Here’s my weekly column:

ABOUT THAT FINE FOR NOT BUCKLING UP…

When the state’s new seat belt law passed this year, it included a $25 fine, but alert reader Paul is among those who have discovered the real cost.

After he got cited in Roseville for failing to buckle up, he called the court system to get more information and the person on the other end of the phone told him what he’d actually be paying:

106 bucks! I told her online it said it was a 25-buck ticket, but she said there were $81 in surcharges!

Roadguy checked with Susan Bownes, Ramsey County’s traffic violations manager. The voice on the other end of Paul’s call was correct.

Although they’re often thought of as court fees, the surcharges mostly go into state coffers. In Ramsey County, $75 of the $81 goes into the state general fund, $5 goes to running the county’s law library, and a dollar goes to the county itself. Hennepin County violators pay slightly less — $78 in surcharges — because the library fee is $3, and there’s no county fee.

On the (somewhat) brighter side for misbehaving drivers, there’s now only one surcharge per incident, instead of for every violation. That means if Paul had been ticketed for speeding and not being buckled up, he would’ve been hit with the surcharge once instead of twice. (That’s a recent change, Bownes said.)

If you ask Roadguy, it’s just a lot easier to wear the seat belt.

TWO VIEWS OF CLEAR BARRIERS

Last week I mentioned the new see-through sound barriers on Interstate 35W at Minnehaha Creek (slightly blurry photo above taken Friday by yours truly while sitting in the passenger seat), and a couple of readers made some noise of their own.

Alert reader Janet wanted to know whether such a barrier could be erected in Robbinsdale along Hwy. 100 at a spot where some residents objected to a solid wall that would have blocked their view of a lake. I called our friends at the Minnesota Department of Transportation, who indicated that the clear barriers are too expensive for widespread use, but they said they’d be happy to hear Janet out.

Alert reader Jim, meanwhile, questions the value of such barriers for drivers:

You don’t want people looking down. … Beautification is beautiful, but let’s use the freeways as intended, as thoroughfares without having a parkway effect so that people can look at all the shrubbery and the greenery … Keep the distractions away from people and we’ll have less claims for the insurance companies.

So if the acrylic gets obscured with crud in the winter, not everyone will be disappointed.

For a city of its size, Albert Lea pops up in my writing more than you might think. (This post and this story, for example.) Today I got an e-mail calling my attention to this editorial in the Albert Lea Tribune. The headline is “Central Corridor good for Minnesota.” For me, the most intriguing sentence was in a paragraph praising the Hiawatha Line:

The line paid for itself in two years.

I’ve been trying to do some mathematical gymnastics to figure out how this could be the case, given that fares don’t even cover operating expenses (though they cover a greater percentage than bus fares do). Light rail can bring numerous quantifiable and qualitative benefits, but are there numbers showing $800 million in benefits in the first two years of Hiawatha operations? If you’ve got a theory, share it below.

Today’s post is brought to you by Roadguy’s boss. The text below is her status update yesterday on Facebook (where, by the way, you can become a fan of Roadguy and see who else already is). Here’s her update:

Today’s commute on the 24 bus had more stop-and-go than usual. The wheelchair lift got stuck on a telephone pole. No amount of lever-pushing would free it, so the driver called for help. But a passenger decided to put the mass in mass transit. He got out and pushed the lift clear of the pole, helped off the person who needed to use the lift and quietly took his seat as his fellow riders applauded.

More local transit stories are available every day at bustales.com and pickingupstrangers.com — and you can always share them with Roadguy, too, even if you’re not his boss.

These days, the old 35W bridge is mostly discussed in the context of litigation, such as in this story from the weekend papers. But other reminders are still around — this past weekend in the Eat Street area, I saw this on a parked car:

Two days later, in a Target parking lot, I walked past a woman wearing one of the commemorative T-shirts:

And last month, I came across this tow truck from Bobby and Steve’s Autoworld:

Work on the permanent memorial to the bridge collapse has not yet begun (a Minnesota Public Radio update on the slow progress is here), but we’ve got bumper stickers, T-shirts, and truck hoods to remind us. Interesting times — share your thoughts below.

The weekend before last, Roadguy drove across Wisconsin to hang out with his 2-year-old niece (as well as various less-interesting adults). The visit included a ride on the rail transportation at the Milwaukee zoo:

(It’s an incredibly tiny train, both in terms of height and width. There’d be plenty of leftover room and minimal vibrations on University Avenue if the Central Corridor used equipment like this.)

I also learned from her grandparents that my niece drives the best-selling car in the United States:

It’s true — it even outsold the Camry last year. (Fox News story here, post on Autoblog here.) Perhaps America’s youth will indeed lead the way to a low-emssions future.

Here’s my weekly column from the paper. The first item might seem familiar to regular Roadguy blog readers — it’s based on the last couple of blog posts from last week. But feel free to comment away anyway.

Many of the thousands of people who walked or drove into downtown Minneapolis over the holiday weekend kept their eyes on the fireworks. But at one intersection, they were asked to watch for a glow much closer to the ground.

A few blocks from the Stone Arch Bridge, a chain-link fence blocks off a portion of the sidewalk at Portland and Washington Avenues, and parking has been banned along the curb. Inside the enclosure, large pipes jut out of the concrete and connect at an odd angle, and the sound of rushing water can be heard. On three sides, mysterious signs say, “If red light is on, please call …” and offer a phone number.

Above it all, on a wooden utility pole, is the red light.

This isn’t something Roadguy has seen very often around town, and he found it curious that members of the traveling public were being asked to monitor a bit of infrastructure. What happens if the red light goes on while nobody’s looking? World War III?

No, nothing so dire, says city spokesman Matt Laible. Below the street is a pump that’s removing water from soil around a sewer pipe in preparation for repairs. Disaster would not strike if the pump stopped, but the city would prefer that it keep doing its thing so the work can proceed, he said, and signs are cheaper than assigning city staffers to check on it.

So if you’re driving by and see the red light, do your civic duty and make the call. Your fellow citizens will thank you even more if you pull over before you dial.

See-through sound barriers

Noise walls along freeways tend to make homeowners happy, but drivers aren’t always wild about the blocked views. Roadguy recently heard from motorists who were pleased that transparent sound barriers have been installed on Interstate 35W where it crosses Minnehaha Parkway, so folks zooming by can get a glimpse of the greenery below.

I’m all for scenery, but when I’ve seen such barriers, I’ve often wanted to stop and get out the Windex — freeways aren’t the cleanest of places, as anyone with a windshield knows.

The clear acrylic walls on 35W won’t have built-in sprayers, but Steve Barrett, a project engineer for the Minnesota Department of Transportation, said they can be pressure-washed.

“Dirt will not readily adhere to this polished surface,” the manufacturer’s website says. “As a result, rain or the dew that frequently forms at night will rinse the sheet clean. In most cases, Paraglas Soundstop needs no additional cleaning.”

We don’t get a lot of dew around here in January, so we’ll have to see whether the parkway views fade during the winter.

Roadguy on camera

Speaking of the Crosstown construction zone, its ever-changing lane markings are the subject of this week’s Roadguy video, available here.