Around The MOB: Conservative Cravings
By Mitch Berg
I was driving through my neighborhood the other day, and I came up to one of those stupid traffic roundabouts that appeared at intersections near key community activists’ houses over the past few years. Not just any activists, mind you – the ones that yap and howl the hardest over “traffic calming”. These are the people behind the latest plague of city-funded weirdness in the Midway; the enigmatic, oblique (“confusing”) signs, the placards begging people to drive slow, and finally, the stupid roundy-rounds.
Now, this has been one of the worst winters on record for streets in Saint Paul. And I don’t know that anyone figured on that when they designed the stupid roundabouts; they’re very difficult for city plow trucks to plow around. So the roadway around the stupid roundabout is an impassible mass of rutted ice ridges radiating away from the stupid round-about; if you’re not bouncing around like a four-year-old that snuck some Red Bull, you’re sliding down the ice sideways directly at oncoming traffic.
Suffice to say, I was not “calmed”.
It was shortly after this incident that I checked out Conservative Cravings.
We first met “Family of Five”, author of Conservative Cravings, at last summer’s MOB party. He debuted the blog right around that time.
And I’m happy to see Fo5 has been working away in the meantime. I liked this one:
Traffic calming is just another way of saying, quit driving through MY neighborhood.
70th St in Edina has been there a long, long time. It’s main function is connect Hwy 100 to the Southdale Mall business district and then onto York Avenue. Since Hwy 100 is one of the oldest freeways in the metro area and Southdale Mall was the first indoor mall in the United States, I would venture to guess that the connection between these two points dates back before any of the current residents on 70th St. That would mean that when they purchased their home, they would have been aware of the purpose of the road, it’s speed limit (currently 30 mph) and all the surrounding development. Why buy a house on a street that does not fit your lifestyle and then try to get the city to work around your desires?So why has the use of 70th St been OK for the last say 40 years and now it needs changing? Squeaky wheels get the grease
Conservative Cravings. Not just a MOB member, but very timely.
Check him out!
January 22nd, 2010 at 11:22 am
54 years for that stretch of roadway. Hwy 100 construction started in 1935 and Southdale was opened in 1956. Sure traffic has increased but like you state few if any residents predate the opening of the Mall.
Of course other residents going way back forced a bad road design through for 62 and 494, which now causes people to avoid those roads and use the surfaces streets. The more citizens get involved in road desing the less usefull and greater problems that road will have. Look at 494/169. 394 into downtown. And hundreds of other compromised designs that do not solve the “concerned “citizens complaints or build a decent roadway.
January 22nd, 2010 at 12:51 pm
You’re probably right that roundabouts in the city are a bad idea. But here in the evil, Republican infested suburbs, they are a godsend. In the city of Eagan, for example, a roundabout on Diffley Road has eased a terrible bottleneck at Rahn Road where there used to be a four way stop that was a bitch if you wanted to turn left. Minnesotans are famous for forgetting the rules on who gets the right of way. In the roundy it’s much easier. We LIKE our cars in the ‘burbs and we like getting where we are going even better.
January 22nd, 2010 at 4:37 pm
I agree with golfdoc; we just got a “rund-aboot” at a problem intersection in our inner-ring ‘burb. During peak times you could wait 10 minutes to make a left on the main road after exiting the highway. Now you pretty much cruise through with a minimal pause, if any. It’s also kind of entertaining to watch people’s reactions the first time they encounter it. Reminds me of the apes/monolith scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
January 23rd, 2010 at 8:19 am
Why are you driving on Albert anyway? Take Hamline. Stay off the roundabout street.
Which, of course, is the point of traffic calming.