Jason Goray writes: "As a side note, I'd prefer it if the buses were run on some fuel other than diesel. I Have you ever gotten stuck behind a bus on a motorcycle or bicycle? It makes you want a gas mask!"
Buses are lower on some pollutants, but diesel engines in general put out a lot of hydrocarbons. If you have to breathe a lot of it, you'd do well to have a gas mask. But one way to NOT breathe it is to use streets the buses don't use. I think there are no buses on Monroe, and fewer buses on Washington Street. Have you ever tried getting downtown on either of those, Jason? Actually when my house was in NE and my job downtown, I found it was FASTER to ride the bus to my job than to drive my car. Always amazed me a little given the way buses poke along. But cars have other problems when going into downtown. Such as finding a place to park!!! And then WALKING to work from wherever that place is. Wendy Pareene wrote: "] My 14 year old son narrowly escaped being = flattened by an SUV turning right on a red light while he was bicycling across 32nd avenue... with a green light... on the sidewalk along Lyndale Avenue. My son was already in the ntersection... the SUV had no turn signal on... JM: Wendy wants to childproof the city. It can't be done; but even if it could, it shouldn't parents abdicate their role too much already. Children don't come trained into the world. When the time comes for them to go off on their own to face the hazards of the world, they should already know how dangerous it is so they can survive. Parents over the millenia have shown it can be done, but too many parents nowadays don't treat their training role as the most important thing in their lives. And no municipality ought to relieve them of the consequences of failure. For one thing, the park of which you speak is not the only one in that vicinity. There are parks adjacent to streets with less traffic. As for the park you mention, it may be it needs a chain link fence on the Lyndale side. It sounds more realistic to me to aim at that rather than to choke off traffic south of Lake Street. Also, this is another place for me to mention another of the real benefits of one-way streets. You only have to fear traffic from one diretion. I've often struggled to cross a street with traffic lights in both directions that don't change together so that once one direction of traffic clears, here comes traffic from the other way. Often, you have to wander out to the middle line and be ready to dart across after the last car (this being, of course, because drivers ignore the LATEST new law which says they STOP for pedestrians crossing the street). ===== Jim Mork Cooper Neighborhood Minneapolis ------------- Paul Wellstone: Best friend Minneapolis ever had in Washington. __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? HotJobs - Search new jobs daily now http://hotjobs.yahoo.com/ _______________________________________ 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
