Please wake up, fellow Democrats
As a long-time Macalester-Groveland resident and retired (in 2020) transportation planner, I have always had a fascination with Ayd Mill Road. This roadway was built in the 1960s and was intended to serve as a link between I-35E and I-94. Its overall history is too complicated to go into here; this letter’s focus is the bike/pedestrian trail that was constructed in 2020 between the railroad and the roadway.
In the 2000-teens the surface of Ayd Mill Road was in truly horrible condition. In 2019, the City of St. Paul budgeted $3.5 million for a “mill and overlay” resurface job for the 1.5 mile roadway. These types of projects are quite basic and can be confidently budgeted. Then Mayor Carter introduced a last-minute proposal to add a bike/pedestrian trail to the project. This element greatly increased the complexity of the project from engineering and construction perspectives (much of the existing roadway couldn’t just be resurfaced – it had to be re-designed and reconstructed to accommodate the path). The final cost of the project was $7.5 million.
Aug. 11 was a gorgeous Sunday, cool and sunny – a perfect day to go out biking and/or walking. I traveled the length of Ayd Mill Road three times, once at 8:30 a.m., once at 10:30 a.m., and once at 4 p.m. During these three trips I saw a combined total of one bicyclist using the trail, and no pedestrians. This was consistent with general observations during my routine trips on Ayd Mill Road.
Cities like St. Paul have limited budgets. It is galling to see a piece of public infrastructure (the trail), one which more than doubled the cost of the original project, receive hardly any use. Trail advocates say that the Ayd Mill trail will be used more if a connection to Minneapolis’ Midtown Greenway can be built. This is a huge if – first a river crossing would have to be established and then all sorts of difficult connections between the east bank of the river and the Ayd Mill trail would need to be completed. I wouldn’t bet on it.
For now, the trail is a monument to decision-making which allows naïve idealism and ideology to trample on common sense. Please wake up, fellow Democrats; this is the sort of thing that makes people vote for Donald Trump.
Peter Langworthy, St. Paul
Whose small town?
Gov. Tim Walz claims to be an expert on small town America. I too grew up in a small town, and our perspectives couldn’t be more different.
In Gov. Walz’s small town, “everyone minds their own damn business” (his words, not mine). In my small town, if someone needs a meal, we don’t send them to the school to get a free government meal. Instead, we organize a schedule, and neighbors take turns delivering meals. If a student-aged child shows up at our door asking for money, we don’t offer to help them write a government grant, we buy whatever they are selling whether we need it or not, because supporting our community is our responsibility. And if someone in my small town falls on hard times, they are the first we call to help around the house, to hire for farm work, or to find some other work for them, because that’s what neighbors do. Quite frankly, I find Gov. Walz’s notion of what it means to be a neighbor as weird.
I think Gov. Walz would like my kind of small town. Why doesn’t he join me and JD at the next festival so we can show him what small town neighbors are like? I’ll bring an extra lawn chair for him. It’s our way.
Dewayne Dill, Mendota Heights
Twice as hard
As an independent voter I see Donald’s Trump’s job twice as hard as Kamala Harris’s. Where Harris has to simply defeat Trump, Donald Trump has to defeat both Kamala Harris and his own mouth.
John Heller, North St. Paul
Elite education
Democrat VP candidate Tim Walz discredits the ability of Republican VP candidate J.D. Vance to understand the circumstances of our country’s general populace … because Vance is a Yale University Law School graduate.
This prompts recollection of the elite university, education credentials of Minnesota’s U.S. senators.
Amy Klobuchar graduated from Yale University and the University of Chicago Law School.
Tina Smith graduated from Stanford University and the Dartmouth College MBA program.
When Klobuchar and Smith are up for reelection, were Walz to endorse the candidacies of these DFL comrades … it could cross the minds of some Minnesotans that “Walz is weird.”
Gene Delaune, New Brighton
80 years ago in St. Paul
I was then 6 years old and in 1944 taken with the sound of our military planes each night.
It was dark and my bedtime then each night. I could hear our B-24 bombers heading to land at our St. Paul Holman airport. I got to love the sounds, thinking we were helping to lessen the war. I found later that each B-24 bomber landing at Holman was being fitted out with the bomber’s machine-gun weaponry. Later that night those same bombers took off for a U.S. port to be shipped both east and west to assist in the war fronts.
Want to hear the airplane roars now? Those sounds can still be heard today as the Minneapolis Airport (MSP) has rerouted their aircraft. Those roaring sounds can be heard on St. Paul’s west side, as the jet aircraft pass over.
Why? MSP airport is doing major runway repair and planes are not where they once were. The low-flying sounds are still heard now, reverberating. The sounds now heard are like those of yesteryear.
I’m thankful it’s runway repair and not more weaponry.
— Tom King, West St. Paul
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