Secrets of the City

What happens when you have $15 billion to spend on roads, but they are going to cost $65 billion? That’s the question MnDOT is faced with, and, apparently, the answer is that “roads get worse.”

47 passengers enjoyed an all-night stay aboard their airplane in Rochester due to storms in what one passenger descriped as a “nightmare”; Strib has the deets: “This was a sardine can, with a single row of seats on one side of the plane and two rows of seats on the other. And they’ve got about 50 people inside, including babies, for the whole night.”

What is your worst flight experience?

MPR reports that Jim Obsertar is getting impatient: “It is disappointing that after eight years of a Bush administration that said no to robust investment in transportation now the Democratic administration says ‘well not now … 18 months,” Oberstar said. “The nation doesn’t have 18 months for a head start program in transportation for the planners at the White House. People need jobs now.”

Abdt takes a look at the Hennepin Ave bike lane, which is having its own funeral tonight before its transformation: It is the only place I have ever been blown off my bike by a gust of wind. … On Hennepin, a tremendous rain storm kicked in out of nowhere, and the attendent wind went whipping through the buildings in way I’ve never experienced here before. A particularly strong gust knocked me ass over end onto the street, where I sat dazed on the pavement for a second, then picked up and headed off.

What are your experiences with this bike lane?

Avidor, if I’m reading this correctly, provides a sketch of the white bicycle that has been left about a hundred feet from where I am sitting now. The bicycle memorializes Dennis Dumm, who was killed by a semi-truck back in May. Anybody else notice the white bicycles? Have they done any good in dramatizing the fact that, while the streets are getting safer in general, they’ve gotten more dangerous for bikers?

Conrad DeFiebre, writing in both Minnesota 2020 and the Daily Planet, discusses the public funds spent on automotive transportation: Start with the $1.5 billion a year in Minnesota property taxes (100 times Hiawatha’s state support) that maintain county roads, local streets and bridges, a subsidy with no relationship to use of the system. Then throw in the $8 billion Congress and former President Bush appropriated from general funds last year to keep the federal highway trust fund solvent in the face of lagging gasoline tax collections.

MPR points out that we have had light rail now for a half decade: Metro Transit spokesman Bob Gibbons says ridership for the line, which connects downtown Minneapolis with the Mall of America, is already 20 percent ahead of what ridership was expected to be 11 years from now.

So, was it worth it? Do you have any favorite light rail stories?

Whiskey Tastes Better offers a series of suggestions regarding riding the Megabus from Minneapolis to Chicago. (Via.) Who here has ridden this bus, and what have your experiences been?

The Uptown Minneapolis blog looks at a few notable bike racks. Where are your favorite places to park your bikes?

The always inventive Bedlam Theatre is doing a rather unusual production of Lear; even more unusual: They are hopng their opening weekend audiences will not drive to the performance: This is not yet sold out. So Bedlam remains vulnerable to a driving audience, says bike advocate/chef Jim Bueche, but they are hoping to keep cars to zero.