I had a poll yesterday for the Greenfield Senate campaign trying out new messaging. One was about climate change and how Greenfield is going to take on "corporate polluters" to protect and expand our environmental protections. Let's look at how Iowa City's Climate Action plan is going - just about one year into the self-declared Climate Emergency.

Today is one of those days I really love my department and job. I left journal club and the department chair was in the hall. He asked if I had a minute, he had some questions for me. We went to his office. He had 3 questions. #AcademicParent #AcademicTwitter Question 1: Does the baby have her own room yet? The baby should go into her own room to sleep and you should close the door and then go into your room and close the door. Let her cry. Crying = alveoli expansion = good for the lungs. Throw out any monitors.

I went to an @MPOJC bike master plan open house last night. It's a good plan and I'll be happy when it's implemented. The only part that left me sad was the amount and importance of the roads marked as "difficult road section." There are 3 roads and 1 trail crossing of the interstate in Coralville. 1 road lacks sidewalks (prohibited by DOT rules due to offramps). The other 2 are both marked as difficult road sections.

@CityOfIowaCity raised the speed limit on a section of road. Reasoning that in the year has been open there have been no fatal crashes with peds = safe. Except their analysis is widely underpowered to detect an increase in risk. Like <5% power. #badstats #SafetyOverSpeed If crashes happened before at 12 times a year, on average, they'd need the rate to *double* in order to have 80% power to find a signal. At 24 times/year, they'd need crashes to happen about 1.7 times more often.

When meeting with a council member he asked about data showing issues with 1st Ave in Coralville. MPOJC has collision rate data by intersection/midblock location. Adjusted for volume and length, 1st Ave has 2.07 times more collisions than the mean road Being an economist (who believes in the safety of 10 foot lanes over 12 foot lanes), I took it a step further. Of the 1.2 miles, 0.5 had been "improved" to 12 foot lanes from 10 feet. The other 0.7 miles were done after the data ends. Same cars, same drivers, same traffic.

@greg_shill I'll meet your fun with dealing with Iowa City City Council with Coralville. I just had a 71 year old dentist whose been in office for 32 years tell me I don't know anything about roads or urban planning when I cited NACTO and the FHWA. He followed up by telling me, on the record, that bikes should not be allowed on 1st Ave because it is for cars. It's an arterial and therefore only cars should use it. It's a highway. (Actually it isn't).

Coralville: "Sorry our stroad is dangerous and almost killed you. Have you tried our even more dangerous sidewalks yet?"

Not an acceptable answer. We need action, not reaction.

littlevillagemag.com/letter-to-the-… Johnson County tried that on Old 218 - and it cost an 83 year old retired pastor his life. We should not seek to emulate that example.