[Winona] 10 Million $$ for an underpass?

[C. E. Woodford]

[Winona Online Democracy]

Keith,

 Thanks for getting back to me on my questions. I couldn't help but notice that you quoted 10 million $ as a price tag for this project.....seems  like a LOT of money for an underpass that will not even be able to accomodate commercial traffic...I am a bit confused here as to why we need to build this, could you explain it to me better ? Furthermore, lets say conservatively winona is responsible for 25% of the cost...that is still 2.5$$million the city is siphoning out of winona citizens paychecks....and it DOESNT accomodate commercial traffic? Aside from WSU who benefits form this project? I don't ( and I hope I am not the lone voice here) see the functionality of putting an underpass here especially when it is a 10 miillion $(est.) project.

 

thanks

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CE Woodford asked about an overpass vs. an underpass.  I think it is
correct that an overpass would have less maintenance than an underpass
that will often be into the water table.  I think most of us have also
seen or heard of problems with an underpass during torrential rain
events.  Designs generally accommodate 80% of rain events but it is not
cost effective to cover the ultimate storm.  Ground water is more
predictable but will be a yearly cost.

An overpass was first considered.  Because clearance for a train is
much
higher than clearance for a car and because the rails are currently
higher than the roadway, an underpass would be a much smaller
structure.
An overpass is easier to build in an area of open spaces.  An overpass
on Huff would have been over twice as long and much wider than on
underpass and would have had a greater if not unaffordable affect on
area homes, busi nesses and WSU buildings.

Good estimates are not available yet but I believe that the project
cost
will be in the $10 million dollar range.  (I hope that number doesn't
come back to haunt me in someone's quote two or three years from now.)
We have not yet determined WSU, city and railroad portions of the
projects.

Pelzer was lower on the table of "exposure factors" but it was also
pointed out as one of the three best candidates for a "grade
separation."  The others being Huff and Louisa.  The goal is to spread
the "grade separations" out to accommodate traffic through out the
community.  Many other factors went into consideration for the Pelzer
street project, including the TH61 intersection improvements, the 5th
street intersection and the Port's truck traffic as well as available
funding sources.  Pelzer should be bid and may begin minor construction
this year with major work in 2006.  It is unkno wn when Huff Street
would
begin.  We have much discussion and many hurdles before that will
occur.
The Federal support certainly gives incentive to proceed.


Keith Nelson
City of Winona Public Works
Winona, MN
507 457 8274



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Today's Topics:

1. Coal Trains, Huff Street, and Healthy Cities
(Dwayne & Denine Voegeli)
2. RE: Re: Huff St underpass (Keith Nelson)
3. RE: Coal Trains, Huff Street, and Healthy Cities (jjs)
4. RE: Coal Trains, Huff Street, and Healthy Cities
([EMAIL PROTECTED])
5. RE: Biking, Walking (Phil Carlson)


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message: 1
Date: Wed, 3 Aug 2005 16:51:54 -0600
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Dwayne & Denine Voegeli)
Subject: [Winona] Coal Trains, Huff Street, and Healthy Cities
To: winona@mnforum.org
Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

Hello Everyone,

For those who have the time, here are two great articles from this past
Sunday's Star Tribune that deal with land use, city planning, economics,
and the environment.

The first story is called, "Healthy By Design" and it talks about what
makes Vancouver such a great city to live in.

The second piece is a staff editorial talking about city planning, both
then and now, and how vital pedestrians are to cities.

The articles bring up wonderful points that relate to the Winona Online
Discussion about Huff Street and the DM &E rail overpass.

The irony of ruining the heart of cities to transport coal half way across
the country to east coast is sad.

The stories also relate to the discussions surrounding the Phillips
development in Wilson Township because the best way to curb sprawl is to
make cities more livable and attactive.

Food for thought.

Dwayne Voegeli

August 3, 2005

-----

HEALTHY BY DESIGN

Steve Berg

Star Tribune Editorial Writer

July 31, 2005

---

VANCOUVER, B.C.

Any busy downtown sidewalk will reveal the mystery of why Vancouverites are
an uncommonly vigorous and healthy bunch and why their city is so widely
admired.

Stand on Robson Street for five minutes on a weekday afternoon. Count the
people walking past: 346. Note the number who are obviously overweight: 2.
Estimate the number wearing backpacks: 100. Now take another five minutes
to count the cars moving steadily and easily past: 74 (plus two trucks and
three buses). Reach for your calculator: 4.5 pedestrians for every car.

There you have it. Not exactly scientific proof, but an insight into
Vancouver's formula for healthy residents and urban vitality: more walking,
less driving.

