that it prompted a shift in city policy. Now, at least theoretically, any time the city does a repaving project they also go in and, at much added expense, improve the sidewalks with ADA ramps, bump outs, curbs cuts and the like. (This is why some property owners balk at the costs and sue the city.)

Unfortunately, Mayor Her did not follow that policy. Instead, she has brought us back to the worst paving practices from 15 years ago, throwing asphalt on a problem without doing jack squat to fix streets, sidewalks, or improve safety. 

The fresh pavement might look nice, but it does not bode well for the list of voter-approved Comment Cent projects, city-funded reconstructions where there's great opportunity to improve streets . Under the Carter Administration, Hamline Avenue (one of the sales tax projects) was going to be a textbook case of reconstruction and redesign with equity in mind. That would mean a road diet and separated bike lane along its entire length, from the railroad tracks on the north all the way to Highland.

Under the Her Administration, I'm not optimistic. I guess we’ll see. City policies and plans are technically on the books, but in the end, those are just paper.

[Aftermath of the 2012 Hamline Avenue crash that killed Cleo Louise Marie Thiberge.]

In Conclusion: Dangerously Bass Ackwards

To make a long story short, the neighborhood groups are exactly right to be pissed off here. The myopic repaving is a short-term solution to a long-term problem, and leaves in place the dangerous status quo conditions, the uncrossable street next to a populated university, the needless traffic sewer that will predictably lead to violent crashes. It will inevitably lead to someone being hurt or killed by drivers who are incentivized, by design, to drive dangerously.   

In the meantime, the city is in the midst of a death spike. Just the recent examples: Barbara Mork-Woodford was killed crossing Hamline Avenue two weeks ago, and Ricki Larson was killed riding a bicycle on Highland Parkway this week. They join the six (and counting) deaths of pedestrians and cyclists on St. Paul streets this year, an alarming increase.

Smooth pavement looks nice but papers over serious problems. I know we can do better in St. Paul, because not too long ago we were! It sure seems like that progress in St. Paul these days has to happen the hard way. 

Mayor Her’s Public Works department is off to a bad start, and I predict more people will get hurt.

Links of previous articles on this topic:

• https://streets.mn/2014/10/28/four-lane-death-roads-should-be-illegal/
• https://streets.mn/2018/05/29/the-death-of-4-lane-death-roads/
• https://streets.mn/2019/01/29/get-to-know-a-four-lane-death-road-broadway-street-ne-minneapolis/
• https://streets.mn/2018/09/13/time-to-kill-the-northeast-minneapolis-death-roads/
• https://streets.mn/2017/05/19/so-much-depends-on-the-next-six-weeks-on-maryland-avenue/
• https://www.minnpost.com/cityscape/2019/10/risky-hennepin-and-ramsey-county-streets-are-increasingly-being-put-on-road-diets/
• https://www.minnpost.com/cityscape/2025/10/bike-lane-rants-are-fig-leaves-covering-up-serious-traffic-safety-concerns/
• https://www.minnpost.com/cityscape/2025/09/new-lyndale-avenue-reconstruction-plan-fails-the-test-for-non-motorized-users/
• https://tcsidewalks.blogspot.com/2016/01/death-road-death-watch.html
• https://tcsidewalks.blogspot.com/2017/05/pioneer-press-misses-point-arterial.html
• https://tcsidewalks.blogspot.com/2021/02/another-predictable-tragedy-on-east-7th.html
• https://tcsidewalks.blogspot.com/2014/11/the-road-diet-cut-off.html

Death Road Death Watch

I have a thing against the 4-lane undivided roadways that traffic engineers in both core counties seem to be so fond of. I think they're unconscionable. I tried to make the case against these roads in urban areas a while ago on streets.mn, and it was one of the rare times when I actually feel justified in using possible inflammatory language to describe a situation. 

Thus the Four-lane Death Road™.
Here's the punchline:

These patterns are troubling, but they probably point to the political disenfranchisement of particular areas of the city more than any grand conspiracy toward structural racism. These streets shouldn’t be allowed in any parts of our cities where people walk or bike or have homes and businesses. It shouldn’t matter where you are or how much money you have. These streets are dangerous for everyone, and there should be no excuse for them.

