Streets and Skyways

Maybe it is because I have spent a lot more time navigating through downtown at street level, but I have always found the skyway system confusing. I get up there and have to think twice about where I am.

I have also wondered if taking so much retail from sidewalk to skyway has made out streets both less safe and less inviting.

And I have always been amazed at how smoothly the complicated public-private relationships that are necessary to make the system possible seem to work.

So I am not confused that Thune is sponsoring an ordinance on skyway hours. I have to agree that some better consistency seems desirable. I am not worried that the Republicans will get confused. There convention is set for weekdays and most of them won’t be staying locally, anyway, but maybe their impending arrival is as good a reason as any to look at the issue of hours and dates of openness.

But let us avoid some of Thune’s phony Pollyanna claim [reported in today’s DPP] that, as he is quoted as saying,

"We wouldn't let a road just end in the middle of downtown on certain hours. We want people to always depend on the fact that you can get from one side of town to the next. It's become a major transportation system for the city.”

Why should skyways be better than streets?

We close downtown streets frequently without giving a rap for moving traffic. Remember the last ice castle? Or the cavalier treatment that Market Street receives when they want an ice rink? Or closing off most of Lowertown for basketball, even though Sibley/Jackson is [pending the completion of the East Central Business District (ECBD) bypass. I remember sitting on the committee doing the preparation for that Environmental Impact Study two decades ago.] the official truck route the city accepted as part of keeping the trucks off the Practice Freeway.

I wish the Council and the building owners well in working something out. But maybe we should reexamine the double standard we seem to have for street and skyway.