Behold! Dazzling lights along S. 7th Street.

Tonight and Saturday are the last two nights of the Holidazzle Parade, which brings illuminated holiday characters to downtown Minneapolis. It also causes a flare-up of seasonal transportation disorder: Buses are rerouted, cars wait at stoplights as the parade passes, and the skyways and sidewalks surrounding Nicollet Mall are packed like you’ve never seen them. The parade, which begins at 6:30, lasts about a half-hour, so the madness is short-lived, and drivers who plan ahead can avoid crossing the parade route by using streets on the northern and southern ends of the mall (I believe Grant Street and Washington Avenue are safe bets). And on Saturday, to mark the parade’s closing night, Metro Transit is offering free rides on all buses and trains from 4 to 8 p.m. — click here for the news release, which includes a mention of the 20,000-light “Twinkle Bus.”

On Wednesday, I was reminded that there’s a second, less heralded parade that takes place on Holidazzle nights — the parade of cars driving down the light rail tracks:

The folks pictured above figured out the error of their ways pretty quickly, but check out this driver on the right below:

Not only did the guy drive down the tracks for a block, but, as you can see, he also tried to make a right turn into a bus/taxi lane on 2nd Avenue South. I felt a bit sorry for him, because where he ended up, he couldn’t see any of the “no right turn” signs — the engineers who decide the placement of such signs didn’t plan on anyone being that far off course.

Despite the episodes of confusion, the parade draws all sorts of families who otherwise wouldn’t venture downtown in the dark of winter, and many of them take light rail to get there. The event’s multimodal nature gives everyone something to celebrate — though for at least a few drivers and bus commuters, the celebrating begins when parade season is done.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 22nd, 2006 at 6:10 am and is filed under Good to know, Moron Patrol, Scenes and stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.