The following was published in Finance and Commerce, http://www.finance-commerce.com/recent_articles/030711b.htm
***** Minneapolis, take back your streets By Ken Avidor and Jeff Carlson/Guest Columnists July 11, 2003 �If you let other people do it for you, they will do it to you.� � Robert Anthony At a neighborhood meeting in Pershing Park on May 5, Hennepin County transportation engineer Jim Grube proudly announced that the county had �taken over� the main arterial streets of Minneapolis. Not one person applauded or even smiled. Many residents and small business owners all over Minneapolis are not happy with Hennepin County�s approach to transportation and urban design. While other cities in America and throughout the world are on the cutting edge of the new way of city planning and design, Minneapolis is stuck in an autocentric, suburban-style quagmire. Portland, Ore., tore up its riverfront freeway and replaced it with a park; Seoul, South Korea, is about to tear down its six-lane Cheonggeucheon Freeway and replace it with a park and a bus rapid transit line. London now charges drivers to enter the city, and the money is used to fund transit. Other cities choose to create human and humane environments instead of moving and parking cars. Minneapolis, unfortunately, seems to be sliding backwards toward the bad old �urban renewal� days when neighborhood homes and businesses were bulldozed to build hideous freeways, parking lots and strip malls. The �Minneapolis Plan� with its emphasis on �Transit First� is suffering the Death of a Thousand Cuts. Hennepin County is planning a major reconstruction of Lake Street. Unfortunately, this project is heavily influenced by another road-building project, the controversial 35W Access Project. Both of these projects are linked in many ways. Both projects are managed by Smith Parker, a law firm with no urban design expertise but plenty of political connections. Both projects are controlled by Hennepin County. Both projects have Project Advisory Committees that share many of the same representatives. It�s not surprising, therefore, that the 35W Access Project tail is wagging the Lake Street dog. At the heart of the debate about the Access Project and Lake Street is whether we will build primarily for automobile speed or for quality of life for neighborhoods. This is a mutually exclusive relationship wherein one suffers while the other benefits. Vehicular speed means perpetuating the status quo of a four-lane roadway with restricted parking, narrow sidewalks and, in general, a wide swath of pavement filled with speeding cars, dust and exhaust. Choosing quality of life means accepting that a narrower, traffic-calmed Lake Street can safely accommodate existing and projected traffic levels with one travel lane in each direction and a shared turn lane, while providing permanent, unrestricted on-street parking, wider sidewalks, bump-outs at intersections and even on-street bike lanes. The county presented three street designs for Lake Street. The neighborhood and business representatives on the Project Advisory Committee added their own proposal: W4. The W4 proposal includes bump-outs, permanent on-street parking, wider sidewalks, a center turn lane and two lanes for car traffic. Many streets in Chicago are designed like W4 and work phenomenally well for all users. This includes Diversey Street , a commercial corridor in Chicago that was cited by Hennepin County Commissioner Peter McLaughlin as a model for what Lake Street could be. Unlike the current Lake Street, however, these streets are designed with people, not cars, in mind. Traffic is slowed, making life better for pedestrians and bicycles (and businesses). Space is restored for bike racks, plantings, brick pavers, benches and even sidewalk seating at restaurants. We should never underestimate the intrinsic value of sidewalks and bike lanes for human happiness. Streets should be designed to encourage shoulder-rubbing amongst neighbors, and not fender-bending. Walking and biking brings us in touch with one another. While it would be naive to wish away the automobile altogether, it is unacceptable not to build the best infrastructure we can for pedestrians and cyclists. Minneapolis residents and businesses cannot be expected to spend their valuable time correcting the mess created by the insensitive street designs of Hennepin County. We shouldn�t have to organize and hold meeting after meeting to protest speeding, air pollution, noise, the disappearance of on-street parking, the razing of affordable homes and the usurpation of the public commons for the private automobile. The city of Minneapolis needs to take its streets back from Hennepin County, the state of Minnesota and the federal government. Minneapolis needs to demand an exemption from the one-size-fits-all state aid standards on details such as lane and parking bay widths that threaten to supersize our roadways while minimizing the actual spaces where people walk and interact. The argument can be made that Minneapolis, in these tough fiscal times, cannot afford to own and maintain its streets. Time will show us otherwise. We live in a unique and beautiful city. To allow the insensitive and uninformed designs of automobile-obsessed planners to reconfigure our fragile urban ecology is inviting economic and social disaster. We, and the elected officials of our city, should at the very least insist that a neighborhood-friendly proposal such as W4 be adopted by the Lake Street PAC and Hennepin County. Ken Avidor is the 10th Ward representative on the Lake Street Project Advisory Committee. Jeff Carlson is Midtown Greenway Coalition representative on the committee __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month! http://sbc.yahoo.com TEMPORARY REMINDER: 1. Don't feed the troll! Ignore obvious flame-bait. 2. 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