Following Barack Obama’s “elitist” comments about the residents of small towns, our local blog extraordinaire, Locally Grown Northfield, hosted a discussion about snobbery and elitism Northfield-style. In the comments, see my own take on class and elitism (with autobiographical details) and my views on the hidden agendas of those who call others elitist. Below is a quote from the latter. Note that Northfield is a town with two liberal arts colleges, St. Olaf and Carleton:

Perhaps some of the frustration certain people have with the educational status/intellectual elites in Northfield is that those elites lay claim to power and influence that other elites want to leave for themselves.

The Northfield Public Schools, the City of Northfield, the City of Dundas, and Bridgewater Township have received a $30,000 Safe Routes to Schools grant. The grant is one of 27 that were awarded throughout the state of Minnesota. During this round of funding, 105 grant proposals were submitted to the Minnesota Department of Transportation.

The Safe Routes to Schools program seeks to make conditions safer for children who walk or bike to school and also expand the number of students who do so. The title of the Northfield Safe Routes project is PaTHS: Pathways to Healthier Students: Planning Enhanced Access to Northfield Schools.

The Northfield area grant is a non-infrastructure grant, which means that it won’t be used to make infrastructure improvements. Instead it will focus on planning for possible future improvements, as well as the creation of education, law enforcement, encouragement, and evaluation programs that will foster physically active modes of travel to and from school.

The Northfield Area Task Force on Nonmotorized Transportation, on which I serve as chair, presented the idea for the grant proposal to the Northfield Public Schools and local governments. All parties worked together to complete the proposal, with the task force managing the effort. Our thanks go out to all who helped, especially to Tom Stringer and Superintendent Chris Richardson of the school district, Joel Walinski of the City of Northfield, and Christopher Tassava of Carleton College. Carleton allowed Christopher, a professional grant writer, to donate work time to the project.

For more information on the Safe Routes grant, see a March 22 Northfield News article (which I found online but not in print), the school district press release, and MnDOT’s Safe Routes to Schools web site. See also an earlier post I did following the submission of the grant proposal.

Aside from government, there is no more influential force in transportation decision-making than the business community. My hopes for that community and its role in improving the transportation system were raised when, a few months ago, I looked at what the U.S. Chamber of Commerce had to say about transportation.

What I found was a clear statement that the United States needs to take a multi-modal, sustainable approach to transportation:

America’s transportation and infrastructure system, once a marvel of the modern world, has been stretched beyond its capacity and has fallen into disrepair. A decaying transportation system costs our economy more than $78 billion annually in lost time and fuel. The Chamber advocates for a comprehensive approach to solving the nation’s looming transportation infrastructure crisis. Specifically, the Chamber believes that a multi-modal and intermodal vision must increase capacity, reduce congestion, and improve the efficient, safe, sustainable movement of goods and people throughout the country and world.

As I explained in a comment I made on the Locally Grown Northfield web site, where I first referred to this quote, there are four words here that stand out for me: “comprehensive,” “multi-modal,” “intermodal,” and “sustainable.” (”Intermodal” refers to movement from one mode of transport to another, as from a car to a train.) These are not words that I was expecting to see from the U.S. Chamber, because I don’t see them from the local Chamber where I live. Read the rest of this entry »

StarTribune reporter Sarah Lemagie has written a nice article about the Northfield, Minnesota-based bike company, Rawland Cycles, and its founders, Sean and Anna Virnig. See also a January 3rd post I did on Rawland and also my conversation with Sean.

My wife and I attended our first political caucus ever. There was a huge turnout, with a long line of cars trying to get into the Northfield Middle School for the Democratic Party caucuses. We had our 3-year old and our six-week old with us so could only stay long enough to cast a ballot for the presidential election. I cast mine for Barack Obama, as did about two-thirds of caucus-goers statewide.

The event would have gone much smoother if the caucuses had been spread over multiple sites rather than located at just one site. The transportation snafu shows that it’s very hard for everyone in a town to descend on one site at the same time using automobiles. Cars work well for transportation, except when a lot of people are trying to drive on the same road at the same time.

I won’t add much to the oceans of political commentary that are already out there, except to hope that Obama can be the nominee for the Democrats. I admire Hillary Clinton’s tenacity, but I’m not much for political dynasties, and I fear she would have a harder time winning in November. One observation: if Obama lost to Clinton in rural areas, is it because rural America is not ready to support a black candidate? Perhaps that’s not a fair assumption, but I suspect it may be true.

