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Minneapolis, take back your streets
published 07.11.03
online at http://www.finance-commerce.com/recent_articles/030711b.htm
Guest editorial by Ken Avidor and Jeff Carlson
Finance and Commerce
“If you let other people do it for you, they will do it to
you.” - Robert Anthony
At a neighborhood meeting in Pershing Park on May 5, Hennepin County
transportation engineer Jim Grube proudly announced that the county
had “taken over” the main arterial streets of Minneapolis.
Not one person applauded or even smiled. Many residents and small
business owners all over Minneapolis are not happy with Hennepin
County’s approach to transportation and urban design.
While other cities in America and throughout the world are on the
cutting edge of the new way of city planning and design, Minneapolis
is stuck in an autocentric, suburban-style quagmire. Portland, Ore.,
tore up its riverfront freeway and replaced it with a park; Seoul,
South Korea, is about to tear down its six-lane Cheonggeucheon Freeway
and replace it with a park and a bus rapid transit line. London
now charges drivers to enter the city, and the money is used to
fund transit. Other cities choose to create human and humane environments
instead of moving and parking cars.
Minneapolis, unfortunately, seems to be sliding backwards toward
the bad old “urban renewal” days when neighborhood homes
and businesses were bulldozed to build hideous freeways, parking
lots and strip malls. The “Minneapolis Plan” with its
emphasis on “Transit First” is suffering the Death of
a Thousand Cuts.
Hennepin County is planning a major reconstruction of Lake Street.
Unfortunately, this project is heavily influenced by another road-building
project, the controversial 35W Access Project. Both of these projects
are linked in many ways. Both projects are managed by Smith Parker,
a law firm with no urban design expertise but plenty of political
connections.
Both projects are controlled by Hennepin County. Both projects
have Project Advisory Committees that share many of the same representatives.
It’s not surprising, therefore, that the 35W Access Project
tail is wagging the Lake Street dog.
At the heart of the debate about the Access Project and Lake Street
is whether we will build primarily for automobile speed or for quality
of life for neighborhoods.
This is a mutually exclusive relationship wherein one suffers while
the other benefits. Vehicular speed means perpetuating the status
quo of a four-lane roadway with restricted parking, narrow sidewalks
and, in general, a wide swath of pavement filled with speeding cars,
dust and exhaust. Choosing quality of life means accepting that
a narrower, traffic-calmed Lake Street can safely accommodate existing
and projected traffic levels with one travel lane in each direction
and a shared turn lane, while providing permanent, unrestricted
on-street parking, wider sidewalks, bump-outs at intersections and
even on-street bike lanes.
The county presented three street designs for Lake Street. The
neighborhood and business representatives on the Project Advisory
Committee added their own proposal: W4. The W4 proposal includes
bump-outs, permanent on-street parking, wider sidewalks, a center
turn lane and two lanes for car traffic.
Many streets in Chicago are designed like W4 and work phenomenally
well for all users. This includes Diversey Street , a commercial
corridor in Chicago that was cited by Hennepin County Commissioner
Peter McLaughlin as a model for what Lake Street could be. Unlike
the current Lake Street, however, these streets are designed with
people, not cars, in mind. Traffic is slowed, making life better
for pedestrians and bicycles (and businesses). Space is restored
for bike racks, plantings, brick pavers, benches and even sidewalk
seating at restaurants.
We should never underestimate the intrinsic value of sidewalks
and bike lanes for human happiness. Streets should be designed to
encourage shoulder-rubbing amongst neighbors, and not fender-bending.
Walking and biking brings us in touch with one another. While it
would be naive to wish away the automobile altogether, it is unacceptable
not to build the best infrastructure we can for pedestrians and
cyclists.
Minneapolis residents and businesses cannot be expected to spend
their valuable time correcting the mess created by the insensitive
street designs of Hennepin County. We shouldn’t have to organize
and hold meeting after meeting to protest speeding, air pollution,
noise, the disappearance of on-street parking, the razing of affordable
homes and the usurpation of the public commons for the private automobile.
The city of Minneapolis needs to take its streets back from Hennepin
County, the state of Minnesota and the federal government. Minneapolis
needs to demand an exemption from the one-size-fits-all state aid
standards on details such as lane and parking bay widths that threaten
to supersize our roadways while minimizing the actual spaces where
people walk and interact.
The argument can be made that Minneapolis, in these tough fiscal
times, cannot afford to own and maintain its streets. Time will
show us otherwise. We live in a unique and beautiful city. To allow
the insensitive and uninformed designs of automobile-obsessed planners
to reconfigure our fragile urban ecology is inviting economic and
social disaster. We, and the elected officials of our city, should
at the very least insist that a neighborhood-friendly proposal such
as W4 be adopted by the Lake Street PAC and Hennepin County.
Ken Avidor is the 10th Ward representative on the Lake Street
Project Advisory Committee. Jeff Carlson is Midtown Greenway Coalition
representative on the committee
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