Several years ago I chaired the Lyndale Avenue Task Force. It was formed by Council Members Meade and McDonald after a proposal surfaced to wide the street and take numerous threes. Hundreds of angry people came to a meeting and it was very clear the staff's proposal would have to be retracted. That was the genesis for the Lyndale Avenue Task Force.
Our group consisted of representatives of the neighborhoods groups that touched Lyndale Avenue from Franklin to the Crosstown. Four at-large members were appointed to bring additional perspectives to the process. We met monthly - with open meetings - for almost three years. Mike Monahan, City Engineer for Minneapolis or his deputy attended and participated in all the meetings. We heard from the traffic experts, neighborhood folks, transit people. The members thought, debated, argued and came up with a plan that divided the length of the street into five sections. Different conditions dictated different treatments for the various sections. For example, Lyndale south of Lake is basically a residential street with tiny commercial nodes at 36th, and 40th. The people living along the street made it clear they wanted slower traffic and one way was to have a median in the area from 31st to 38th and one line with traffic bays more akin to a Parkway south of 38th to 54th. The goal was never to divert traffic to other neighborhood streets nor to drive traffic to the 35W. Lyndale was a "collector" street for residential traffic and a funnel to 35W. It should not be an alternative to 35W for commuter traffic. The plan was presented at two community meetings and met with resounding support. Then the problems. One winter saw a breakup of the surface and a "quick fix" of an overlay to keep traffic moving. This put the rebuilding of the street back a few years. The elections and new people taking office, a change in personnel at both the County and Minneapolis Traffic Engineering departments and new people moving in and then - no one remembers why the plans are the way they are or where they came from. I still support the plan our Task Force developed. However, I have soured on the whole idea of Task Forces and citizen participation in some instances. Unless the money is in hand to do the project and the schedule is for the near term, it often becomes a waste of a lot of people's time since the plan is subject to the vagaries of time and personnel changes. Sorry for the length of this post. Jan Del Calzo Lynnhurst Chair, Lyndale Avenue Task Force _______________________________________ 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
