Agenda - Council - 01/13/2009 - Laserfiche WebLink

Home

in Ashley ram Engineering Mr. Steven J. Jankowski City Engineer 7550 Sunwood Drive NW Ramsey, MN 55303 CONSULTING ENGINEERS GARY C ASHLEY, PE. Project: 0900 Re: Improvement Project #08 -32, Andrie Street & 164 Lane Street Improvements Dear Mr. Jankowski: I am concerned about the approach proposed for the above referenced project. My concerns relate primarily to the proposed parking lane and the sidewalk alternate. Let me elaborate, starting with the sidewalk alternate. First of all, you and the City received signed petitions which indicated that a sidewalk was not wanted by a majority of the homeowners on the affected streets: Since Northfork is a carefully planned development which already has common areas such as its own community park and several walking trails, it is already well equipped and user friendly for those who wish to walk. If sidewalks are added on either side of the streets, they will be placed over existing buried gas, electric, cable TV, and telephone utilities that will someday require maintenance. The presence of a sidewalk will increase future costs to maintain these utilities. Furthermore, because of the rather heavy use of lawn fertilizers and sprinklers with high iron content water, the sidewalk will end up orange colored and will likely be unsightly and high maintenance. Also, given the large lot sizes of Northfork, I doubt that you can expect the property owners to keep these sidewalks usable in, winter. I for one would not be interested in paying someone to plow 200 feet of sidewallc on niy property —our 200 foot driveway is enough of a headache. Now let me move on to the parking lane issue. A proposed 1' widening of the street will make it as wide as my .3 car garage. Now I don't see any way that I would want to have a parked car on one side of me and be meeting on- coming traffic at a combined closure speed of 60 miles per hour in the space of my garage. (Even without parked cars, the amount of space taken by the parking, lane will no longer be available for use by motorists, thus .putting on- coming traffic closer tban it has ever been before on these streets.) Furthermore what need is there for a parking lane on these streets? I have lived on Andrie Street for 20 years and I have never seen on -street vehicle parking to be an issue. Quite frankly, it is a rare occurrence out here. Usually you know whose kid just graduated or who is hosting a family or neighborhood party. And with long driveways and large lots, reasonable size get- togethers are accomplished with no need for on -street parking. But even if these arguments are not persuasive, consider this: You are proposing parking on the sides of these streets that are intersected 8 times. Anyone who