Participants included:

• Randy Distad, Parks & Recreation Director
• Scott Neal, City Administrator
• Peg Prowe, Council member, liaison to Park Board
• Char Carlson, Chair of Park Board
• Chris Robbins, Planning Commission member, Cannon River Watershed Project
• Gordon Kelley, Planning Commission member

The forum focused on the following issues:

• Development of a long-term master plan for city parks, trails, and open spaces
• The land along the city’s waterways: Cannon River, and the creeks (Heath/Rice/Spring). Pros and cons of buying the land to preserve it; process used to acquire.
• The new city Parks and Rec dept under new director Randy Distad: programs, parks, staff, responsibilities, budget, etc.
• The city’s need for more/bigger sport/recreational complexes (hockey, soccer, swimming, etc.)

The draft document, available on the city’s Web site, considers the future of the city’s parks, open spaces and trails and is based on the Greater Northfield Greenway Corridor System. It also includes an inventory of the area’s natural resources, completed in 2005.­

The Northfield Parks and Recreation Advisory Board will be holding an Open House to obtain public input concerning Northfield’s Parks, Open Space, and Trail System Plan.

Tuesday January 29, 2008
6:00PM-8:00PM
Northfield City Hall
City Council Chambers

Speaking of photographs, how about some of the fading glories of the Northfield Bantams in Ames Park?

- Ross

I even have foggy memories of skating on a city-maintained rink ON THE CANNON RIVER above the dam when dinosaurs roamed the earth back in the pre-global-warming days (perhaps the winter of 1968-1969)? Any photos of this or earlier such adventures on the Cannon in the Historical Society archives???

One of my neighbors, old Johnny Westerlund, a retired phy-ed instructor and occasional substitute teacher when I was a kid, would regale us with tales of skating on the Cannon from Northfield to Dundas and back.

Do springs freeze well enough to skate on…? Probably, but just asking.

Or should we just switch it so the kids can skate downtown… I like the latter, better, although the boards do rip up the concrete a bit.

if you ask me, kids skating all over is a sign of a healthy community. Sorry.

However, I (in my personal opinion) think it’s worth the risk. Let’s give it a go and try a skating rink in Ames Park.

If we can pull it off in the next thirty days, maybe at the “dedication” of the skating rink next to the historic Ames Mill Malt-O-Meal would provide hot cereal…and Paul Niemisto could provide a brass band.

In Northfield, I see many of our problems as:

1. Lack of imagination
2. Lack of a cohesive plan when there IS imagination
3. Lack of leadership (time, skills) in obtaining funding and doing project management.

But I digress, as I am wont to do. Thanks for the link.

I think that it’s important to have an unpaid emerging photographer on the streets of Northfield day and night, taking pictures of people enjoying outside activities during the winter, and posting them on a website.

So, get on it, will ya?

- Ross

 Danes aren’t any hardier than the rest of us, notes Gehl; it’s simply that Danish cities over the past few years have created or refurbished many great public places — plazas, parks, lively shopping streets, waterfront districts– where people want to hang out even when it’s freezing. “Climates differ all over the world,” he says. “But people are the same. They will gather in public if you give them a good place to do it.”

I am so frustrated with the whole Woodley project at this point. The city is doing exactly what they want to do, and not listening to its citizens.

Once the speed surveys are done when this project is completed, the speed will go up, not down. The speed is set to 85% of the average speed taken over the survey period. So, with the increased lane width, and increased speeds, its almost a given.

Increased speeds will also make it more difficult to get the stop signs put in at Woodley and Prairie as well.

So frustrating…

tonight’s City Council meeting agenda has an item related to bike lanes:

11. Approve final design directions for Woodley Street from Prairie Street to Jefferson Parkway for  the preparation of plans and specifications

See pages 36-39 of the packet for details.

The 3 Addenda to the Woodley packet with striping details is not currently working. I’ve alerted Deb Little, city clerk.

Snow tires Ross.

I have felt safer on the redesigned 4th, though I would like to see the bike lane widened. I don’t know if it is safe for my daughter and what happens after Prairie through the curve.

This is from Bicycling.com:
What becomes clear is that, as numbers of cyclists increase, the rate of fatalities decreases. This inverse relationship is borne out by a 2003 report entitled “Safety in Numbers” by Peter L. Jacobsen, a public-health consultant in Sacramento, California. Studying cities of varying sizes from California to Scandinavia to the United Kingdom to the Netherlands, Jacobsen found that collisions between motor vehicles and people walking or bicycling declined with increases in the numbers of pedestrians and cyclists, partly because motorists in foot- or bike-prone communities are themselves more likely to walk or bicycle occasionally, and thus give greater consideration to others who are doing it.
Jacobsen’s fundamental conclusion: “A motorist is less likely to collide with a person walking or bicycling if more people walk or bicycle.”

full article:
http://www.bicycling.com/article/1,6610,s-3-12-16651-1,00.html

and more good articles:
http://www.bicycling.com/article/1,6610,s1-3-12-16637-1,00.html

The piece titled Broken is tough to read. The Judge Judy video is from a case in Northfield.