I wrote about this two years ago. I’m probably going to write about it again after the next person is put in a coma or coffin. Every day, these dangerous designs erode safety and quality of life, and our urban businesses and neighborhoods continue to languish in the shadow of death. Minneapolis, Saint Paul, and Ramsey and Hennepin Counties can fix this problem and make Death Roads™ illegal in urban areas. Until they do, it’s only a matter of time before another kid gets mowed down.

And here again is an attempt to describe some of the science and research behind the Death Road™(aka road diet) debate:

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.

To me the trade-off between car capacity and safety for vulnerable users of our public rights-of-way is a moral question, not a transportation question. These designs erode the safety and security of people living int he city, and they're simply too dangerous. We shoudl get rid of them as soon as possible. Full stop.

So here's the list of roads we should immediately convert to 3-lane designs. All of these need to go. They are not OK. They need to die.

The Death Road Death Watch List (in no particular order)

• Rice Street (the Saint Paul / North End portion)
• Lyndale Avenue (in South Minneapolis)
• East Lake Street (east of Hiawatha)
• West Broadway Avenue (in Northeast)
• West Broadway Avenue (in North)
• White Bear Avenue (North of I-94)
• University Avenue (in Northeast)
• Franklin Avenue
• West 7th Street (between Grand and Downtown)
• Hamline Avenue (North of Summit)
• Cretin Avenue (North of Grand)
• Dale Street (North of Summit)
• Robert Street (through downtown) 
• Maryland Avenue (East of Western)
• Hennepin Avenue (South of Downtown)
• 46th Street South 
• Hennepin Avenue (East of Central)

Am I missing any? To me, this is a moral question. We must change these streets. Nothing else will do.

Eventually, we'll fix these streets. Why not now?

Pioneer Press Misses the Point: Rice Street Road Diet is a Huge Deal for Saint Paul

This Sunday, the Pioneer Press published a 1A front-page story about Rice Street and the North End, my old neighborhood. The piece described a changing of the guard in the local community group, the District 6 Council, which recently held an election where a new wave of board members ran for office and won, angering an old guard. The neighborhood schism hinges around a changing philosophy about streets and public space, particularly a proposed redesign of Rice Street, the main commercial drag, soon slated for reconstruction.

The reporter, Fred Melo, is one of the best journalists at the Pioneer Press and (mostly) does good work in trying circumstances. (For some context, consider how the newspaper’s hedge fund owners have admitted to “harvesting”the newsroom.)

But, as I pointed out on Twitter, he missed the key point here:

In short, Melo was right to cover the story, and has some good journalistic instincts on display. But by framing the piece around bike lanes, he and his editors needlessly turned an important story into another piece of bait for trolls.

An example of how the article’s framing quickly adopts bike lanes as its central focus:

Holst, a Marion Street resident and proponent of bicycle lanes and pedestrian-friendly infrastructure, was appointed chair by the board members, and his friends and personal contacts took over the other leadership posts.

“A lot of people have served tirelessly for District 6 for a very long time,” said Holst, a rental property owner, on Thursday. “My focus is going to be on making the North End the best neighborhood it can be.”

The sudden turnover in leadership within the North End’s neighborhood planning council may underscore the extent to which bike lanes have become a contentious topic in St. Paul’s business districts. The districts have long struggled with how to balance the needs of drivers, pedestrians, business owners and nearby residents.

Scoffing at the prospect of adding bike lanes to a busy county thoroughfare, some business owners see cyclists as newcomers and outsiders inserting themselves into the discussion.

Cyclists and advocates of “new urbanism” say they’re a growing part of the city’s population, and too long overlooked. And they say the infrastructure they’re advocating for could help calm traffic, improve public safety and boost business sales by increasing general access. They believe it could save lives.

The article continues with some quotes from disgruntled neighborhood group members, a cursory mention of on-street parking, and that’s about it.

And that’s the problem, because the issue here isn't bike lanes, it's a street re-design around pedestrian safety.  The difference in focus is significant because street design is central to solving Saint Paul's safety problem, which has 140+ pedestrian crashes annually and 5 deaths in 15 months. Economically struggling Rice Street, more than anywhere else in the city, needs this kind of urban design change if it’s going to survive.

Here are three key pieces of context that the column left out:

[A "road diet", aka a safer street design.]

1. Road diets are a revolutionary safety improvement

[Seattle data.]