More than any North American city, Vancouver has intentionally merged
public health with city planning. The goal is not just to promote
recreation (there are plenty of bike trails and tennis courts), but to
design physical activity into the daily routine, to build a city so
compelling that people will leave their cars at home, strap on a backpack
and take up walking as their primary mode of travel.

The result is a cityscape that's breathtaking in its beauty and impressive
in its retail vitality. Thick layers of trees and flowers have invaded the
downtown district. Strips of freshly trimmed green grass line many downtown
sidewalks. Hundreds of small shops and restaurants have sprouted among the
ever-expanding supply of townhouses and high-rise condos. You can take a
beautiful and pleasant walk to fetch almost anything you need, so why
drive?

Indeed, driving has become the backup mode of downtown travel. Growth in
auto traffic has lagged far behind growth in resident population, which has
doubled to 80,000 in the last 15 years. Auto traffic actually declined by
13 percent between 1994 and 1999, according to a city government study,
while pedestrian traffic rose 55 percent. Last year, vehicle registrations
declined for the first time in memory as new residents began eschewing
second cars. Transit ridership, meanwhile, rose 20 percent over three
years. Air quality improved. And the Vancouver region led Canada in many
health categories, including life expectancy.

"They built it and they live it," said Lawrence Frank, a planning professor
at the University of British Columbia and a lea ding expert on the link
between urban design and public health.

Both here, and earlier at Georgia Tech, Frank has been at the forefront of
research that ties obesity, hypertension, coronary disease, diabetes and
other health problems to the sprawling development and auto dependence that
dominates most cities. His and other research continues to show that
substituting even a modest amount of walking for driving as part of the
daily routine reduces the likelihood of obesity and related disease.

The greatest inducement to physical activity is living within walking
distance of shops, transit stops and other destinations, studies show. In
other words, urban form can induce a healthier lifestyle.

"Vancouver is the clearest example of that," Frank said. Critics suggest
that self-selection may have tilted his results -- that people who choose
to live in active cities tend already to be trim, fit and quite literally
"walking the talk." Frank acknowledges the point, but insists that the
policy implications remain valid. People will have a better chance at a
healthy life if cities build physical activity into the urban form.

Vancouver owes its health-conscious design to a list of advantages that
most cities, including Minneapolis, don't have: a moderate climate, a
geography hemmed in by water and mountains, the relative racial harmony
among Vancouver's white and Asian ethnic groups, tax policies favorable to
renters and small business, a huge flow of Chinese investment since the
mid-1990s, and a contrarian strain of politics that engulfed the city in
the early '70s and continues to pay dividends.

"Those were the hippie-dippy days," recalls Gordon Price, an urban planning
consultant and former city councilor who says Vancouver succeeds mostly
because environmentalists kept freeways out of the city's center.

As a result, traditional neighborhoods stayed intact; loca l streets stayed
vibrant and busy; crime was held in check; public schools and small
business remained strong. The city swallowed hard and accepted high-density
redevelopment as a way to preserve the wider region's lush environment.

It was, in short, an early version of "smart growth" that ran contrary to
the trends of the day and to human nature. It would have been easier just
to acquiesce to sprawl, big-box stores and the auto lifestyle, Price said.

Vancouver isn't without problems. Vagrants and drug addicts occupy
downtown's derelict eastern edge. Housing prices in the tonier West End are
leaving the middle class behind. Meanwhile, the outer ring is suffering
traffic woes common in most suburbs.

But what most impresses a visitor is central Vancouver's extraordinary care
for public spaces. While drivers tend not to notice, walkers are drawn to
beautiful spaces. They see their city close up. They won't tolerate
crumbling, weed-infested sidewalks or shabby neighborhood businesses. The
more walkers a city has, the more pleasant, safe and vital it becomes.
Every great city is a great walking city -- not only through parks or along
waterfronts, but along ordinary streets that link homes and destinations.

For Vancouverites, the values of healthy physical activity, public beauty
and retail/residential success seem to have converged in a perfect synapse.

How? A greenways program invests $1 million a year to build attractive
pedestrian and bicycle links between homes and destinations, sometimes
along "ordinary" city streets. In addition, the park system maintains
130,000 street trees as part of its impressive $80 million (U.S.) annual
budget, and the zoning ordinance requires private developers to devote 1
percent of construction budgets to public art, thus embedding scores of
sculptures, fountains and other artistic features into the walking
environment . Moreover, city planners routinely negotiate generous
landscaping commitments from private developers.

"They are expected to match the high standard that the city has set with
its landscape investments," said Sandra James, the city's chief greenways
planner.

The central idea in creating a healthy city, she said, is to make sure that
natural beauty isn't confined to parks and the waterfront but that it
invades every block.

Quoting the preamble to Vancouver's greeways policy book, she said: "It's
time to stop thinking of our cities as one place and nature as someplace
else."

