Nathan Hunstad wrote, in part: >>>>> I think traffic could be much improved if they were. I think that a three-lane Lake Street with continuous left-turn lanes, combined with better-timed signals, is more than adequate. Perhaps the city could use signs to direct through traffic to 26th and 28th streets to better divert traffic from Lake and make it more pedestrian friendly. <<<<<
I agree. I've ridden my cargo trike or pedicab and trailer on such streets as Lake, Lyndale, Hennepin, and Nicollet at various times of day, and find that they are usually congestion and trouble-free. I'll go a bit further as well.... The best single transportation investment we can make is to encourage and participate in "active transportation" as the dominant urban mode. Given the public health, environmental, and "peak oil" energy concerns, our city leaders must educate constituents and demand that city and corporate planners also understand the paradigm shift. Human beings require active transportation integrated into daily life for mental and physical and social health. Our current dominant mode of transportation -- the automobile -- is poisoning us even as it makes walking and biking more difficult. On the one hand, our environment and economy will make the change for us in much more painful ways if we continue in agressive denial and intentional ignorance. On the other hand, we can create healthy and sustainable urban neighborhoods prepared for the next thirty years of adaptation to a new energy and "cradle-to cradle" resource regime. (Take a look at McDonough and Braungart: "Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things") Ironically, the healthy, sustainable, future-oriented options involve far less tax money to be spent on roads (to which most imaginations are currently bound) and far more investment in creating walkable, self-sustaining neighborhoods linked by clean, low-energy transportation options. Ultimately, our urban transportation infrastructure will be increasingly violent or peaceful. A violent infrastructure will not sustain us for very long. Environmental, physical, economic, and geopolitical "blowback" will render a violent urban infrastructure suicidal. A peaceful transportation infrastructure will be sustainable over the long run, integrating the complex local and global issues into a city structure which is the result of democratic vision and process. A bigger Lake Street will be a violent trap. We must make better ways to do what we do. I do sustainable work in our city with my cargo trike or pedicab and trailer that some people do by driving huge trucks and trailers into our neighborhoods from the burbs. I reduce congestion, pollution, and squander far less energy, while the trucks and trailers add to pollution and congestion and an obscene energy waste. I have conversations almost daily with contractors who complement me on my mode of transportation, while decrying the fact that they need the trucks and such because they "have to drive" in from the burbs or are afraid they "could not survive" without the trucks and trailers. Our imaginations are all too bound, and our capacity to believe that we can create alternative positive futures are nearly destroyed. It seems to me that we too easily view big corrupt corporations wed to big corrupt government as authoritarian paqrents who provide us with some comfort of illusion and security -- especially if we refuse to think or act or adventure for ourselves. Roadbuilding is the way of increased dependence and devolution for our city. Discovering a sustainable future is a matter of survival over the next thirty years or so. We poison ourselves needlessly to support some agressive psychopathic "legal persons" called "corporations" (oil, auto, tobacco industry?) and we ourselves become more agressive, more psychopathic, more dependant upon violence to support "our way of life." It is more important to maintain "intentional ignorance" all the time, is it not? To admit even a tiny change in the way we design our city is to challenge the great House of Cards, the Oiligarchical Empire within which we are set. Want to do something really meaningful and radical in Minneapolis? Walk. Bike. Design your life around walking and biking, as much as possible. -- pedaling for peace and environmental justice in Minneapolis -- Gary Hoover REMINDERS: 1. Think a member has violated the rules? Email the list manager at [EMAIL PROTECTED] before continuing it on the list. 2. Don't feed the troll! Ignore obvious flame-bait. For state and national discussions see: http://e-democracy.org/discuss.html For external forums, see: http://e-democracy.org/mninteract ________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Un-subscribe, etc. at: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