At first glance, the term “road diet” seems like flip jargon. Like “traffic calming” or (please God no) “woonerf”, it seems like cutesy self-help, something for the bougie “new urbanist” crowd (as Melo put it) to slap on convention brochures.

But it’s not. A 4-3 road diet is a very serious concept at the core of the contemporary shift in urban design thinking. They represent a huge change in civil engineering practice, a rethinking of the relationship between speed, congestion, safety, and walkability.

A quick definition: A road diet is when you take a four-lane undivided street (i.e. no turn lane) and replace the middle two lanes with a center turn lane. It creates a “three lane” footprint where cars can no longer swerve back and forth between gaps in traffic like they’re racing at Daytona. (Local examples include Marshall, Fairview, Lexington, West 7^th, Riverside, and Franklin.)    

Here are a few key points, from my 2010 article on deadly four-lane roads, following a tragic crash at Rice and Hoyt:

#1) 3-lane roads are much safer for car drivers. 

According to a Federal Highway Administration study, changing a 4-lane Death Road™ into a three-lane road reduces automobile traffic accidents from 20% to 50% depending on the context. (Note: this makes intuitive sense if you’ve ever driven on a street like this.) There are dozens of similar studies out there.

#2) 3-lane roads have marginal impact on traffic flow. I’m not going to suggest that a 4-to-3 conversion of a Death Road™ has no impact on traffic flow (though sometimes that turns out to be the case). Rather, fixing a Death Road™ usually sees a reduction in car throughput in the 5% to 10% range. As another Federal Highway Administration report puts it, “under most average daily traffic (ADT) conditions tested, road diets have minimal effects on vehicle capacity.” 

#3) 3-lane roads slow speeds. 

The main difference between a 4-lane Death Road™ and a 3-lane safe street is that traffic speeds go down and become far more uniform. It’s a proven fact that reducing speeds even a little bit, i.e. from 40 to 30 miles per hour, can make a huge difference on accident severity for pedestrians and bicyclists. 

#4) 3-lane roads increase biking and walking. 

After a 4-lane Death Road™ was fixed in San Francisco, “bicycle usage increased 37% during the PM peak hour, the number of pedestrians increased 49% during the PM peak hour, [and] public response has been overwhelmingly positive about this project.” That’s just one example; also, it’s common sense.

#5) Fixing a Death Road™ is really cheap. 

Unlike expensive street reconstructions or concrete bumpouts, cities and counties can quickly, easily, and cheaply fix these Death Roads™.

Here’s a quote from a city engineer in Portland, Oregon:

Graff said the price of all five road diets considered in the city’s analysis was “in the $100,000 range,” or up to $120,000 or so for projects that added new median islands or other improvements. “The cost/benefit is really high,” he said. “For the cost of one improved crossing — a median improvement or rapid-flashing beacon that provides a point improvement, you can reduce crashes across 10, 20 blocks.”

[A forthcoming example from Hennpein County.]

If anything, the case for 3-lane designs has only gotten stronger in the last seven years.

Hennepin County is going to do a 4-3 (and 4-2!) road diet on Lowry Avenue, and just this week I’ve read about a proposed 4-3conversion in Bloomington and a 4-3 conversion on a 30,000+ ADT street in Denver that barely impacted congestion. (That’s over twice as much traffic as on Rice Street.)

The only thing I’d change:  

#6 Road diets solve the fatal crosswalk problem

[Four people recently killed on Saint Paul streets.]

I would also add that the 4-3 conversion solves the deadly“whip around” problem that Saint Paul has been wrestling with for years now. In response to a rash of crashes where drivers killed five people in just over a year, the Police Department has led “crosswalk stings” at dangerous points around the city.

But the truth is that Saint Paul Police can continue doing “Stop For Me” events until Sergeant Ellison is blue in the face, and it will make only marginal differences. Enforcement is facing huge challenges because of escalating distraction culture.

Two-hour police stings make for nice headlines, but when you install a 4-3 road diet, you can build 24-hour medians at key intersections. These designs will literally save lives on a street like Rice, and it’s not hyperbole or speculation to say so. They are the only thing that will make Rice Street (and others like it) safe for the thousands of people who live and work along it every day.

[A sign I once spotted on Rice Street.]

2. Social ties in the North End are very frayed

[Via MN Compass: North End is getting poorer, more diverse.]