Steve Berg is at: [EMAIL PROTECTED]

July 31, 2005


------


Star Tribune Staff Editorial

Editorial: "Pedestrians: A city's most valuable players"

Published July 31, 2005

A half-century has passed since Jane Jacobs eviscerated modernist city
planning -- blaming her fellow designers for imposing a sprawling, sterile
emptiness on metropolitan life.

In her 1961 masterpiece, "The Death and Life of Great American Cities," she
mourned the paradox of people who, in hoping to strengthen their cities,
ended up "undermining their economies and killing them."

Not until the 1990s was Jacobs' critique fully appreciated. Cities began to
regret that freeways had been allowed into their midst, that mass transit
had been dismantled, historic buildings razed for parking lots, small
business and middle-class homeowners chased away and downtowns left hollow.
All of this had been a terrible mistake.

What to do? Is it possible to repair the damage and to rebuild cities back
to the way they should have been?

Yes, but the task is daunting. As Jacobs foretold, the nation's tax laws,
zoning ordinances, energy policy and lifestyles have now been tipped to
favor the suburban form. Regaining some measure of balance will require a
market shift tow ard the urban choice. That market is now arriving in the
form of a condo boom and demands for walkable communities and transit
options.

It is bolstered by evidence from social and physical scientists that the
sprawled lifestyle is unhealthy -- that it takes a toll on people's hearts,
lungs, air, drinking water, sense of community, psychological well-being
and physical safety. Indeed, public health has emerged as an important
ingredient in community design.

"If you are an architect or an urban designer, you are also a health care
professional," says Richard Killingsworth, a professor at the University of
North Carolina's School of Public Health.

The most compelling evidence so far is the link between driving and
obesity, a condition leading to a number of diseases. A study from the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Georgia Tech and Emory
University found that each additional hour spent in a car per day was
associated with a 6 percent increase in the likelihood of obesity;
conversely, each additional kilometer walked per day was associated with a
4.8 percent reduction in the likelihood of obesity. The condition most
likely to produce regular exercise was not a trip to the gym, but a mix of
shops, restaurants and other attractions within walking distance of homes.

Thus, encouraging communities to develop in ways that encourage physical
activity as part of the daily routine has become embedded in city planning.
Walkable communities also are less apt to pollute or waste energy and more
likely to produce the vital street life that reduces crime.

All of this is meant as a backdrop for Steve Berg's two-part series
"Healthy by Design," which begins today on page AA1 and continues in Op Ex
next Sunday. Today's essay tells how Vancouver, B.C., has intentionally
remade its downtown as an active, healthy alternative to the auto-bound
lifestyle. Next Sunday's ins tallment issues a challenge to downtown
Minneapolis, where throngs of new residents cling to driving partly because
the city hasn't provided an inviting sidewalk atmosphere to link new homes
to the retail-office core.

These missing links keep downtown Minneapolis from reaching full potential
as a healthier place to live, work, shop and simply enjoy life.

© Copyright 2005 Star Tribune. All rights reserved.

------------

Dwayne Voegeli

Winona County Commissioner

(507) 453-9012

[EMAIL PROTECTED]

359 Pleasant Hill Dr.
Winona, MN 55987

------------




------------------------------

Message: 2
Date: Thu, 4 Aug 2005 08:24:45 -0500
From: "Keith Nelson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: RE: [Winona] Re: Huff St underpass
To:
Message-ID:
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

CE Woodford asked about an overpass vs. an underpass. I think it is
correct that an overpass would have less maintenance than an underpass
that will often be into the water table. I think most of us have also
seen or heard of problems with an underpass during torrential rain
events. Designs generally accommodate 80% of rain events but it is not
cost effective to cover the ultimate storm. Ground water is more
predictable but will be a yearly cost.

An overpass was first considered. Because clearance for a train is much
higher than clearance for a car and because the rails are currently
higher than the roadway, an underpass would be a much smaller structure.
An overpass is easier to build in an area of open spaces. An overpass
on Huff would have been over twice as long and much wider than on
underpass and would have had a greater if not unaffordable affect on
area homes, businesses and WSU buildings.

Go od estimates are not available yet but I believe that the project cost
will be in the $10 million dollar range. (I hope that number doesn't
come back to haunt me in someone's quote two or three years from now.)
We have not yet determined WSU, city and railroad portions of the
projects.

Pelzer was lower on the table of "exposure factors" but it was also
pointed out as one of the three best candidates for a "grade
separation." The others being Huff and Louisa. The goal is to spread
the "grade separations" out to accommodate traffic through out the
community. Many other factors went into consideration for the Pelzer
street project, including the TH61 intersection improvements, the 5th
street intersection and the Port's truck traffic as well as available
funding sources. Pelzer should be bid and may begin minor construction
this year with major work in 2006. It is unknown when Huff Street would
begin. We have much discussion and many hu rdles before that will occur.
The Federal support certainly gives incentive to proceed.


