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

Alert readers Karl and Gina have a question about a pair of stop signs a couple of miles from their home. Late every fall, the signs disappear. Then every spring, like robins, they return.

Gina theorizes that workers from the city of Minneapolis come and take the signs out so children attending a nearby school get spurts of exercise during the winter. Without signs to halt traffic, she argues, kids have to sprint across the street.

Karl, meanwhile, says that forcing buses to stop at the stop sign in the summer, when the asphalt is softer, helps wear out the road faster, ensuring continued employment for public works crews.

“Who’s less wrong?” this cheeky couple asks, noting that the winner won’t have to shovel their driveway.

The intersection in question, at Johnson Street and 35th Avenue NE., is home to “the only seasonal stop sign we currently have in the city,” said Minneapolis spokesman Matt Laible. During the time of year when roads might be slippery, the signs facing traffic on Johnson — which has a steep slope south of 35th — are removed.

“The four-way stop in the summer is better for pedestrians,” Laible said, “but it’s a little safer for everybody in the winter if those cars going up and down the hill don’t have to try to stop at that sign.”

Maybe Karl and Gina should use their shovels on Johnson Street.

FILLING GAPS IN THE TRAFFIC

Alert reader Dave from St. Louis Park has a question about what we’ve previously called the Crosstown Black Hole:

Why is it that the online traffic maps can only show “no data available” on what are arguably the most needed portions of the roadways — the under-construction areas of the Crosstown and 35W? I’m sure MnDOT would attribute it to losing their old monitoring stations due to the actual construction, but with this information being so critical, couldn’t they put up temporary equipment?

Dave even suggested hiring some interns to stand outside and report on the traffic going by, but there’s already a lot more light coming out of the black hole than there used to be.

In March, when Roadguy last visited this issue, the Minnesota Department of Transportation was testing some temporary above-ground traffic detectors to replace the under-the-pavement ones, which don’t work when you’re ripping up roads. There are now trailer-mounted detectors in five spots, according to Matt Gjersvik, a MnDOT engineer.

Indeed, if you compare a traffic map from October 2007 with the current map, there are now some specks of color in what was a large “no data available” zone.

Some traffic cameras in the area are still functioning as well, so there are a couple of ways for Dave to check things out before he hits the road.

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 16th, 2008 at 11:23 pm and is filed under Main. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.