I wrote the following action alert and fact sheet for an important issue here in my county:

Fact Sheet: Rice County Highway Cost Participation Policy

Summary: Rice County no longer pays a share of the costs for replacement sidewalks and new and replacement shared-use paths (sometimes called bike paths) on county roads in cities and townships. Sidewalks and paths along urban roads serve an important safety function and provide transportation and recreation options for many people, including children, the elderly, and the disabled. While some claim that these facilities are amenities, they are more properly viewed as essential components of a modern urban road.

On Tuesday, April 7 the County Board of Commissioners will revisit this issue. Please contact your county commissioner and/or write a letter to your local newspaper at your earliest convenience. (See contact info below.) Read the rest of this entry »

Note: I wrote the post below as a guest blogger at Locally Grown Northfield (LGN). See the LGN post for comments because I’ve turned them off here. The photo above shows a crosswalk at a roundabout in Bend, Oregon. Note the landscaping and the island where pedestrians can stop in the crosswalk. (Photo credit: Bill Ostrem)

In a February 6 post Tracy Davis referred to a short essay by the Project for Public Spaces titled “A Revolution in Transportation Planning.” It’s an excellent piece that discusses the history of transportation planning in the United States – how planners and leaders focused almost solely  on the automobile for most of the twentieth century, often to the detriment of our cities and neighborhoods and our own health, and how they have recently begun to consider all modes of transportation, including transit, walking, and biking. Increasingly, our society is looking at streets as public spaces (it’s the public “right of way,” after all) – spaces that must provide access for all users, whether they are in a car, on foot, in a wheelchair, on a bike, or riding a bus or train. We are beginning to create what some would call “complete streets.”

As I see it, this change is significant enough to be called a “renaissance” of the American street. In this post I’d like to briefly describe some of the groups and organizations working on this renaissance, including those in Minnesota, as well as some of the resources for learning more about it. In doing so I draw on my experience as a pedestrian and bike advocate in Northfield, where I’ve served as chair of the city’s Task Force on Nonmotorized Transportation for the last year and a half. Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve gotten even lower than yesterday morning: minus 29 degrees (F). This time it’s confirmed by the same temp at Stanton Airfield.

Stayed inside yesterday, but must go out today. This is one of those times I appreciate my car.

Our thermometer read minus 28F this morning. I looked at it for a while to make sure I was reading it right. Nearby Stanton Airfield reports that it was 24 below. Northfield Public Schools are closed today.

These are the coldest temperatures I’ve experienced since moving back to Minnesota in 2004. The coldest temperature I remember from Minnesota winters before that is minus 35 at my parents’ house in suburban Minneapolis.

It was about minus 5 yesterday afternoon here in Northfield. I’m not particularly hardy in the cold, and I have to bundle up. So  when driving my daughter to and from preschool I wore three layers on my legs – two layers of long underwear underneath flannel-lined khakis – and four layers on top, including a fleece jacket underneath a down coat. I also had on two pairs of Smartwool socks inside insulated boots. On my hands I wore thin gloves that I wear underneath mittens. The gloves allow me to do fine work such as buckling children into car seats and fishing keys out of pockets.

While downtown I ran into a friend and fellow member of our local Task Force on Nonmotorized Transportation, Dan Kust, who was getting off his bike. He bikes to his job as a teacher at Northfield Middle School and is a mountaineer and outdoorsman. “You’re amazing, Dan,” I said. I asked him how it was out there. “Brutal,” he said, noting the toll the cold takes on the hands and feet.

Next week we will warm up, with highs above freezing – 60 degrees warmer than this morning!

It’s minus 23 F right now according to my thermometer and the Stanton Airfield weather station. Their three-day summary shows that the temp has been dropping steadily and may fall even lower. Wind chill is minus 37 F!

I took the photo above during a recent cross-country ski outing that took me around the periphery of St. Olaf College on New Year’s Day. As I was taking photos of Regents Hall, St. Olaf’s impressive new science center,  I realized that the sky was fabulous that day.

I like the sky’s deep blueness in the center of the photo and its wispy clouds. The sky here says something to me about possibilities, about the wonders that exist near us and to which we are normally oblivious.

I’m glad I was able to get out on my skis, get some exercise, appreciate the natural scenery near our home, and take some photos. I’m thankful that I was able to start out the new year in this way.

See another photo of Regents Hall below.

The city where we live – Northfield, Minnesota – has as its motto, “Cows, Colleges, and Contentment.” I took this photo of our two contented cows last August. Our son is about 8 months here, our daughter 4 and a half years.

Above are pictures from Walk to School Day in Northfield, Minnesota, October 8, 2008. We had four schools participate this year: the three elementary schools and the Middle School. That is a fourfold increase over last year. Approximately 160-200 students participated at the Middle School and 150 at Sibley Elementary. The latter represents at least double the usual number of kids who walk or bike on a given day.

The pictures show children leaving Bridgewater Elementary with the assistance of the crossing guards, my daughter in our new jogging stroller, and a photo from Greg Sumner of a record number of bikes at the Middle School.

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.