“If voting is that important to you, you should get a voting ID.”
That is what our new Rep. Kelby Woodard had to say about voting in the state of Minnesota. A co-author of a bill that requires that voters display photo identification, he apparently doesn’t believe that voting is the right and duty of all citizens. But if you really, really insist, I guess you should get an ID. The law Woodard co-authored requires that all voters have valid government photo ID and, critically, that said ID indicates the voter’s address in the district.
Let’s consider Woodard’s own district. In Northfield alone, we have about 5,000 college students, legal residents of Northfield who do not have their college address on their ID. I am one of these students. Granted, some vote absentee in their home districts, but nearly all of those who do vote here come from another district or another state. So, in advance of the election, students would need to head on down the Northfield DMV to apply for a state ID card or new voting card with their college address. We don’t know exactly what will be required, but it’s almost certain they would need to provide a certified birth certificate or passport to prove citizenship. (And I’m sure the tiny staff of that office would appreciate a few thousand applications in the month before an election.)
Is it still possible for students to vote? Yeah. Sure. At great inconvenience to both students and the city DMV office, students could vote if they’re adequately prepared and are able to get required documentation in time. But reasonable convenience matters. Even with same-day registration and no ID requirement, student political involvement groups struggle to get everyone to the polls. Now they’ll need to get them to ask their parents to mail a birth certificate, leave campus, get to City Hall, and stand in line to get an ID — just for the privilege of going to the polls weeks later. The end result of this change is that hundreds — if not thousands — fewer college students will vote. Perhaps that’s exactly the point.
Students reported the following number of sexual partners within the last 12 months:
Why the difference? Perhaps having numerous sexual partners is not considered as socially acceptable here as other places. These numbers also reflect the fact that there is less reporting of involvement in serious relationships here at St. Olaf than nationally.
I have trouble calling it a “positive” that a majority of healthy men and women of reasonable sexual age are reporting celibacy.
A couple of years ago, the Metro Airports Commission replaced signage along Minneapolis freeways to the Minneapolis airport. The signage had previously said the names of the terminals, Lindbergh and Humphrey. Deemed far too confusing by the Commission, they were replaced with signs indicating Terminal 1 and Terminal 2. How could people possibly know what a Lindbergh or a Humphrey was? Advanced signs, shown above, were also added, to show which airlines were at which terminals.
This was indisputably brilliant and necessary, but as I was leaving Terminal 1 yesterday (I was told to meet someone at Lindbergh), I saw an exit sign for Hwy 55 either west to Minneapolis or east to Hastings. I felt stuck immediately, nearly had to pull over to the side of the road. What was a Hastings? Is that like a Kmart? Or a Minneapolis? Mini-what? To resolve the confusion, I propose that all cities be numbered on freeway exits, rather than using the names that some locals prefer.
All cities could be numbered, naturally starting with Minneapolis and Hastings. Advanced signs would list the attractions available in each city, but of course avoid city names.
I was riding up to Minneapolis yesterday, a beautiful spring day. Preparing to turn on to Pilot Knob Road from Dodd Boulevard, a car came up from behind, and a 30-something man shouted out of the window of his Jeep, “get on the bike path!” Limited in my response time, I simply showed him the middle finger. That was followed by a “bike path, motherfucker!!!” and a witty “FUCK YOU” by me.
This great exchange of the minds made me realize the need to clarify why exactly I do not ride on the “bike path.” I quote it not just because the actual term is “shared-use path,” but my personal preference is to call it what it is: an asphalt sidewalk.
