Here’s Roadguy’s column from the Sunday paper. If you’ve already read it elsewhere, please skip on down to the comments below. Thanks.

SHOVELING YOUR WAY OUT OF TROUBLE

Who should shovel out Twin Cities bus stops? After reading last week’s column, alert reader Jeff from Brooklyn Park had an idea:

How about getting those offenders that are sentenced to community service [to do] the shoveling at the bus stops? It would get the snow shoveled and wouldn’t cost “us” anything.

By sheer coincidence, Roadguy received an e-mail two days later from another Jeff from Brooklyn Park:

I just finished a couple days of community service for Hennepin County. The days were spent cleaning snow around the bus stop signs. We would clean about three feet on either side of the sign.

When passengers would exit the bus, we could see that they were pleased with what we were doing. Just a little something to pass on to your readers about their tax dollars at work.

(Roadguy called both Jeffs and learned that Jeff No. 2 was working off a transportation-related penalty: He’d gotten a DUI.)

Mike Kennedy, who is not named Jeff, is in charge of snow removal for Minneapolis, and he says that community-service crews do snow removal work at bus stops and intersections around town.

But who shovels in, say, certain suburbs? Alert reader Peter wants to know:

It took a whole week from when the snow started falling for Columbia Heights personnel (presumably) to clear snow from the [bus] stop for people going downtown.

Peter has put his foot right in the middle of the slushy mishmash of Twin Cities shoveling. Bus stops are not part of Columbia Heights’ snow-removal plan, said public works director Lauren McClanahan, though the city will clear some of them if it’s finished with other priorities.

Metro Transit, meanwhile, clears many shelters but doesn’t do stops, while some shelters are shoveled out by private companies that sell advertising on them. Private firms also handle ad-covered benches, which have a phone number you can call about snow or other problems.

And bike racks? Yes, in our snowy metropolis, someone asked about unshoveled bike racks at the 38th Street light-rail station. Bob Gibbons of Metro Transit says that during the first snowstorms, there was some confusion involving a contractor, and that from now on the bicycle rack areas will be shoveled.

THE LAST WORD ON PLATES

Roadguy is more than ready to stop talking about license plates, but some alert readers aren’t quite there yet.

A few vehicle owners with the letters F and S in their plates wrote in because they were mystified to read that those letters aren’t used in randomly assigned plates. To clarify: The letters weren’t taken out of rotation until late 2005.

And for those of you eager to get your new flat digitally produced plates (or obtain a final set of embossed ones), the state folks say the transition will happen early next year. Digital plates will first be available by mail, then appear at the 173 deputy registrar offices in spring or summer as shipments are made.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 17th, 2007 at 12:01 am and is filed under Good to know, Main, WUWT?. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.