Last Thursday, January 10, Eric Johnson and I met with Sean Virnig of Rawland Cycles, the new Northfield, Minnesota bike company (see my Jan. 3 post for more on the company). That’s Eric in the foreground above and Sean behind him. We met Sean in downtown Northfield and got to see and test ride Rawland’s two bikes, the Olaf and the Sogn. (The Olaf frame is for fixed-gear or single-speed bikes, and the Sogn is for geared bikes; both use size 650B wheels and tires.) We also sat down at Goodbye Blue Monday, a local coffee shop, and conversed with Sean. Because he is deaf, we did so by typing on Eric’s laptop computer.

Sean and Eric both have a lot of technical knowledge about bikes, so it was a treat for me to learn from them. Below is the transcript of our conversation, including more pictures. I’ve re-ordered a few of the pieces of the conversation to better group topics together. One note to help you follow the conversation: Rawland is derived from the English translation of Sean’s mother’s last name.

Eric: Thanks for the test ride!

Bill: [to Sean] You lived in California?

Sean: I went to high school in Fremont in the early 90s. I grew up at the Minnesota State Academy for the Deaf in Faribault where my siblings and parents went as well. We all lived in Mendota Heights. My dad designed and built my childhood home there, [a] Colonial Williamsburg [style].

Next month I will be in California on business, so I will bring the Sogn so as to ride up Mount Diablo in Walnut Creek, 3500 or so feet. That’s Rivendell’s backyard. I know Grant Petersen personally, so perhaps he’ll ride with me.

Bill: I drove up Mt. Diablo! Davis, [California,] where we lived from 2002 to 2004, is not too far from there. If you have time, you might want to check out the [bike] infrastructure there.

Eric: How did you decide to build bikes?

Sean: I’ve been riding for all but the first five years of my life. I’ve worked at bike shops, etc. I just don’t like where the industry is heading with all the high-tech stuff. I decided to start Rawland so as to show how it should be done.

Read the rest of this entry »

Today the Northfield News published my response to a December 12 column on transportation by former Northfield Chamber of Commerce president David Ludescher. In his column Mr. Ludescher argued for providing pedestrian and cyclist facilities only in limited parts of the road system. I had originally submitted it as a letter just before Christmas, but I’m grateful that the News has elevated it to a guest column.

Local cyclist Eric Johnson informed me of this exciting news for my hometown: Northfield, Minnesota, resident Sean Virnig has established Rawland Cycles, a new bicycle company. Rawland offers two different steel frames, the Olaf and the Sogn, the former for fixed-gear or single-speed bikes and the latter for geared bikes. Both frames are designed to use 650B wheels, a newer size that is supposed to be more versatile. Information on complete bikes is available by request.

Like Virnig, I am of Norwegian descent, so I appreciate the Viking motif designed into one of the bikes: the decorative allusion to the sea serpent on the rear dropouts (the spot where the rear wheel attaches to the frame).

Judging by the News and Updates section of the Rawland web site, there has already been a lot of coverage of Rawland in the cycling world since the company debuted at the Interbike trade show in Las Vegas last September. Strangely enough, I haven’t heard anything about the company in the local and regional media.

I hope to find out more about Rawland, and I wish Mr. Virnig good fortune with his new company.

Last night I attended the Minnesota Department of Transportation presentation on a major highway here in Northfield, Highway 19. It was the second open house on the MnDOT Access Management and Safety Plan for the highway. The presentation was made by MnDOT planner Peter Waskiw.

Mr. Waskiw laid out the reasons for doing the plan, principal among them crash reduction and improved traffic flow. He described the classification of this stretch of 19 between I-35 and Minnesota Highway 3 as a minor arterial shading into a principal arterial. He had lots of data on traffic volume, turning movement counts, and crash history. The latter showed 187 crashes between 2002 and 2006 - a higher rate than with similar highways in MnDOT District 6. Rear-end collisions made up the highest component of those accidents, numbering 64. Read the rest of this entry »

The City of Northfield Transportation Plan has begun to take shape, and interested citizens can take a look at the plan web site. I’ve seen a draft of the Transportation Plan goals and objectives (not yet posted online) and they look promising in their commitment to a sustainable, multi-modal transportation system. One item I was encouraged to see: “Objective 4.3 - Establish an area transportation advisory committee with the state, counties, and adjacent municipalities and townships to coordinate and strategize regional transportation planning initiatives (TH 19 between Northfield and I-35, Cannon River Crossing/CSAH 1 Preservation, NW Corridor).”

Does anyone know, are there models out there for this kind of regional advisory committee, ones that Northfield might emulate?