Star Tribune
Lack of snow has state roads looking quite trashy
The medians on either side of Interstate 94 in downtown Minneapolis have never been the most tidy, but this year drivers are having a hard time grasping the amount of litter that has collected on the side of the road.
A handful of Drive readers saw hundreds of large pieces of white paper tangled in the brush along the eastbound lanes between Cedar Avenue and Huron Boulevard, and in emails said it looked unsightly.
“We know,” said Anne Meyer, a spokeswoman for the Minnesota Department of Transportation. “We see it, too.”
The agency dispatched a team of in-house workers to clean up the area near Huron Boulevard on Tuesday, and in a few hours they picked up enough rubbish to fill 95 trash bags, Meyer said.
To further the I-94 clean-up effort, MnDOT hired a contractor to work over the weekend, de-trashing the medians between the two downtowns, she added.
MnDOT normally relies on its vast network of Adopt-A-Highway volunteers to pick up litter along state roads. In 2022, groups from schools, churches, community organizations, businesses and even families across the state picked up enough pop bottles, fast-food wrappers and other discarded items to fill 38,500 bags of trash. In April, MnDOT will put out the call for new groups to join the program for the 2024 and 2025 seasons. The agency has nearly 900 segments of highways available for groups to adopt and clean twice a year.
But in the urban core, it’s just too dangerous to send out volunteers to pick up trash, Meyer said. Interstates such as 94 and 35W have narrow shoulders, medians with steep inclines and heavy traffic volumes navigating multiple lanes at high speeds.
“We don’t have those as an adoptable area,” Meyer said
Next to unfilled potholes, Meyer said concerns about trash rank near the top of the list of complaints the agency gets from motorists. Snowpack normally hides most of the crud that accumulates for six months, but not this year. That has made all the roadside debris stand out even more.
Cleaning up the ditches is “on the list,” Meyer said, but there are other pressing needs that attention first. And like anything outdoors, it’s weather-dependent.
“We could still see winter,” Meyer said. “We will deal with it.”
Littering in Minnesota is a misdemeanor punishable by a fine of up to $1,000, or 90 days in jail, or both.
It’s not clear how all that paper landed along I-94, but Meyer said windy conditions bring more trash. Another leading cause is motorists traveling with unsecured loads.
However it got there, “we are seeing a lot more trash,” she said.
Free St. Pat’s Day Rides
As luck would have it, Metro Transit and the Minnesota Valley Transit Authority are offering free rides on buses and trains for St. Patrick’s Day, a day early. The agencies will not collect fares from 6 p.m. until the end of service Saturday, the day of the St. Paul St. Patrick’s Day Parade.
Metro Transit will extend hours that light-rail trains will run, with Blue and Green Line departures from Target Field Station at 12:30 a.m.
“We need to get people home if they come on transit,” said spokesman Drew Kerr.
Two men are dead and one woman was injured in a shooting at a homeless encampment in south Minneapolis on Sunday afternoon, police said. It was the second shooting at a Minneapolis encampment this weekend.
At about 2:20 p.m. Sunday, police responded to a reported shooting in the 4400 block of Snelling Avenue near the railroad tracks at the small encampment between Snelling and Hiawatha avenues. At the scene, officers found two men with fatal gunshot wounds, said Sgt. Garrett Parten Minneapolis Police spokesman. Responders rendered aid, but both men died at the scene.
A woman was found at the scene with life-threatening injuries and was taken to a local hospital where she was being treated Sunday night, he said. Police have yet to say whether the three were living at the encampment.
Officers detained three people, who Parten said have since been released after police found they were not believed to be involved in the shooting. No suspects had been identified as of 6:30 p.m. Sunday.
The shooting is the second at a southside homeless encampment this weekend. One man died and two were critically injured early Saturday at an encampment shooting near E. 21st Street and 15th Avenue S. On Sunday, the man was identified as Deven Leonard Caston, 31, according to the Hennepin County Medical Examiner’s Office.
“We don’t know if there’s a connection between this homeless encampment shooting and the one that occurred yesterday,” Parten said on Sunday. “That is a consideration of the investigation. We can’t rule it out.”
Ward 12 Council Member Aurin Chowdhury, who represents the area and lives nearby, was at the site of the shooting Sunday afternoon. She said officials need information about what happened to better understand how to address situations like this long-term.
“This is an absolute tragedy, and this type of violence should never occur within our city,” she said. “It really makes me think about how we need to look at this more systemically and not just take a whack-a-mole approach and expect the problem to go away.
During Sunday’s Twitch stream, Walz and Ocasio-Cortez played Madden while discussing making homebuying more accessible, building affordable housing, eliminating student loan debt and raising the federal minimum wage.
After the match, Walz showed off his Sega skills in a round of “Crazy Taxi,” the Y2K-era racing game where gamers play as a taxi driver picking up passengers and taking them to their destination for cash.
Walz called himself a “first-generation gamer” and recalled playing “Crazy Taxi” when he bought a Sega Dreamcast. He also mentioned the Minnesota Star Tribune’s coverage of how his old game console was sold and ended up with a Plymouth resident, who still has it.
Afterward, Walz and Ocasio-Cortez watched a short clip of Trump denying on Rogan’s podcast that he lost the 2020 presidential election. Democrat Joe Biden won that year.
Ocasio-Cortez during the livestream also showed viewers her farm on the cozy, indie game Stardew Valley. Walz said the game reminded him of Minnesota: “You’ve got mining,” he said. “You’ve got agriculture. You’ve got snow.”
Before Walz headed out to a rally in Nevada, he pleaded with viewers to vote. More than 12,000 viewers tuned into the livestream on Ocasio-Cortez’s Twitch channel. More watched from Harris’ channel.
”Hey guys, they’re now scrambling and trying to call us Nazis and fascists,” said Alina Habba, one of Trump’s attorneys, who draped a sparkly ”MAGA” jacket over the lectern as she spoke. ”And you know what they’re claiming, guys? It’s very scary. They’re claiming we’re going to go after them and try and put them in jail. Well, ain’t that rich?”
Declared Hogan in his characteristic raspy growl: ”I don’t see no stinkin’ Nazis in here.”
Trump has denounced the four criminal indictments brought against him as politically motivated. He has ramped up his denunciations in recent weeks of ”enemies from within,” naming domestic political rivals, and suggested he would use the military to go after them. Harris, in turn, has called Trump a ”fascist.”
The arena was full hours before Trump was scheduled to speak. Outside the arena, the sidewalks were overflowing with Trump supporters in red ”Make America Great Again” hats. There was a heavy security presence. Streets were blocked off and access to Penn Station was restricted.
In the crowd was Philip D’Agostino, a longtime Trump backer from Queens, the borough where Trump grew up. The 64-year-old said it was appropriate for Trump to be speaking at a place bills itself as ”the world’s most famous arena.”
”It just goes to show ya that he has a bigger following of any man that has ever lived,” D’Agostino said.
