Barbara Lickness: Nice history on the 1st Ave diversion. I�d never heard that before.
One small item that puzzles me. Where does the 1st Ave traffic come from? Is it people driving East on Lake who turn onto 1st Avenue? Is it people who live south of Lake? Is it both? I can�t see why anyone would get off 35W and take 1st Ave into downtown? And I really can�t see suburbanites taking that route in place of freeways. I sometimes went that way to get on 28th Street to drive west to my neighborhood. But just as often I would do that swerve on Bryant or Harriet or some other disused street. So some of that neighborhood traffic is Minneapolis residents going to other parts of the city. Just as people go through my neighborhood to get to other parts. Dave Stack:�I am a firm believer that natural greenspace corridors and oases scattered throughout the urban landscape enrich the lives of the city's poor, as well as the better-off. The poor probably benefit more because the local neighborhoods are where they spend more of their lives. The rich more often can afford to take vacation trips, own lake cabins, and get out to more distant natural areas. � And when there is insufficient housing, they can even SLEEP in those green spaces. Minneapolis already has more green spaces than most cities in the land. But it does not have enough living spaces that a poor person can pay to live in. I think a strong consideration ought to be to affordable housing over green spaces. If not, don�t compalin when the homeless take over these public spaces. What other choice do they have? Jim Young:� Realistically, I agree that cars are here to stay but that doesn't mean that the transportation system we've built in the past 50 years is what will work well in the next 50 years. We need to think about what life will be like when the metro area has double the population it does now and even more than double the number of cars. � Cars and mass transit can live together. For decades, I used buses with a car parked at home for trips where mass transit wasn�t an option (such as those involving moving bulky loads). But as Jim says, the end of the days where we just assume we can jump in the car on a whim are coming to an end. Dyna Sluyter:� So what happens when our police departments fleet of Crown Vics gets parked due to lack of gasoline? Can we hack their engine controls and run them on ethanol? If petroleum diesel fuel becomes unavailable, can we get enough soy diesel to power our snowplows this winter?� How about killing two birds with one stone. Switch the cop cars to natural gas or propane. They hav eto drive a LOT of miles, so the reduction in pollutants would be a bonus. James Jacobsen: If it is cool to say that the US is bad for discussing and intending to defend itself from 9/11 types, -our own city and yes the mall -with lots of Minneapolitans always in the Mall- a possible terrorist target- then it is at least equally cool to say that the US -to avoid the 9/11 type of massive destruction right here in Minneapolis- is very good and appropriate to do what the President and now the Congress is talking about and moving ahead with reference Iraq. The issue here is not Iraq, the terrorists, or the war against them. The issue is democracy.� So why don�t we attack China, North Korea, and..............Florida? No, the issue is Bush�s poll numbers and our habit of gobbling up petroleum products. This pattern is as old as the USA. The country is built on seized assets. ===== Jim Mork (Cooper Neighborhood) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Vote Wellstone! One of the few people in Washington who'll stick his neck out for BOTH the stockholders (combatting management fraud) AND the working people.************ Why do corporations always love war? Easy: They don't bleed and they don't pay.************* __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? New DSL Internet Access from SBC & Yahoo! http://sbc.yahoo.com _______________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A Civil City Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest option, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
