Links: A transportation engineer, bike parties, and more
Posted on May 14th, 2008 – 2:35 PMBy Roadguy
- Moving up at MnDOT: An engineer takes the No. 2 spot; news brief here.
- A 3-minute limit on vehicle idling? Minneapolis is considering an ordinance, and there’s a committee meeting on the topic Thursday morning; a news release is here.
- Should a man give up his bus seat to a woman? This MNspeak post asked the question and got more than 100 comments.
- Street furniture: Minneapolis is looking at its benches, bus shelters and more; a Strib story from Tuesday is here.
- Bike celebrations: The new Freewheel Midtown Bike Center on the Midtown Greenway has a grand opening this Friday morning from 7-9 a.m. (and, for late risers, an open house from 4-7 p.m.); click here for the city news release on the event, here for more details on the bike center, here for a Greenway Coalition announcement. And on Sunday, there’s a naming ceremony for the Sabo bike and pedestrian bridge over Hiawatha Avenue. The celebration is from 3-5 p.m., with a program at 4 p.m; more info here.
- Speaking of bikes: Steve Brandt’s Wednesday column looks at bicycling in Minneapolis.
And speaking of MNspeak, if you have any insights as to why a post on that site referred to me as “the ironically named John Foti,” I hope you’ll share. (Is it ironic that my name isn’t John?)
14 Responses to "Links: A transportation engineer, bike parties, and more"
YES!! to the limit on idling. We really don’t need to be wasting fuel and polluting the air with Remote Start warm-ups, when warm clothes and Minnesota toughness would suffice.
NO!! to everybody parking in the bike lanes. How about requiring those parkers to set out orange cones to make a path around their mail trucks, FedEx and UPS vans, police cars, etc. every time they park in the bike lane?
If the idling rule covers diesel pickups whose owners cant seem to get enough joy in blessing us with their vehicle’s noxious exhaust, I’ll dance. Do those trucks even have an “Off” switch?
I’m not sure if this is the John Foti they were thinking of over at MNSpeak, but I found this John Foti of Verona NJ Myspace TV page:
http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.Channel&ChannelID=4657358
Other than that, I’m out of ideas on this one.
Steve Brandt’s article is great, though.
Mary, I’d love to go one step further and get rid of drive-thrus. Yes, they can make sense for a parent with small children, but most folks I see are more than capable of shutting off their vehicle and walking into the establishment.
Another wishlist item is to get the parkways reconstructed with actual bike lanes. In addition to increasing safety, it’d put an end to the cyclical debate/argument around here of “riding in the street vs riding on the parallel bike path.” 
I thought I would drop a line to RoadGuy and mention to everyone that we have it very good here in the Twin Cities. My partner and I were recently in the Bay Area, CA. San Francisco is one heck of a cool city but they had terrible bicycle paths. They were not properly marked much, they did not have separate lanes for bicyclists and walker/runners, and the directions when you went to towns like Tibron were very much misleading and mislabeled in terms of where to go.
We came back from the trip extremely appreciative of what we have here in the Twin Cities. We did not leave our hearts in San Francisco, but I would imagine the weather is much more cooperative out there year round compared to Minnesota.
“A 3-minute limit on vehicle idling? Minneapolis is considering an ordinance”
Has anyone quantified the ‘problem’?
And how would such an ordinance be enforced?
Sounds like a feel-good solution to a small problem that will have limited impact in actually curbing the undesired behavior.
I hardly think an ordinance should be required for common sense.
Does anyone know of a study that shows how much fuel is “wasted” by the millions of trips Americans make via drive-thrus instead of walking in? I would love to see the results of a study like that.
bsimon says: “A 3-minute limit on vehicle idling? Minneapolis is considering an ordinance”
Take a look at 35W - 100,000’s of cars creeping along / standing still. MnDont’s lack of road design may be the greatest culprit.
mary says: “How about requiring those parkers to set out orange cones to make a path around their mail trucks, FedEx and UPS vans, police cars, etc. every time they park in the bike lane?”
The problem is 20 lb bikes can’t compete with 4,000 lb vehicles. Your (plural) requests for special accomodations is tiresome.
Ah, I see, the heavier the vehicle the more allowances they should have to park illegally. Must find source of this New Logic. It fascinates me.
“Your (plural) requests for special accomodations is tiresome.”
I’m saving that quote for the day when DGB complains about well, anything in which he’s the smaller guy.
“Your (plural) requests for special accomodations is tiresome.”
“but I got run over by a car!”
“Sorry, you can’t compete.”
“but…but…”
“Tiresome…”
The idling ordinance really seems like a solution in search of a problem. Three questions (at least) come to mind:
1) Where is the evidence of a problem?
2) How would said regulation be enforced?
3) Why wouldn’t high fuel prices provide a better incentive not to waste fuel?
BarryS,
A bit dated, but on point:
Jon Fricker and Huel-Sheng Tsay (1986) “Drive-up windows, energy and air quality.” Transportation Research Record 1092, pp. 22-25.
Haven’t read the paper, since it is not available in electronic format, so I don’t know the conclusions.
Street furniture that serves as nothing but a billboard for adverts is worth less than nothing.
How many ugly cement benches are placed too close to the road for a person to sit safely or comfortably but instead are just a mini bill board.
How many bus stops have a HUGE advert but no map of the bus system or are placed badly or unshovelled in snow (but always have the ad visible to cars).
The new “Street Furniture” will be an obstruction to walkers, wheel chairs or strollers as they are used to inflict more commercials on us
google “bus stop usability”
I’m not a car-mechanics-type-guy, but I seem to recall reading that the act of starting a car used up quite a large bit of fuel . . . much more than one might intuitively guess. Could it be that idling for three minutes is not that different that starting a car? How long of an idle does it take to equal the starting of a car, of an SUV, or of a motorcycle?
