Gail Dorfman is a Hennepin County Commissioner from the third district. Her government service started in St. Louis Park – as a city council member from 1991 to 1995, and as mayor from 1996 to 1999. Recently, she met with Joan Pasiuk, BWTC Program Director, to talk about her vision for healthier communities.
How do you walk and bike?
I’ve been biking seriously since I was a kid. When I was in high school in Ohio, I joined the American Youth Hostel (AYH). As a kid in high school it was a great way to get out of my parents’ house; it was a safe and healthy thing for me to do.
One thing I started doing when I was the mayor of St. Louis Park, and have continued doing as a county commissioner, is walking around the community. I bike a fair amount too, but walking around a community gives you a different perspective. You get a different view of transportation and redevelopment projects if you walk around as opposed to driving by. I also like to do destination walking—somehow that feels more purposeful to me than recreational. So we often walk to dinner or walk to the movies. I wish I lived in a community where that was easier, but we’re getting there. We do a lot of that on the weekends—it’s very common to walk for coffee. In suburban communities, it’s harder than in the city.
You have a lot of grassroots experience. How do we get people motivated to envision their cities and neighborhoods in new ways?
Based on experience with [Hennepin County’s] active living initiative, but even more on the work that I did as a mayor in working with the community to develop Excelsior and Grand, there’s something that people really love when you go out to them at the very beginning and say, “How do we build a healthy community and what does that mean to you?”
People get really engaged if you frame the debate, as we did with Excelsior and Grand, with livable community principles—so it’s not an entire free-for-all. You start to educate people about what it means to build healthy communities and learn about the elements that make those communities successful: gathering places, bike and pedestrian trails, pedestrian-level lighting. People get really engaged in thinking about new ways to create their community. There’s an opportunity then, once they understand that, to have people involved at all levels.
For instance, when we do Arbor Day for the Midtown Greenway, we ask people to get involved in determining where to plant trees and then planting those trees themselves. They then own those trees, and they love to bike or walk along the Greenway so they can check on their tree. What we’re trying to do with active living is to have people really design their own public spaces in a way that meets their needs.
Are there groups of people you find more amenable to being involved or to grasping these concepts and other demographics that are less involved?
That’s always the challenge in government. There are always the active, involved people who will show up. How do you reach out to other groups in the community? How do you reach out to seniors; how do you reach out to people who are new neighbors and immigrants? There has to be a proactive way to do that. I remember years ago, we were challenged by creating more diversity in these public bodies or in any kind of public outreach. And I remember meeting with a group of new immigrants in St. Louis Park and said, “Well, why don’t you interview for boards and commissions?” and “Why don’t you show up at public hearings that impact projects in your neighborhood?” And they said, “You never asked us.” And so I think that’s a lot of it; that we don’t ask. We need to do that and we need to make it easy for people to participate.
In terms of effectiveness and impact on transportation issues, how does being a county commissioner compare with being a mayor, city council member, or community development manager?
Well, I think there are two things. The first thing is the scale. When we think about transportation projects here at the county, it’s a conversation that’s regional in scope. It’s not about a particular neighborhood or about building sidewalks in a new subdivision project. It really crosses neighborhoods, crosses municipal boundaries. The scope of county services is also bigger in some ways, so we don’t have, or we try not to have, transportation discussions in a vacuum. You really have to be talking about housing, jobs, and transportation all at the same time because this is really about building a healthy community -- so people have these choices about where to live, where to work, how to get there, and how to make it accessible. It’s a very different kind of discussion.
We’re hearing a lot of that from Ray LaHood (Secretary of U.S. Department of Transportation) these days too.
Which is great. And we heard it—we met Friday with Shawn Donovan, the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, who also gets that it’s not just about housing. It really is about transit-oriented development and how it links to jobs and programs.
Because the county has already been in that mindset, do you expect that the new administration in Washington might cause something different to happen here? Would the federal perspective enhance the way the county is approaching these issues?
Well, I think there’s some opportunity that we’re already seeing through some of the stimulus dollars. There will be additional money, so there will be more opportunity. You know, even as we begin complete streets work now, and we want to see some projects in the ground, one of the things we’re always challenged to do is getting beyond the pilot demonstration projects. We have to bring these projects to scale and figure out how to really have this embedded in policies. I don’t think we’ve really figured out how do to transit-oriented development here. I think we started out early on by saying. “OK, if we have a transit corridor and we put a commercial/residential development next to it, that’s TOD.” We’re still building our stations separate from the redevelopment next to it. Why not build it as one? Why not have a private developer come in and do housing where they actually build the transit station, and the housing is part of it? So we have a ways to go. But I’m really jazzed by what the federal government is saying now; it’s very different.
Is there a stimulus project that you are really excited about that you think could take our region to the next level?
We’re hoping to get some money for the intermodal station at the ballpark and to help with planning the station.
