Are we doing enough in St. Paul to promote transportation alternatives?
As a semi-regular bike commuter, I'd like to add a couple of quick observations: My ride to work is 15-20 minutes along Shepard Road from Randolph and Victoria to downtown. The bike lane there has made my commute much easier for two reasons: I am no longer trying to avoid drivers and buses along West 7th that don't signal lane changes, crowd lanes, block lanes, etc. If the city has any reasonable expectation of making the streets "multi-modal", than we need to spend resources and effort on both infrastructure AND education. Most of the education efforts I have seen are for bicyclists, particularly youngsters, which is needed. But by my observation, the state of overall driver education is pretty poor: drivers don't know how to interact with buses, bikes, and pedestrians; and at times bicyclists willfully ignore traffic rules to avoid cars. I'm a bit of a thrill seeker, but taking your life into your hands on every commute does not particularly encourage this activity. And on a side note, it's not bicyclists who seem to be tossing garbage and breaking bottles onto the bike lane along Shepard Road (or speeding ten to fifteen miles over the 45 mph limit...we could make some extra revenue if a cop car was judiciously placed right near the Centex development). The second thing that makes my commute easier now that Shepard Road is open is that downtown is not configured at all for bike commuting. The only designated east-west lanes are typically joint bus lanes such as along 5th and 6th. Entry into downtown at Sibley near Kellogg now is pretty easy, but the bike lane ends after 4th Street! Commuting from the west, there are no good entry points. When I would commute from Hamline-Midway, it was a struggle to get from west-to-east, and then find a way to get into downtown around the Capitol. The last five minutes of my ride were always the most difficult. I bike because I enjoy the exercise, but when I combine that with bus commutes, I save close to $700 a year in parking costs, and I reduce the need to have an extra car, and all those attendant costs. That probably equals two or three mortgage payments a year. My wife and I are in the vast minority on our block because we use only one car. I don't know what would be the cost savings on my block if 10% of the people changed their habits a little bit, but I like the idea of families in our neighborhood saving money. The city could actually be using cost savings to promote transportation alternatives and living in our community (if we still have a marketing department?). Hmm. Rich Kramer's points about recent city investments are valid, but I don't see any integrated approach to encouraging transportation alternatives in the city. Most of this seems to be done by CDC's and developers of senior housing who are thinking about integrating development with transportation planning. Some of this work was funded or encouraged by the Met Council in the Ted Mondale administration. Of course, that solution only works if people are within reasonable distances from their jobs. At my workplace of 14 downtown, only two people could reasonably bike to work (less than 30 minutes), and only five or six could reasonably bus to work regularly. My guess is that's typical for most downtown employers. I've often thought an interesting question for local politicians (mayor, city council, but also met council, state, county and federal) and local administrators and planners is how often they use other means of transportation besides a car. It's sort of a litmus test, like George HW Bush not recognizing a bar scanner in 1988, or not knowing the price of milk. That would be a demonstration of leadership on these issues. Mike Wassenaar _____________________________________________ NEW ADDRESS FOR LIST: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe, modify subscription, or get your password - visit: http://www.mnforum.org/mailman/listinfo/stpaul Archive Address: http://www.mnforum.org/mailman/private/stpaul/
