Here’s something you can’t do (or rather, shouldn’t do) if you drive or bike to your destination:

Transit can take longer, but there are ways to make good use of the time, such as this gentleman was doing last week in Uptown. But then there’s this story about the former Pioneer Press transportation reporter getting mugged while trying to pay his fare at the Lake Street light-rail station on Father’s Day. (In broad daylight, even.) At least he didn’t have a laptop with him.

The Washington Metro is otherwordly in a couple of ways. The underground stations look as though they were designed by the same people who created space movies in the 1970s, and they feel nothing like the rest of Washington — they aren’t clad in important marble like the Mall-area monuments, nor are they run-down and crime-plagued like so much of the capital. I last used the Metro (and took these photos) in August 2008 and found it as alluring as ever.

But it’s a transportation system like all others — ultimately reliant on imperfect humans and imperfect machines. I’m saddened by Monday’s fatal crash, and will watch with interest as the cause is investigated. If you’ve ever checked out the Metro, I welcome your thoughts below.

Here’s my weekly column from the paper. Check it out and comment below.

How far off the freeway are you willing to drive for a hamburger?

For Roadguy, the answer is “not very far.” So I was in for a surprise the first time I tried to find a particular fast-food outlet while driving through Wisconsin on Interstate 94.

After reading one of those blue freeway signs that list restaurants, I exited, followed an arrow near the top of the ramp and drove about a mile to another intersection, which was amid farm fields. There, another sign said the restaurant was another 2.8 miles away: due west, back in the direction of Minnesota.

I did not head back toward Minnesota. I headed back to the freeway.

Just how far from an interchange can a business be and still be listed on the blue signs? Turns out that in Wisconsin, the distance is 5 miles. (If Roadguy were dictator, he might require burger joints to be within sight of the exit, though that would be bad for small towns that aren’t right near the highway.)

And the distance limit on Minnesota’s rural freeways? Fifteen miles. That’s a ways to go if your gas gauge is on “E” or your kids need to pee, but as Kevin Gutknecht of the Minnesota Department of Transportation puts it, 15 miles at this exit is better than traveling 30 miles to the next one.

The sign at the top of the ramp in Wisconsin now warns drivers that the distance to the burger place is 4.3 miles. I’d still rather pack a sandwich or take my chances at the next exit.

CLOSED LANES ON THE DETOUR

Alert reader Jackie was not pleased last weekend:

How does it occur that on Saturday night, when 35W northbound was closed and Hwy. 100 northbound was the official detour route, that Hwy. 100 had two of three lanes closed? Miles of backed-up traffic. They were tarring the cracks in the road. Isn’t someone at MnDOT in charge of coordinating road closings?

Alert reader Mike from Brooklyn Park said it took him an hour to get through the area:

You would think someone would think, “Hey, this might not be a good time to close this road off because we’re sending all of the traffic from 35W over to 100. Let’s fill the cracks next week.”

MnDOT agrees. “This was an unfortunate but honest mistake,” said Todd Kra­mascz, metro communications director. Doing the work “was more or less a last-minute decision by a project inspector” because a crew was available, he said.

Normally there’s a lot of coordination among work crews, project engineers and traffic managers, he said, adding that “they’re working on a plan to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”

If you’re tired of pedaling but can’t afford an electric bike, perhaps it’s time for a new kind of wind power:

This fanciful print, by artist Sean Smuda, is on display at Barbette in Uptown.

Got the following in my inbox this afternoon in response to this story I wrote for today’s paper. Some interesting math:

I appreciate the updates on the bridge collapse and the ensuing lawsuits. One thing I think needs to be included in the articles when you mention the loads on the bridge from the contractor is their equivalent weight in semi trucks. I think that is a much easier way for people to understand how much weight was really up there.

The legal load limit for an 18-wheeler in Minnesota is 80,000 pounds. So if there was 500,000 pounds of material and equipment on the bridge, that is equivalent to 6.25 fully loaded semi’s. If I remember correct there were four lanes out of service, two each way, and four still in service, two each way. That would equate to 1.56 equivalent semi’s per closed lane. If the loads were what caused the collapse, imagine what it would have been like if all lanes were open and we had 6.25 semi’s at the location of the material piles and equipment. My guess is a lot more deaths. Maybe we are lucky there was work on the bridge, it may have lessened the tragedy.

Matt from Hugo

Thoughts?

(Photo taken Aug. 23, 2007)

Here’s another item for the Dept. of Widely Ignored Signs (earlier example here). After I took this photo for Monday’s post…

… here’s what the truck decided to do:

It’s unwise to make a diagonal move across the middle of an intersection, and doubly unwise when there are light-rail tracks involved. Roadguy must sigh and once again ask: How hard is it to go around the block when you’ve messed up and picked the wrong lane?

Maybe that’s why the Twin Cities ranked as one of the places with the least-courteous drivers.