I thought I should say a little bit about the lack of posts on this blog. I’ve not kept up with my recent rate of posting once a week. It would seem to be easy to micro-blog with brief comments on what I’m doing or thinking, but I don’t want to make posts too trivial, either. Some recent posts have been long, including those that I’ve done for Locally Grown Northfield, and then I seem inclined not to post for a while as I attend to other areas of my life.

Those other areas have me very busy, of course: family life, work, home maintenance and housework, church, and volunteer work on bike/ped advocacy. And more.

My test development work has been more involved lately, as I’ve taken on additional projects with stricter deadlines.

I’ve wondered whether I should end the blog or possibly move it to a free service such as wordpress.com. I’m a little bit frustrated that I’ve not learned more about maintaining my own web site. For now I’ll keep it and try to post at least once a week again.

[Note: The following appears also as a post at Locally Grown Northfield. Comments can be made there; I've turned them off here. Be sure to note their rules for comment.]

Last August the Rice County Board of Commissioners made a change in their transportation policy that goes against the interests of people who walk, bike, or use wheelchairs in our community. It’s a change that’s detrimental to many of the most vulnerable users of our transportation system, including children, seniors, the poor, and the handicapped.

I’m talking about a change in a fairly arcane and complex policy: the Cost Participation Policy for Cooperative Roadway Construction Projects, which governs the share that the county pays on joint road projects with cities and townships. The policy applies to projects that are part of the county Capital Improvement Plan.

Why should we care about some complex policy? Because it governs the funding for county road projects – which we might also call the public right-of-way – in many of our communities, and because it shapes the way we think about transportation.

The changes made last summer involved the provisions for sidewalks and “bituminous bike paths,” or shared-use paths, along county roads in cities and towns. Previously, the county paid a share of the costs for replacement sidewalks and new and replacement paths – specifically, 55 percent of the cost for municipalities over 5,000 in population, and 100 percent of the cost for those under 5,000. With the change, the county moved these facilities into the “not eligible” category for county funding. In effect, they cut funding of these facilities in their Capital Improvement Plan by 100 percent. The commissioners voted 4-1 for this change last August, with the only exception being Galen Malecha of Northfield at that time. Read the rest of this entry »