7 September 2024
News this summer even more surprising than the acquisition of an unneeded $1.8 million electric fire truck, which, like a well-behaved child, will apparently be seen but not heard, was the mid-August announcement that the St. Paul City Council approved a plan to remove a lane of Rondo Avenue between Snelling Avenue and Marion Street, in most part to accommodate bicyclists.
Rondo.
Even given their youth and their not very deep backgrounds, it is not possible that the least diverse city council in America is unaware of the irony. Rondo was already once and famously pillaged to construct Interstate 94, which should have been built in a long Pierce-Butler curve to the north but instead was bulldozed through an established neighborhood, the Rondo neighborhood. And now, despite objections by those who still live along or near Rondo, the city council wants to charge between $3,000 and $5,000 per house for the mill and overlay project that will eliminate a traffic lane.
Many residents reject both the cost and the ideology.
From the Center of the American Experiment: “Historic manual count data estimates for weekday bicycle trips on Rondo Avenue east of Griggs Street do not show an appreciable number of bicycling trips,” according to the project overview compiled by city planners.
So, you’re going to shrink what is basically a frontage road to get on and off I-94, increasing congestion, and you’re going to dedicate a lane of traffic — this plan apparently also includes Concordia Avenue — for bicyclists who evidently don’t use this as a route to get anywhere anyway. And you’re going to do this in a neighborhood whose residents don’t want it, don’t need it, haven’t clamored for it and will not suddenly start wearing bicycle shorts.
Most of the residents of Summit Avenue don’t want to become part of a regional bike trail. Most of the residents of the Rondo neighborhood don’t want to lose a lane of traffic and an estimated 13 percent of their parking spaces. The residents of St. Paul most certainly don’t want and can’t afford another property tax increase. We shouldn’t be so ignored.
The neighborhood in question was Mayor Melvin Carter’s neighborhood, but he does not see any parallel between a bike lane and I-94.
“I think bulldozing a house was more traumatic than getting a new bike lane, a new amenity,” Carter told me.
There are people objecting.
“And there are people ecstatic about it,” Carter said. “I tried to use my bike on those streets and it wasn’t safe. This will be an improvement for people on bicycles,” Carter said.
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The mayor is an amiable fellow and I get the notion that he could produce a magical coin from behind your ear. I probably shouldn’t bring up the fire truck.
That $1.8 million fire truck? Yes, about that. A couple of diesel trucks could have been acquired for that amount and they wouldn’t have needed a new $48,000 charging station. Worse, the city is on the hook for the $1.8 million. According to the Minnesota Reformer, the city assumed the cost would be covered by federal dollars, still your money. The city tried to get an earmark requested by Minnesota Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith, but fire trucks are not included in the type of funding they applied for.
But hey, the city said, we’re trying to save the Earth. It’s in our Climate Action and Resiliency Plan! Good try, but the city could not explain how it would meet the federal government’s required objectives.
Most people not in government would have nailed down the funding before they bought the truck.
Just like most people not in government would have expected Rondo to be off limits for any taking, even a bike lane.
Joe Soucheray can be reached at [email protected]. Soucheray’s “Garage Logic” podcast can be heard at garagelogic.com.
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