This is a pretty typical use of such an asphalt sidewalk. Along a higher-speed collector street in a suburban environment, it provides a space for pedestrians, joggers, rollerbladers, and — as this driver would have it — bicycles. The surface itself is actually better than a traditional concrete sidewalk for riding, because there are not expansion gaps every meter or so. However, asphalt is also a cheaper, less stable material that often develops cracks and humps; if not maintained, it can be worse than concrete. But these are not the reasons for not riding on them. These are:
1. It is dangerous to the biker
This seems counterintuitive, because after all, you have separation from cars going much faster than you. But the reality is, very few crashes happen from cars overtaking a bicycle from behind. Nearly every car-bike crash occurs at an intersection. The trouble with riding on a sidewalk at an intersection is that you end up to the right of a right-turning car, which is a very bad place to be. Often cars are turning off a 40-55 mph (65-90km/h) road onto a minor street, and they do not slow down adequately to see bike going straight. According to the Minnesota Dept. of Transportation, you’re 25x more likely to be in a crash on a sidewalk than on the road itself. Specifically because cars do not have to deal with you on the road, they are not aware of you when they turn right.
2. It is dangerous to other users of the sidewalk
Depending on the area, there can be much slower users who are not aware of you and are not prepared for adult bicycle speeds. Small children learning to ride a bike with training wheels, the elderly, joggers — these are all other users forced into this space. You would have to significantly slow your ride or put yourself and others at risk on the sidewalk.
3. It may force you to ride on the wrong side of the road
To save money, many roads — despite very high speeds — only have an asphalt sidewalk on one side; it would be even more dangerous to ride against traffic on a bike path, as drivers are even less likely to look to their left when turning right.
4. It can be damaging to a bicycle
Since the roads are designed to prioritize a smooth ride for the motorized vehicle, not the bicycle, an asphalt sidewalk generally goes down to street level to cross (as opposed to car going over a raised crosswalk at bike/ped level). This means, at every intersection (including strip mall/gas station/etc. entrances), a bike needs to cross a curb ramp, a gutter, and an asphalt edge — and then go up the other side. Put more simply: KERKLUNK. Again and again.
There are some situations where bike paths — true paths for bikes — are very useful. They can provide a shortcut that is not possible for motor vehicles. They can provide a scenic ride through the woods. But when they simply follow the street, as a sidewalk, they are a dangerous substitute for road riding.
So, as the Jeep driver would phrase it, get off the sidewalk, motherfucker!
On Thursday, a cyclist was killed on the University of Minnesota campus. She was riding on a street with a designated bike lane, following traffic laws, and riding as predictably as possible: going in a straight line through an intersection. A truck at this intersection turned right across her right of way and struck and killed her. This category of accident — driver failing to yield right of way to bicycle — is the #1 cause of bicycle deaths in Minnesota.
So how might you imagine reporting on this would look? “A driver has struck and killed a cyclist in Dinkytown today”? “A tragic reminder for drivers to be more alert around bicycles”? Nope. Instead, a written report begins:
A 25-year-old woman is dead after her bicycle collided with a semi-truck Thursday morning.
No, actually, false. She would not have died if she had collided with the truck. Human + bicycle generally weighs <100 kg, and is itself of lethal threat to almost nobody, including its rider. It was rather the fact that the truck collided with her that’s the issue here.
The video is even worse. The reporter snottily notes that “she wasn’t wearing a helmet, but she was wearing headphones.” Neither of these behaviors is illegal in Minnesota. Potentially, it is not advisable to wear headphones in city traffic, but the problem with pointing that out is that it suggests that the victim’s distraction was a cause of the problem. She was behaving correctly. And anyone who has ever ridden a bicycle in a city knows that you notice a semi-truck. There is no doubt in my mind that she was this truck. Her (reasonable) assumption is that the truck both saw her and legally yielded to her.
So whose fault is it? The driver’s, obviously; he may have not been able to see the cyclist, but that reminds his and the truck’s fault. If a vehicle that large and dangerous going to be operating adjacent to a bike lane (and turning across it), it needs to be able to see cyclists.
But it’s not just the driver. The other fault lies with the road designers and engineers. In Minnesota, the preferred way to handle right turning traffic on a street with bike lanes is to provide a right turn lane to the right of the bike lane. This means that cars have 30-50 meters to negotiate with cycles and get into the right turn lane. At the intersection, there is no conflict, because they have already crossed the bike lane. In this case, there was no dedicated right turn lane, so right turning traffic had to cross the bike lane at the intersection.