Woodley from Prairie east IS going to be widened significantly this summer (from its current 24 feet to what many feel is an excessively wide 44 feet); the sidewalk on the south side and shared eight-foot path on the north will be huge improvements over the status quo in most respects.

I simply feel (and bike/ped experts concur) that it is safer to have experienced cyclists on a well-designed on-road bike lane than on an eight-foot shared use path that crosses 14 intersections in 0.7 miles. The potential for bike/bike, bike/pedestrian, and bike/motor vehicle accidents is MUCH greater with the design we’re getting than it would be with safe on-road bike lanes. (For more on this, see page 27 of http://tlcminnesota.org/Resources/NTP%20Program/solicitation/NTP%20RFA%20Instructions%20Mar%2013%20REVISED.pdf.)

Thanks for the hard work, Bruce.

I’m trying to get across the point that if there are bike signs or lanes– or literature which promotes bike traffic, there is intended usage, and implied protection. Bikes SHOULD ride here. “More and more bikes here” type of thing.

But, Is the road safe? Is it a good to direct bike traffic here? If we hang up a sign are we appeasing someone, instead of protecting someone?

I like people biking to work (not my people, but others)– and I think that marks on the road seem more inclusive and suggestive. But, why put marks/signs/etc. on the worst roads in town? Cedar? Yikes! Woodley? Yikes! It’s safer to bike on Hwy 3 than either of those roads, in my humble opinion. Hwy 3 has a huge shoulder.

Faster cars on Hwy 3? Nope. Cedar signs are 50 mph. Woodley signs are, what, 40? I believe they upped the speed right after my mother was killed. So, when I go out there to see what is going on, cars are speeding by at more than 40, and are heading out to the country, and I know it feels like a good spot to hit the gas.

Well, that’s it for me. I could work tirelessly on this, but I can see I am biased, and I had to go “identify” my mother (won’t go into detail but you can imagine), and so the images still sting, and so I can’t really advocate well on this issue. I’m still stuck on the idea of letting my kids bike at all… yes, I do know accidents can happen and life is about taking risks.

Good luck and hopefully what happens will be for the good… Future families/kids/bikers will benefit from thoughtful thinking.

Minnesota design standards call for five-foot bike lanes on roadways with a 30 mph speed limit, and the 4th St. bike lanes do not meet these standards. The roadway is wide enough that they could, however. (It might take somewhat narrower traffic lanes, which would have an added traffic calming effect.)

I was extensively involved in the City Council Follies concerning Woodley St. redesign this past summer and fall. I’ve walked and biked in and around Northfield since 1967, and lived at 1109 Woodley (right on the curve by the golf course) as a kid until my folks moved in 1984. I fully concur with the Death Zone designation of this stretch of road, and think of your mother every time I head out of town on this road on my bike, Holly.

I advocated long and hard for safe, well signed and striped five-foot bike lanes both east and westbound on this stretch of Woodley, but ultimately to no avail. County and City staff stonewalled, and the plan currently calls for an eight-foot off-road shared (biking/walking/strollering/skateboarding/rollerblading/dog-walking/what-notting) two-way trail. This is fine for mom or dad and their kids biking along at five miles an hour, but is UNSAFE when you mix in experienced transportation and recreational cyclists traveling at 15 to 25 mph, with fourteen crossings between Prairie and the eastern city limits. People are gonna get hurt.

It is ironic that the new plan calls for on-road bike lanes on Woodley all the way from Highway 3 on the west to Prairie on the east, then changes to a bike “route” (no lanes; just signs) from Prairie to the eastern city limits…

Tonight’s City Council meeting (http://www.ci.northfield.mn.us/meetings/council/2008/01/07/city_council_meeting62) agenda includes “final design directions for Woodley Street from Prairie Street to Jefferson Parkway for the preparation of plans and specifications.” The links to the Woodley St. packet addenda didn’t work, but I contacted City staff and have received a PDF of the final striping. The on-road bike facilities are a four-foot “shoulder” that is actually mostly curb and gutter. Unfortunate, to say the least, from my perspective.

Thanks to Betsey for providing the definitions of some of the relevant terms.

My point is that the ROAD needs to change– just adding a bike lane isn’t going to work. The road is too narrow, and when they did the recent road construction, there was no shoulder added (on Cedar the project was described as “adding a shoulder”. That wasn’t done and the road has white line and then one foot or less on the other side.)

Look at the curve on Woodley near the new Jefferson as you head out of town. Put a bike lane there and you make is SEEM safe, but the road is too thin, and if another car is coming from the other direction, there’s not enough room to pass and give the biker three feet.

Of course, I take the law to mean that there should be three feet of space between the biker and the car when you pass. That would mean that the road needs to be wide enough for a car, a bike, and three feet between the car and bike.

Okay, so, if you hang a sign up about biking, it seems like it is a bike safe area. But is it? Even with striping? The road has to be wide enough.

What’s this you’re saying, John? I know there’s two bike lanes on 4th, but are they going in diff directions? So a bike would ride on what is technically the wrong side of the street for a bike?