Madam President,
Here are my unfinished, long-winded ramblings of last week, found in the
Drafts folder:
Misc. "Riverview Corridor" commentary:
The Mayor may know, and may tell, the answers to your questions
below. But long after he's gone, we'll still be here, so let's just have
us decide...
The main two reasons most of are against a W7th Busway were/are 1)
stealing sidewalk width and 2) creating a "whizz-through" corridor (hard to
get off an Express bus and go pawn-shopping.)
There are at least two good alternate routes to W7. Getting buses
and trucks onto them has always been an objective.
I live four doors from W7 and have seen my share of crashes, one
right INTO Joseph's Coat (then Joyners').
Despite the improvements lately, there is still a huge lack of Scotch
brand pavement markings. For example, the Randolph & View intersection is
home to a school, a (brand new) cafe', a gross-ery store, and a residence,
yet only two of the four crosswalks are marked. Why?!
We are pleased with the High Bridge sign, but you don't need to be a
traffic engineer to realize that a "Reduce Speed Ahead" sign in the middle
of the bridge might help explain why the interactive speed sign is flashing
at you. A driver sees that before the "Speed Limit 30 mph" sign and isn't
sure what to make of it.
During the Thune campaign, we often talked of traffic calming
measures that could be implemented in Ward 2, and we do our best to hold
Dave to his word. This hasn't been very difficult, i.e. he represents his
constituents very well, still listens to us, and wants to do a good job.
Your District Council is open most days and anyone looking for the
latest buzz only has to walk in the door and ask. We can't expect the
staffers to come knocking on our doors telling us what is happening, and
they do make an effort to publish happenings in the Community Reporter.
It seems very easy to get on the Board of the Councils, and in fact,
some members may need replacing anyway. No one can stop you from running
for a position. But if you're like me, it's easier to just criticize from
the sidelines. ;-)
W7 is unique in that we have oblique, three-way intersections. This
fact should not be overlooked, (nor should the fact that this affects our
vernacular architecture, WHICH IS SO OFTEN IGNORED.) It makes crossing the
street more difficult for peds and cars, and even makes it impossible (or
at least very difficult and dangerous) for tractor-trailers to turn the
acute angles. (I DID go to Civil Engineering School and designed highways
for MN/DOT, dontcha know, so this is one thing I know more about than the
other people in my household.)
Another interesting, overlooked factor about the three-way
intersections is that they create "150% More!" corners at which to stop and
shop or move on down the road to your house. There are 150% more
"shopfront radii," also. The West End is one petit Paris after another,
hence the nom du jour "Rive Gauche." At our intersection alone, there is a
1) pharmacy, 2) Chinese restaurant, 3) free clothing charity, 4)
gasoline/convenience store, 5) flooring store, and 6) bar. That half a
dozen reasons to slow down and stop, and six reasons not to have a bus
whizzing through. Fort Road is more of a path of stepping stones. If I-35E
is the cartpath, we are the fairway, and there's no sense running down it.
Besides the Armstrong/W7 intersection I just described, this type of thing
happens at Michigan/Western, Grace/Colborne, Jefferson/Erie,
Randolph/Osceola, etc, and "5 Corners" like at Tuscarora. At 150%, these
sites add up, and would benefit from frequent, quiet, small, cheap,
solar-powered bus service. If you're in a rush to get from the St. Paul
Hotel to the Mall of America you will not be concerned by or even aware of
the route you take, will you? If I want to take the train to Hennepin
Avenue, it does me no good to have an express bus go by without stopping to
pick me up. I would, however, take a bus "backwards," to the Schmidt
Station Pub, and have a beer and watch my express bus's progress on the
monitor. When it arrives, I just go from the Loading Dock right onto the
bus, beer, bike and all. I'd have a lid, of course.
Being against "The Busway" is not to be confused with not wanting
improved transit. That includes bikes, Carl's trike, peds, beer trucks,
etc.
