Today's Star-Tribune has a story by Rosalind Bentley on the increasingly dangerous driving behavior nationwide and locally. It's on-line at http://www.startribune.com/stories/462/3400257.html and it answered some of the questions that I've had about the risks of being on the roads in our fair city.
Short summary: it's not just my perception that there's fewer cops out there enforcing red lights and speed limits. From the article: Minneapolis Police Lt. Gregory Reinhardt remembers the early 1990s, when his traffic unit had 35 officers. Now he has 12. Those 12 officers aren't the only ones out there enforcing traffic laws, Reinhardt said. But precinct officers are more likely to be responding to a 911 call than to be flagging someone for rolling through a stop sign, he said. "We've put a great deal of focus on reducing violent crime, and we've done a great job on that," Reinhardt said. But as a result, "One of the duties we've kind of put on hold is traffic enforcement. Even my unit doesn't do as much as we used to. Now I'm performing triage." So the City could *double* the number of traffic patrol officers out on the roads today and still be at only two-thirds of the enforcement we had ten years ago, when there were way fewer SUVs, cell phones, and total congestion. Yikes! Does anybody know the financial picture of Minneapolis traffic enforcement? I'd be really curious to know what it costs to put another traffic patrol car on the street and the average revenue in fines that it would collect to offset that cost. How does it net out? As a bicyclist and motorcyclist, I'd hate to become a victim of a 50th Street red-light runner if the city could have done something revenue-neutral to prevent it. (Well, I probably would not like to get clobbered whatever the cost, but I hope that you get my point.) -- Peter Klausler, Linden Hills, Minneapolis, Minnesota ',.PY FGCRL Principal Engineer, Cray Inc. AOEUI DHTNS pmk@visi,com, [EMAIL PROTECTED], http://www.visi.com/~pmk ;QJKX BMWVZ _______________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:mpls@;mnforum.org Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