Keith Nelson
City of Winona Public Works
Winona, MN
507 457 8274

-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of C. E. Woodford
Sent: Tuesday, August 02, 2005 4:26 PM
To: winona@mnforum.org
Subject: [Winona] Re: Huff St underpass

[Winona Online Democracy]



------------------------------

Message: 3
Date: Thu, 4 Aug 2005 08:27:00 -0500
From: "jjs" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: RE: [Winona] Coal Trains, Huff Street, and Healthy Cities
To:
Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1";
reply-type=original

Dwayne & Denine Voegeli said, in part: "The first story is called, "Healthy
By Design" and it talks about what makes Vancouver such a great city to live
in."

Something is just broken in our social paradigm. The peoples penchant for
driving everywhere is part of it. If more people would just leave their cars
at home, bicycle, walk or bus to work it would make a difference. Less use
of cars would bolster the public transportation (bus) effort and make it
better. Heck, we might even become more healthy!

Points: I once lived in very hilly region of the country that had more snow,
sometimes worse winters than Winona the school bus policy used a three-mile
limit. You lived 3 miles or closer and you walked. It didn't hurt any of us
children one bit. Let's start there and perhaps we will have a generation
with more healthy expectations. Another - in some highly civilized and
successful cities it is virtually illegal to have an automobile in the city;
they use bicycles, young and old alike. Large avenues are opened to one-way
traffic into the city in the morni ng and then reversed for traffic out of
the city in the afternoon. Almost nobody locks their bikes, either. It's
unnecessary.

Exceptions were made for the infirm who usually use the properly outfitted
bus.

Gasoline was $4.0 a gallon there - forty years ago!

We have bicycle lanes. It's a good start. And, in my experience, we have
amazingly courteous, bicycle and pedestrian-conscious automobile drivers.
That's a surprising and wonderful thing. (Or maybe my experience with
drivers is an outlier - a sixty-year old man on a bicycle. I don't know.)

Put your children on their bicycles. Show them by example by doing it
yourself first.




------------------------------

Message: 4
Date: Thu, 4 Aug 2005 11:29:28 -0500
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: RE: [Winona] Coal Trains, Huff Street, and Healthy Cities
To: jjs <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: winona@mnforum.org
Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

"Something is just broken in our social paradigm. The peoples penchant for
driving everywhere is part of it. If more people would just leave their cars at
home, bicycle, walk or bus to work it would make a difference. Less use of cars
would bolster the public transportation (bus) effort and make it better. Heck,
we might even become more healthy!"

Hear! Hear! (Here?)

In the interests of full disclosure I have to admit that I do drive to Rochester
210 times each year for work. One of the reasons we live in Winona though is
that there are places like the Lakes where we can walk and ride bike for
leisure and exercise. However, it is NOT easy to walk or bike from our house
on Lake Boulevard to anywhere in Winona. Traffic makes it just plain dangerous
to cross Hwy 61 into Winona even at the lights on Mankato and Huff. I can't
believe th at the is no Bike Lane or Sidewalk along Lake Boulevard. We have a
bike trailer that we use to get groceries but we are more or less forced to
shop at Hy Vee when we travel by bike because we just can't get anywhere else.

Almost anywhere in Winona is within biking (or even walking distance) but it's
just plain silly to think we can compete with the Hwy traffic to go anywhere
other than next door.

Bryon Bothun


------------------------------

Message: 5
Date: Thu, 4 Aug 2005 11:55:18 -0500
From: "Phil Carlson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [Winona] RE: Biking, Walking
To: "Winona Online Democracy"
Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

Bryon Bothun makes a very good point on walking and biking - it doesn't take
much to disrupt a good walking/biking environment. Every segment of a
sidewalk/trail system must be sa fe, pleasant, and conducive to pedestrians
and bikers. Attention must be paid to size of the lanes, paving materials,
visual aesthetics, buffers to major roadways or other unpleasant features,
and safety - or the feeling of safety. Otherwise people will simply avoid
them. The chain is only as strong as the weakest link.

There are so many benefits to a pedestrian-friendly city, yet it takes so
little to break the good links that may exist. It's got to be somebody's
project or passion - who advocates for trails and sidewalks in Winona?
Planning Commission? Parks Board? City staff? Private citizens?

Phil Carlson, Mpls

P.S. In the 1969-1971 era I rode my bike from home near Madison School to
work at the hospital every other day and it was a decent trip - 7th, 8th and
9th Streets make great cross-town bike routes. Mankato Avenue was a bit
less friendly.
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