Minneapolis, MN
OPINION EXCHANGE | This summer let's start treating the parkways like parks
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Recently when I drove down West River Parkway in Minneapolis, a car tailed me, then passed, barreling toward downtown way too fast to notice the flowering trees or see the hawk hunting from a dead limb. The same thing happened last week. And the week before.
Yeah, I’m that guy who drives the speed limit on the parkway — 20 miles per hour. It seems to really infuriate the drivers who want to use the parkway as a commuter highway.
Minneapolis’ 30-odd parkways are called parkways because they’re actually part of a park. They run through park land and are managed by the Park and Recreation Board as public space for you and your family to play, forage, picnic, walk, cycle, skate and scoot.
But in the last few years a lot has changed to make some of the parkways feel more like highways.
The parkway I’m most familiar with — West River Parkway — has essentially become a commuter route for impatient families going to work, school, the airport or downtown, and hurried Amazon drivers making their deliveries. Few drivers heed the 20-mph speed limit. Very few slow to view an eagle passing overhead, and it’s rare that one would stop for a dog-walker in a pedestrian crosswalk.
Meanwhile, e-bikes, e-scooters and other e-rolling devices are increasingly popular and changing how it feels to take a family stroll through the park. The park board has set a 10-mph speed limit on bike paths, but if you’ve been on an electric bike you know that speed barely lets you feel a breeze. Very few people using an e-anything are going only 10 miles per hour. It can feel really scary when an e-bike whizzes by a 5-year-old with training wheels.
Minneapolis is famous for its parks and parkways and we should encourage more people to get out and enjoy them. I have four requests for the mayor, city and park board to make the experience more enjoyable and safer. Happily, none of these requires any change in existing, applicable law.
• Enforce the speed limit. Just a little well-positioned, recurring enforcement, with stiff penalties, would change driver behavior. Commuters need to realize they are driving through a park.
• Move anything with a motor and wheels off the bike path and onto the parkway. Under current law all those electrified bikes and other toys are “motor vehicles” because they aren’t “moved solely by human power.” That means they don’t belong on the bike path. Let’s require all the e-rollers to use the road, which will help to temper the speed of the cars and make the parkway feel like it is, in fact, part of a park.
• Street bikers who want to ride over 10 mph should be welcomed on the road. Many bikers who are out for exercise already ride on the parkways, but it’s not always a welcoming ride, with frustrated drivers often honking or passing too close. It should become the norm, not the exception, to follow a biker if you’re driving on a parkway.
• Ask Google Maps and other driving apps to remove parkways from preferred routes. I don’t pretend to know how the mapping apps figure out a preferred route. But it seems they often disburse traffic from designed arteries to less-trafficked places, like parkways. (Are times calculated by speed limit or traffic flow?) We want our parkways to be a destination, not the fastest way to get to some other place. Announcing that to Google Maps might be a City Council resolution that the whole city could get behind.
The Park Board boasts in its ordinances that the Minneapolis parkways have “gained national and international fame for their history, beauty, and innovation.” If you’ve ridden the grand round, you probably agree. This summer let’s treat the parkways as deserving of that fame, as places we come to recreate, to exercise, to see plants and trees and flowers and bees. Let’s enjoy our parkways as a park.
Kevin Reuther, of Minneapolis, is an attorney.
AUBURN, CA — Former Major League Baseball pitcher Dan Serafini was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for murdering his father-in-law and attempting to murder his mother-in-law in a 2021 ambush-style shooting at a Lake Tahoe-area home.
A Placer County jury previously found Serafini, 51, guilty of fatally shooting 70-year-old Gary Spohr and seriously wounding Spohr’s wife, 68-year-old Wendy Wood, on June 5, 2021, at their home on the lake’s west shore. Wood survived the attack but died a year later.
In a statement obtained by The Associated Press, Placer County District Attorney Morgan Gire said that Spohr and Wood were loving grandparents and detailed how Serafini’s crimes had affected the couple’s family members and friends.
“The impact of this attack has extended far beyond the immediate victims, deeply affecting family members and the broader community, and highlighting the lasting harm caused by deliberate violence,” Gire said.
On the day of the shooting, Serafini’s wife, the victims’ daughter, had taken the children to the lake to visit their grandparents.
Prosecutors said the deadly ambush stemmed from a dispute over a $1.3 million investment in a ranch renovation project. The victims had reportedly contributed the money.
In one text message shown in court, Serafini wrote, “I’m gonna kill them one day,” referencing a dispute over $21,000, prosecutors said.
He also sent other threatening messages, including “I will be coming after you” and “Take me to court,” according to ABC10.
Jurors also found Serafini guilty of several “special circumstance” sentencing enhancements, including lying in wait, use of a firearm, and that the attack was willful, deliberate and premeditated. He was also convicted of first-degree burglary.
Prosecutors had also charged Serafini with child endangerment, saying he put his infant and toddler sons at risk by having a gun in the home. Jurors found him not guilty on that count.
The case also involved a second defendant, 33-year-old Samantha Scott, who pleaded guilty to being an accessory in February, according to the New York Post.
A left-hander, Serafini was a 1992 first-round pick for the Minnesota Twins. He also played for the Chicago Cubs, San Diego Padres, Pittsburgh Pirates, Cincinnati Reds and Colorado Rockies, pitching for six MLB teams over seven seasons.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
MINNEAPOLIS (FOX 9) – The story behind Anthony Edwards wearing a bright orange bracelet since last season has received a positive development, after Timberwolves fans learned Luca Wright has beaten leukemia.
Anthony Edwards, Luca Wright connection
What we know:
Last January, the 6-year-old Minnesotan met “Ant” for the first time following a game against the Detroit Pistons, proclaiming him to be his favorite player, and asking him to wear a bracelet that symbolizes leukemia awareness, resilience and support for those affected. During the interaction, the fan had created a sign with a to-do list: “1. Beat Cancer. 2. Be The Next MJ.”
Leukemia is a type of cancer that spreads throughout the bloodstream, infecting bone marrow and a person’s lymphatic system by rapid production of abnormal white blood cells that can’t fight infection.
Since then, the Wolves’ MVP has worn a bracelet that proclaims, “Love Like Luca” on it for every game he has played, vowing to wear it “until he hangs up his sneakers.”
Ant has gone on to explain how the gesture connected with him given that he lost both his mother, Yvette, and grandmother, Shirley, to cancer when he was 14 years old. The No. 5 jersey he wears currently is a tribute to them both.
Luca bracelet latest
Dig deeper:
More than a year later, Wolves fans have received the update they hoped for – now 7-year-old Luca has beaten his cancer.
What’s next:
Ant has since responded to the news with his own social media video, calling it “God’s gift” and saying, “Let’s do this Luca.”
No word yet on whether he intends to keep wearing the bracelet, though he’s previously said he has a stash of replacements near the team bench should one ever be broken.
The Source: Information provided by the Minnesota Timberwolves public relations department.
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