The second big piece of the puzzle is that the North End is struggling and I’m very worried about its future. Think about this: I lived In the North End for seven years and barely met any of my neighbors. Keep in mind that I’m an outgoing, friendly guy, but after spending seven years living on Western Avenue, when I moved away, the only people I knew by name were the butcher down the street (since burned down), the bartender at my local dive bar (since burned down) and the owner of the pizza place (not burned down!).

There are a lot of demographic and social reasons for the weak social ties. The North End has always been a working-class place. A local bar (Tin Cups, featured in the story) sells a shirt that says “It’s a Rice Street thing, you wouldn’t understand,” and there’s a legacy of community there from past generations.

[Asked an old-timer the age of Born's Bar: "I came here in my mothers' womb," he said.]

But over the last few decades, the area has quickly changed and the institutions have not kept up. Looking at Rice Street offers a good example. Super old-school Tschida Bakery closed a few years ago, a building burned down next to Mama’s Pizza, bars that closed included Diva’s Overtime Lounge, Easy Street West, and the bar on Front Avenue (I forgot the name). Many in the neighborhood saw this as addition by subtraction, but I see these closures a as a bad sign.

(Or see also Melo' excellent story on the struggles of a Maryland Avenue beauty salon from 2016. It is very hard to start a business in this neighborhood.)

[Via MN Compass.]

The result is that the old North End institutions have disappeared through death, entropy, changing tastes, and demographic changes that have seen a transformation of the neighborhood away from older white residents toward younger people of color.  

The growing diversity is a good thing for Rice Street, which boasts businesses like Bangkok Thai Deli or Kathy's Live Bait, with more and younger people speaking languages other than English. But in an area that struggles with crime and gang violence, it’s a challenge, especially for the old-timers.

Another story: I felt really weird when I marched in the Rice Street Parade back in 2006, because the parade offered a long string of floats full of white people heading down a street lined with people of color. The parade dynamics really bugged me, especially when I saw the guy running for City Council on a “tough on crime” platform hoisting police logos against a segregated racial background. It was one the things that pissed me off enough to get involved in local politics in the first place.

(I door knocked for his opponent, who won a close election. Then, four years later, I door knocked for his opponent, Amy Brendmoen, who has shown a great ability to have tough conversations across some of the stark neighborhood lines.)

[The view from Tin Cups.]

One more story about Rice Street inequality: When I attended the North End/Como Ward DFL convention back in 2007, where the City Council nomination was being determined, there was a huge disparity between the different ward neighborhoods. My Rice Street precinct had three delegates in the room, while many of the other Rice Street precincts had none at all. (!) Meanwhile, every Como Park precinct was jam packed with dozens of supporters of different candidates.

This to say that political engagement in the neighborhood is hugely imbalanced. For years, it’s felt like almost nobody advocates for Rice Street, except in a reactionary way. Few people vote, politicians generally ignore the area, and the street has been stuck in a downward cycle of disinvestment and apathy.

It’s in the midst of this vacuum of social capital that Rich Holst, the new chair of District 6 (featured prominently in the story) has been doing some amazing work. Here are three quick examples that I've personally witnessed:

Last summer I attended an hour+ long meeting that Holst had set up in the District 6 offices. He’d invited an expert on co-cooperatively owned real estate developments from Northeast Minneapolis to give a “how-to” talk on setting up alternative community investment models on Rice Street, an area that has trouble getting regular business loans.

Second, last year Holst successfully applied for a city grant to install new, branded bike racks on Rice Street. He pulled together a design for for the racks: a “North End” logo featuring a compass rose. They’re kind of like the ones in Highland, only it’s much easier to lock a bike to them. Then, by himself, Holst went up and down the street talking to business owners trying to convince them to agree to have the racks installed.

Finally, he and his neighbor, (newly elected Soil and Water Commissioner) Lena Buggs, have been hosting weekly (!) “pink flamingo” parties in his neighborhood for over a year. Every week, all summer, for over a year…  People gathering on each others lawn to talk about the weather and how to improve the neighborhood.

This kind of work is hugely difficult in a neighborhood like the North End, where poverty, crime, and demographics tend to keep people turtled up in silos.

[One of the "flamingo friday" parties in the North End.]

 

3. Neighborhood politics is always about getting friends to show up

[Meeting in Minneapolis' Central neighborhood.]

Maybe it was the petty quotes from the outgoing District Council members, but Melo’s article seemed awfully naïve about how neighborhood group politics work.

