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.
The trial included testimony from a Towson University marketing professor who conducted a survey about the advertisements.
The pictures are actually tightly controlled by contracts negotiated between the models and the magazines, said Chamberlin, a modelling agent who testified during the trial. A 30-year veteran of the industry who has represented Brooke Shields, Tyra Banks, Claudia Schiffer and others, Chamberlin during his testimony pulled back the curtain on the high-stakes negotiations that take place for supermodels, saying none of the images that the Cajun Club used were intended for strip club advertisements.
“We know exactly what they’ll be shooting, what product, and what type of work, and then we know how that’s going to be distributed and any other questions. It’s all negotiated before the model sets foot onto the set,” he testified.
Even if the women had consented to the use of the photographs in Cajun Club advertisements, Chamberlin said, it would have cost the club more than $1.2 million in fees.
The jury ruled in favor of the women and said they were owed amounts ranging from $1,500 to $15,000.
A freeway ramp in downtown Minneapolis used by thousands of drivers each day closed Monday morning and won’t reopen for five weeks.
Minnesota Department of Transportation crews shut down the ramp from northbound I-35W to eastbound I-94 at 5 a.m. Monday and it won’t reopen until Nov. 29
In addition, both directions of I-94 will be reduced to two lanes between 11th Avenue S. and Franklin Avenue.
The closures will allow crews to construct crossovers that motorists will use in 2025 when MnDOT begins maintenance work on five bridges along I-94 between downtown Minneapolis and the Franklin Avenue bridge that crosses I-94.
Drivers needing to get from northbound I-35W to eastbound I-94 will be directed to go north on I-35W to Hwy. 36 and south on I-35E.
Next year, both directions of I-94 will be reduced to two lanes between Hwy. 55/Hiawatha Avenue and the Franklin Avenue bridge.
The preference, he said, was to arrest Sawchak outside, but “in this case, this suspect is a recluse and does not come out of the house.”
City Council members criticized MPD for their handling of the case, expressing outrage at the department’s inability to protect a resident “from a clear, persistent and amply reported threat posed by his neighbor.”
The Moturis have reported to police at least 19 incidents of vandalism, property destruction, theft, harassment, hate speech and other verbal threats, including threats of assault, involving Sawchak since last fall — shorty after the couple moved in. Sawchak is white and Moturi is Black.
Over the weekend, as frustration continued to boil over about the lack of a resolution in the case, several more council members released statements demanding that MPD move in to make an arrest.
“Our Chief of Police is hiding behind excuses, and our Mayor…is just hiding,” Council Member Emily Koski wrote on X.
Less than two hours later, from the scene of an unrelated fatal shooting at a homeless encampment, O’Hara acknowledged that his police force failed to protect Moturi and issued an apology.