Copenhagen has a different attitude, that keeps bikers closer to sidewalk and less mingled with traffic. Copenhagen has no one standard intersection, but many approaches. The above diagram, according to a paper called Livable Copenhagen, is a fairly optimal intersection: the separated cycle track ends before the intersection, but bikes have a narrow painted lane to proceed without being blocked by cars. The staggered stop lines means that, on a red light turning green, cyclists are far more visible to right-turning cars (also bear in mind that, unlike in Minnesota, standard intersection behavior does not allow for right turns on red). The intersection itself also has a very clearly marked bicycle crosswalk to indicate the path of cycles and remind cars of their presence.
Minneapolis needn’t adopt all of these things, but at least a couple of them could have prevented this accident:
A marked bike crosswalk would have reminded the driver that there is through-traffic of cycles.
Staggered stop lines (only possible with no right turn on red) would have potentially kept him a bit further back before entering the intersection.
In any case, while it’s important cyclists behave appropriately, it always behooves the bigger and stronger to watch out. These are not tragic accidents; they’re tragic symptoms of bad design and bad behavior.
Mikael Colville Andersen of Copenhagenize had an awesome photo set here, trying to demonstrate that cyclists should be treated as fast-moving pedestrians. That’s in stark contrast to the standard US treatment of bikes as slow-moving vehicles.
Of course, without the girl bikes (what Colville-Andersen snottily calls “the most anthropologically-correct bicycle”), the effect is a bit less dramatic. But very cool here.
(Walking back to Hill-Kitt, behind a group of first-years talking about California.)
Guy 1: “It’s all just earthquakes, cars, and homos. I don’t ever wanna go there” Guy 2: “What you got against homos?”Guy 1: I just think it’s not the most comfortable experience to be somewhere where like everyone around you is a homo” Guy 2: “You don’t have to like go into the Castro” Guy 1: “No it’s not just San Francisco, the homos are everywhere, dude, like 25% of the population there.” Me, after some hesitation: “I’m sorry, you’ve got a homo walking right behind you, so maybe you could keep it to yourself for a little while.”
I guess I’m glad I said something today, but I’m never sure how much to speak up in these situations — or for that matter, when a little old lady asks me if I have a girlfriend. Awkward balance between avoiding conflict and not hiding who I am.
I’ve got mail. Out of the 4932 messages in my St. Olaf account (since they switched to Gmail), 998 (yellow) are addressed to me. The remaining are 3934 (red) are mailing lists, most of which are involuntary (majors and the thoroughly abused “All Students” list).
I griped yesterday about the problems with the total lack of Minnesota River crossings for bikes. Apparently, the legislature (the previous, DFL one, not the current GOP-controlled one) actually just addressed this problem in their Trunk Highway Bridge Improvement Program, to prevent future Cedar Avenue bridges.
(165.14 Subd. 4) (d) All bridge projects funded under this section in fiscal year 2012 or later must include bicycle and pedestrian accommodations if both sides of the bridge are located in a city or the bridge links a pedestrian way, shared-use path, trail, or scenic bikeway.
Bicycle and pedestrian accommodations would not be required if:
a comprehensive assessment demonstrates that there is an absence of need for bicycle and pedestrian accommodations for the life of the bridge; or
there is a reasonable alternative bicycle and pedestrian crossing within one-quarter mile of the bridge project.
All bicycle and pedestrian accommodations should enable a connection to any existing bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure in close proximity to the bridge. All pedestrian facilities must meet or exceed federal accessibility requirements as outlined in Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act, codified in United States Code, title 42, chapter 126, subchapter II, and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, codified in United States Code, title 29, section 794.
This won’t address existing problems, but it’s good to know that in the future, we’ll build better.