For one thing, there’s a huge range of difference in quality between the different neighborhood groups in Minneapolis and Saint Paul. Some neighborhood groups reach out to city leaders and the community all the time; others seem like they don’t exist. (At the Saint Paul Planning Commission, the inequality is very apparent. Union Park, Mac-Grove, Fort Road, Highland, and Highwood, for example, have very active Councils. I have never heard anything from District 6, other than a complaint about a used car dealership.)

Secondly, some neighborhood groups take pains to try and reflect the demographics of their neighborhood. Others explicitly disenfranchise marginalized groups, like students, renters, or people who don’t speak English. A lot depends on where you live, each neighborhood’s unique history, and who steps up to get involved.

A few examples: I wrote an article about the great work being done in the Standish-Ericcson neighborhood; or check out John Edwards’ justified diatribes and hell-stories about LHENA and critique of Whittier's democratic process; or listen to Chris Meyer’s experiences with student disenfranchisement in Marcy-Holmes.

(Meanwhile, in my West Side district council, the annual meeting does a great job reflecting the diversity of the community and the board has many younger and/or non-white board members. In fact, a year ago, a group of board members ousted a long-time executive director in a contentious vote.)

[Meeting in Minneapolis' Standish-Ericcson neighborhood.]

In each case, the power dynamics are pretty simple. District Councils hold an annual election, and you try to get as many friends, neighbors, or others who live in the neighborhood to attend the three-hour meeting. After some period of mingling, they vote and elect the board. It’s straightforward, though group dynamics can quickly become petty in wrong circumstances. 

The point is that talking to friends and neighbors about the neighborhood is precisely the point of a community group. The idea that people who voted and ran for the board of a neighborhood group would know each other is a feature, not a bug.

The Takeaway: Bike Lanes Have Little To Do with It

[Drive down Rice, chances are good you'll see a crash.]

This kind of context is difficult to explain, and there’s no way that a newspaper story could fit it in. But my big critique of Melo’s story is that it focused on bike lanes instead of Saint Paul’s huge street safety problem.

(PROTIP: "new urbanism" is a term most commonly linked to developments like Seaside, Florida.)

It’s worth pointing out, as Osten does in the article, that bike lanes are just one of the options for the forthcoming street re-design. Compared to the safety improvements, they’re not anyone’s top priority.

It’s also worth pointing out that Rice Street can stand in for a half-dozen deadly Saint Paul streets in poor areas of town. These deadly streets are a social justice issue, because the high number of people of color and people living in poverty who depend on walking, biking, and transit. It’s a geographic issue, because of the imbalance of power within both the city and the county.

[A deadly intersection on Maryland Avenue.]

And it’s a political issue, because changing these streets isn’t a given, by any means. Almost all of Saint Paul’s deadly arterial roads are Ramsey County jurisdiction, so having a friendly Council Member does very little to advance the conversation with County-wide constituents, old-school County engineers, and little-known County Commissioners. These are the people shaping street designs on Rice, Dale, Maryland, and White Bear, and they’re only beginning to change the way that they make decisions. As Bob Collins predicts, it’s not a given that any of these streets will become safer in the next ten or twenty years.

(For example, the County Commissioner who represents the North End, Janice Rettman, successfully killed a 4-3 road diet on Dale Street a few years ago because she was worried about parking. She’s also consistently opposed bike lanes, and was *the only vote* against Ramsey County’s new All Abilities Transportation Network Policy, which aims to increase safety and ensure mobility for vulnerable people. There’s little chance that she will support safer designs for Rice Street.)

The work of people like Holst, Buggs, and Osten, and many others in these vulnerable neighborhoods, to build community and get involved, show up to meetings and stay positive, is one of the best things to happen on Rice Street in many years. In other words, this is exactly the kind of community work we need if we’re going to finally build safe streets in all parts of Saint Paul. It won’t be sufficient, but it’s a great first step. To me, it feels like blowing the dust off of the King of Rohan.

This isn’t the first time that media chosen a misleading slant for a street-related story. Bike lanes make both a convenient scapegoat, and an easy shorthand for more complex issues. But focusing on bikes does a disservice to the stakes and concerns of the people involved. It’s not about bikes, it’s about safety, and it’s about time. I wish the article could have figured that out. 

[The corner of Rice and Hoyt, where Bickram Phuyel was put in a coma.]