The world will not blow up if you don’t call.

Earlier this afternoon, I talked with Matt Laible, city of Minneapolis spokesman, about the sign pictured above (see yesterday’s post). There’s an electric pump beneath the sidewalk that’s “dewatering” a storm sewer pipe and the adjacent soil so the pipe can be worked on later this year. (Alert reader Matty’s posted response was on the mark, except it’s a storm sewer, so presumably none of the more foul-type sewage is involved.)

If the pump goes off, the light goes on, and the city wants to know. It doesn’t have a fancy device that will call automatically, nor does it have the staff to babysit the pump, so you — pedestrian, bicyclist or driver — are asked to let ‘em know if there’s a red glow.

Nothing terrible will happen if the pump stops, Laible said — officials just prefer that it keep doing its job so the project can proceed.

So if you’re passing by on the 4th of July, please take a glance upward and do your civic duty for America’s infrastructure.

Roadguy’s colleague Emma Jaye often commutes on foot, and she’s once again utilized the camera on her phone to prove that you do indeed see more when you walk. For one thing, there’s this sign on the Stone Arch Bridge:

Translation: Bridge to be mob scene during fireworks.

This more curious sign is on a sidewalk a few blocks away:

Emma Jaye writes:

Something odd I noticed on the way home from work: a fence around a long piece of pipe with a number to call if the red light was on. Luckily, it wasn’t on.

This seems like a rather unusual request to make of passersby. (”Pull over, honey, and grab the phone — the red light is on!”) I haven’t called the number yet — I thought I’d first see whether any of the infrastructure geeks in our studio audience know what this is about. If so, please make use of the comments below.

Minnesota now has nearly 100 roundabouts, so it’s the right time for the latest Roadguy video, which went online this morning. (Apologies for the posting delay — once again, I’m on the road.)

Here’s my weekly column, which now runs in the Monday paper. Please comment away below.

It’s a buyer’s market for car shoppers, but alert reader Dr. P warns consumers that they might want to prepare themselves for another kind of sticker shock: license-plate renewal fees.

Dr. P bought himself a 2008 Range Rover about a year ago, and he was floored this year to receive a bill for more than $800 to get his tabs renewed.

Under old rules dating to the Ventura administration, Dr. P would have paid no more than $189, but the 2008 transportation bill ended such limits for vehicles that hadn’t previously been registered in Minnesota. The bill’s gas-tax increase and the legislative override of Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s veto grabbed most of the headlines back then, but the removal of the caps and the creation of a faster depreciation schedule (which lowered renewals for some folks) were indeed enacted.

Dr. P thought his tax must be an error, so he called his dealership and even a legislator, but nope.

Renewal fees are based on a percentage of the manufacturer’s suggested retail price plus destination charges, says Roxanne LaDoucer of Driver and Vehicle Services. You can look up that value and a bunch of other things, including the annual tax of any vehicle for which you know the license-plate number, at www.mndriveinfo.org  — and perhaps head off any potential shocks of your own.

WHERE YA HEADED? DEPENDS

On the drive south from Duluth, sometimes you’re told how far it is to Minneapolis, other times to St. Paul, and still other times to the Twin Cities.

Alert reader Mysteray has long wondered why, going so far as to count the number of “Twin Cities” signs (four, he says) on his most recent trip. And just how, he wants to know, can there be a single distance to a pair of cities?

“For the past 20 years or so, states have begun phasing out nicknames such as Twin Cities, Quad Cities, etc.,” said Todd Kramascz, metro spokesman for the Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT), because such names “typically are not recognized by interstate travelers.” Both Minneapolis and St. Paul are on an official nationwide list of “control” cities, he said, so MnDOT now alternates between the two, with “Twin Cities” signs being replaced when they reach the end of their lifespans.

The distances to Minneapolis or St. Paul are the number of miles to the respective downtowns, while the “Twin Cities” signs show the distance to — well, to highway marker 106 on Interstate 35E just south of Grand Avenue in St. Paul. It was picked long ago as a way to split the difference, ­Kramascz said.

The MPR story about the guy who rode his bike on I-94 this morning is here.

A video of a 4-year-old kid surviving a wacky car accident is here, via a British newspaper website.

And an atheist group is using transit to spread messages — it’s taken out ads on buses in New York City. NYT item here.

As Minneapolis celebrates another biking honor (one of the top ten bike-friendly cities in the world), let’s have a look at what Roadguy saw last evening while sitting at a light on Hiawatha Avenue:

The light had obviously turned green by the time I took this picture, but it seemed wise for me to wait a bit longer, what with a bicyclist headed toward oncoming traffic. I had been watching his meandering approach from some distance, and he was riding closer to the middle of the lane for most of that time.

I suppose there was a chance that he was a Briton accustomed to driving on the left, but I’m thinking alcohol played a key role in his decision-making. This was his next low-speed maneuver:

It was a pretty sad sight — unkempt, unhelmeted guy wandering toward and in front of traffic on a 40-mph four-lane road. I hope he doesn’t read this article about bike-related beers…. I’m pretty sure he’d already had enough.