Despite the Holle Brian's concern about the possible inadequacy of pedestrian crossing times for Hiawatha at 32nd street, the increase of speed limits on Hiawatha are a step forward.
If a crossing problem truly exists, it is something that can be remedied by changing the length of the semaphore signal, a do-able task. This does not however change Hiawatha into a freeway as she suggests. It is and has been a highway for longer than she and I have been alive. A highway that serves people. As a person that lives along the Hiawatha corridor, I am gratified that this roadway has been significantly improved over the past few years. The benefits are enormous, although we keep hearing from the handful of anti's and general road bashers. I can get downtown without loosing a hub cap, or knocking the bejeesus out of my alignment, struts that was the old Hiawatha. The new route, despite its many nay sayers, has served to reconnect a portion of my neighborhood to the rest of the community. A portion that previously was sliced off from the rest by a very busy and unsafe highway. As a consequence and byproduct of the new route, a very hard and permanent border has been created that instead of violating the Minnehaha park area, has served to define its border and has led to significant enhancements to the park. It has also in my opinion greatly improved the protection and isolation of the river gorge and its capacity to nurture and preserve wildlife and its natural beauty. More can be done to enhance this, I for one would tend to prefer to remove some of the unnecessary fencing that has been allowed to intrude on some of the natural spaces within the park. Today's announcement of increased speed limits surprised me however. I thought that the discussion had been postponed officially. This issue was relatively actively discussed on this list a while back, but dropped from sight when word circulated that no decision would be made until an undetermined later date. I regretted that decision then and welcome the change to a more realistic speed limit. But where did the miscommunication come from? As to the speed limit, the 40MPH section is still absurd. I understand the natural desire to protect us from ourselves, but the net result remains one of making scofflaws, if not outlaws, of the majority of motorists using the roadway. Putting a sign saying the speed limit is 40 will not reduce the prevailing speed to 40 from the current 45 to 50 MPH traveled my 87.9% (my estimate) of the people using the roadway when conditions and traffic load permit. It does allow some to say they favored keeping the road speed lower to ameliorate criticism from the go slow and no go crowd, but it flies in the face of common sense. When I was at the University of Minnesota as a student I marveled at all the foot paths around campus worn by the short cuts students actually took from building to building in contrast to all the nice neat and rectangularly laid sidewalks. It seemed obvious that the wise landscape planner would observe what people do and then put the sidewalks along the paths where people walked. That sort of responsiveness also makes a certain if limited sense in designing roadways and in this case speed limits. The new Hiawatha has an inherent design that permits safe travel through its southern extent at 45 mph if not more. In my opinion, 45MPH is the lowest posted speed, that anywhere close to the majority of drivers will feel reasonable enough to restrain themselves. Lower limits beg to be disregarded and ignored. We are a funny people, we like our independence. We will conform to certain rules and regulations as long as they appear to be reasonable. When they do not, we tend to ignore them outright. It is then that truly dangerous situations tend to arise and civil conformity declines. While I welcome the increased speed limits, I don't believe they have quite gone far enough. Earl Netwal NENA, near greater downtown Nokomis Village an oasis in the urban forest not far from the very much improved Hiawatha avenue. TEMPORARY REMINDER: 1. Don't feed the troll! Ignore obvious flame-bait. 2. If you don't like what's being discussed here, don't complain - change the subject (Mpls-specific, of course.) ________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