I am one of those people who you get stuck behind going the speed
limit, and if I'm in the correct lane, you know what?, I don't care.
What's the hurry, is what I want to know...
I hold professional drivers (truckers, bus drivers, etc.) to a higher
standard than amateurs, while at the same time cut them more slack because
they pay more for the roads. But to see a semi turn at Randolph and W7
without using its indicator really pisses me off. (My mother was killed by
a truck 9 years ago, so you can understand why...)
People really do drive like shit around here. Just think if airplane
pilots were allowed to fly by scoring only 70 points on their test! Raise
the passing score, raise the legal age, and raise the fee. Driving a car
is a privelege, not a right. "In St. Paul..."
Any experiment is a good experiment. Even Ayd Mill, whose fate has
NOT been decided in my mind. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Even if
you get results that are not what you expected or wanted, you still have
learned something. "If you choose not to decide, you still have made a
choice..." "Wisdom come from good judgement, and a lot of that comes from
bad judgement."
We can blame the GSE debacle on all sorts of people, including
ourselves. Hindsight is 20/20. If your foresight is 20/80 or better, you
should be in office.
You must sign your name and 'hood.
A Hine
W7th
Andrew M. Hine
Corporate Research Materials Laboratory
3M Center 201-1W-28
St. Paul MN
55144-1000
USA
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Tel: (651) 733-1070
Fax: (651) 737-5335
Lab 201-W110
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
m
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Subject
10/24/2004 11:31 [StPaul] West 7th Re-striping
AM
Iâve been meaning to respond to the Busway discussion, but have been
having one of those busy stretches of life, so please forgive me.
Status of the Riverview Corridor transit plan (the âBuswayâ): Not wholly
dead, but comatose and the health insurance ran out a long time ago. The
plans at the City are sitting on a shelf with an uncertain future. Some of
the planning that took place at the very end of the process has
applicability to ongoing projects (RiverBluff) and things we hope to make
better in the future (a redesigned Randolph Avenue between W7th and
Shepard). The one thing that Riverview did promise was fewer bus stops for
that route, and by golly thatâs just about the only thing we got out of the
deal. In a neighborhood with lots of elderly residents, we have had the
local route to the VA hospital cut out, replaced with the 54, with fewer
stops. Thatâs the way to serve an older community â make âem walk farther
and donât go where they need to go. The âplanned increasesâ mentioned by
Mr. Sands would really be just restoration of what the Met Council took
away as a result of their Sector 5 study.
On the re-striping of West 7th: Itâs not a conspiracy to give us the
busway, if anything, itâs a conspiracy to make the street a
pedestrian-friendly, locally-based commercial corridor so that if this
lousy idea ever resurfaces again, it will be seen as even more out of sync
with the area. The striping (which has been in discussion for a while) is
designed to slow things down, allow the on-street parking to be less
dangerous, and to make it easier to cross the street. Crossing W7th has
always been difficult, because of the angles of the cross streets. On the
river side of W7th, there are no playgrounds, no rec centers, very little
public space appropriate for kids. They shouldnât have to take such risks
just to get to Palace playground. Itâs being done on that part of the
street with the lowest traffic volume, although I pushed for it all the way
between Smith and 35E. North of Smith, itâs too crowded, and south of 35,
itâs too crowded. The studies done for the busway did show that this
section of the road has low volumes.
The arguments for slowing things down are the same arguments that the
residents pretty overwhelmingly agreed cut against the busway. We already
have two huge corridors through our area â indeed, weâre surrounded by them
â 35E and Shepard Road. When we held community meetings on the busway,
there were things people said they wanted over and over: keep the traffic
slow, keep the sidewalks wide, retain on-street parking as safe, donât
build something that would make turning left impossible, donât use the road
as a through-way when we have two others, make it so riding a bike on the
street isnât fatal. The re-striping advances all of these goals.
Diane Gerth
I really live in the West End
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