Yesterday the Minnesota House voted to override Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s veto of a state transportation funding bill. The override - a first for Gov. Pawlenty’s administration - means that the state will raise its gasoline tax for the first time in 20 years, raise the sales tax in the Twin Cities metro area to support transit development, and raise motor vehicle license tab fees - all to fund badly needed road and transit repair and upgrades.

Raising taxes during a recession is a painful decision, but today we have many more vehicles driving more miles than we did 20 years ago, and they are heavier vehicles to boot. That means roads and bridges are being pounded and need to be repaired. Other roads have become unsafe and need to be updated. At the same time, we simply have more people, and investment in transit is necessary to end the costly traffic gridlock in the Twin Cities. The increase in the gas tax was long overdue, since gas tax receipts have been eroded by inflation. Our investment in transit is also long overdue. Minnesota is finally maturing into a 21st-century state.

The Republicans who crossed party lines to vote in favor of the bill deserve praise, not vilification. Even the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce supported this bill.

But don’t think we’ve solved our transportation problems with this bill. According to MinnPost’s Steve Berg, “The new law will fill about 25 percent of the state’s transportation shortfall, estimated at nearly $2.5 billion a year.” And so we muddle on.

For more analysis of the vote and issue, in addition to the excellent article by Mr. Berg, see commentary by another MinnPost writer, Britt Robson.

To understand why so many people sing the praises of Davis as a pedestrian- and bicycle-friendly community, see this Streetfilms video, “Davis, California, a Platinum Bike City.”

An e-mail from the League of American Bicyclists recently educated me about how Davis, California, became the “bicycle city.” It contained an obituary notice for Frank C. Child, former chair of the economics department at the University of California-Davis, who was a key player in the development of the bicycle network in that city.

Mr. Child’s story, summarized below in an obituary from the Sacramento Bee, is a testament to the role that citizens can play in transforming their communities:

Mr. Child joined UC Davis in 1962 and became the second chairman of the economics department the following year…. [He] arrived in Davis after living for four months in the Netherlands, where bicycles were the dominant transportation mode. Eyeing the city’s flat terrain, he and his wife, Eve, launched a grass-roots effort in 1964 to establish a system of bicycle lanes on Davis streets.

The couple organized a core group of citizens who lobbied, collected petition signatures and backed successful City Council candidates who supported bike lanes. In 1966, the Davis council voted to create the city’s first bike lane, spawning a national transportation movement.

“All the bike lanes in the United States today are descendants of what started in Davis,” said Ted Buehler, a graduate student at the UC Davis Institute for Transportation Studies.

The action delighted Mr. Child, who sold his second car and bought six bicycles for his family to get around Davis. He also helped persuade UC Davis Chancellor Emil Mrak to close large portions of the campus to automobile traffic to promote cycling.

“My father had a three-speed Raleigh with a wire basket for his briefcase on the handlebars that he rode for years,” Bill Child said.

According to a nice February 18 article in the L.A. Times by Ronald D. White, Californians are driving less often and using less gasoline. Even in southern California they are driving alone less often, although the number doing so is still almost 75 percent of all commuters. The article takes a look at many types of commuting, from vanpooling to mass transit to cycling.

Here are some excerpts:

Americans are getting serious about using less gasoline, confounding some economists who have argued that most people can’t reduce their driving much because they have to get to and from work and make those necessary trips such as shopping and chauffeuring their children around.

The truth is more complicated, according to some energy experts: When the price reaches a certain threshold or the driving reaches a peak point of aggravation, people are willing to give up personal space and independence. Read the rest of this entry »

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 »

On Thursday, January 31, I spoke to the Northfield Rotary Club about the Northfield Area Task Force on Nonmotorized Transportation, on which I serve as chair. I began by explaining how I got involved in bike and pedestrian advocacy. I didn’t put it quite this way in the talk, but I’ve come to view my advocacy as really a coincidence resulting from the special character of the last two cities I’ve lived in: Davis, California, and my current city of residence, Northfield, Minnesota. Davis showed me what was possible for nonmotorized transportation in cities, while Northfield encouraged me with its potential and its people - people who agreed that Northfield could make important strides in healthier modes of transportation.

The bulk of my talk to Rotary addressed the reasons that communities should promote cycling and walking and the mission and goals of the task force. As far as the reasons for promoting nonmotorized transportation, I focused on energy issues and health issues, with more emphasis on the latter. Regarding energy, I displayed a slide showing the vastly different energy requirements for propelling a pedestrian or cyclist as compared to a person in a motor vehicle. Of course this is a function of the difference in the weight of the vehicles (or lack of vehicle) involved. Here are the examples of vehicle weights that I gave: 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.

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?

Yesterday the StarTribune published an opinion piece by a former Republican state legislator from Rochester, Dave Bishop. It reveals another crack in the facade of Republican unanimity on the “no new taxes” policy espoused by our governor, the Taxpayers League of Minnesota, and national leaders such as Grover Norquist. Some Republicans are waking up to the fact that a reduction in tax receipts can have seriously negative consequences - as it does, for example, when inflation eats away at our state gas tax and our transportation infrastructure deteriorates due to a lack of funding.

Starving our government of funding starves our society of needed services in education, transportation, and more. Yes, we need to limit government in order to limit the tax burden, but we also need to have government do what the private sector cannot or will not do. As Mr. Bishop writes, the “starve the beast” view of tax policy is an example of “extreme” conservatism; we might also call it radical.

Here are some excerpts from Mr. Bishop’s brave essay: Read the rest of this entry »