We’re looking at some for Lake Street access as well. But the notion of actually beginning to envision a system—a transit system, not just Hiawatha, that comes together here in Hennepin County at a central point as an intermodal station-- that is exciting.
What do your constituents talk to you about in terms of bicycling and walking? What do they want for biking and pedestrian facilities, programs, or access?
I’ve been saying this for a couple years now, and I tend to reference my experience with developing Southwest light rail. We started that process ten years ago, right after I got here. It’s been really interesting in the past decade to see the changing public opinion when I hear from my constituents along the Southwest Corridor, which is Minneapolis into Eden Prairie. When we first started, folks in Minneapolis and in Minnetonka and in Eden Prairie essentially said “not in my back yard.” They love their trails but they didn’t want the notion of having transit together with a bike and pedestrian corridor. But there’s been this huge sea change to the extent that I think the public is way ahead of elected officials in what they want around biking/pedestrian facilities and transit. Now when we go out to those same people in those same communities they say, “How come we have to wait so long?” I get a lot of calls from people who point out gaps in the bike trails and want to know when they’re going to be filled; “When can I ride to the river?” It’s amazing when you go out and ride, and people are amazed at the access by the regional trail system that’s coming together. They love it; they’re ready. They’re ready to invest some money in building it out.
You have strong commitment to ending homelessness. To serve the most economically disadvantaged, what should we be addressing with pedestrian and bicycle investments?
It gets back to this issue of how we build communities so people have choices that are affordable for housing and transportation and access to jobs. When we have our project Homeless Connect over at the convention center, transportation is the biggest issue for people who are homeless because they have trouble getting anywhere. The Met Council has partnered with us to provide bus tokens for people. But if you can’t get to your health appointments and you can’t get to jobs, it makes it tougher to break that cycle of homelessness. We have a number of the chronically homeless who, when you say, “What’s the single thing that you could use that could help you break this cycle?” they will often say, “A bicycle” or “Bus tokens.”
If you could speak boldly to one person who could make a difference in creating a more walkable and bikeable Hennepin Count, who should get the message and what would you say?
We need Mn/DOT to embrace complete streets; they are moving in that direction, and I think that will make a huge difference. So we’re hoping that all of our communities can move toward complete streets. When we had the complete streets forum, they were talking about building communities differently and designing our transportation and transit systems differently.
It just seemed obvious to put bus stops in safer locations so fewer kids will be hit when they get off the bus and try to cross the street; to design parking spaces that are more pedestrian friendly in neighborhoods; to design access ramps and connections between roads and bike/pedestrian ways. We just need, as a state, to have that commitment from the folks at Mn/DOT that this is how we’re going to do it. And what I thought was most intriguing was that our engineers at Hennepin County and our city engineers didn’t balk at all of this, because it was pretty consistent with AASHTO guidelines. So it wasn’t like rocket science or we’re going to start making them do things that aren’t safe. They sort of looked at most of what was being suggested as being complete streets and said, “This isn’t inconsistent with safety issues. In fact, it seems to enhance it.”
With the new Hennepin County complete streets policy, what do you think will change? How will people in their neighborhoods see a difference or how quickly might some of this start to affect people?
We need to take these complete streets policies and start working with cities—and on county projects as well—and get some of this on the ground really quickly so people can see what it means and how it looks differently. Some of the things are easy to do; there’s a lot of low-hanging fruit there in terms of painting the lanes differently and ways to make it safer to walk and to bike. That’s the piece we really need to quickly show people it works.
In a sense it’s the same sort of evolution that we did when Livable Communities came on the scene: you needed to get projects out there so people could see it. And then there becomes that tipping point where people say, “Well, I want this too.” It’s the best way to educate people, by showing them how you can do it. That’s always the challenge though, not to just do a few examples but to try to bring it to scale and roll it out. The best way to do it is to just start doing it. I’m hoping that’s what we’re going to do here in the County, that is certainly part of the complete streets resolution and policy that we’re adopting here-- it means every new transportation project and redevelopment project needs to encompass complete streets policies in their analysis of how it’s done. We’re hoping to see a lot of examples as we roll out new libraries, things like that.
Is there an education element as part of that policy as well?
Yes. You need to educate city and county economic development staff along with engineers and transportation staff. But you also need to educate the public so they demand this and that’s a tougher challenge. It’s interesting, when I look back and ask, “When has that been done well?”
With these changes, it has to be what the public demands. It’s already happening; the next generation expects and wants to live a different way, and they will drive that way as well. They don’t want to live in the big home on the cul-de-sac any more. They want to be in the heart of things. The want to live in a community that feels—even if it’s in the suburbs—that feels like an urban environment, where you can walk to the grocery store and walk to have coffee and where are walkable community spaces. That’s what our kids want. That will drive it too.
But there has to be some sort of education about how you do it, how you build these places that people want to live in. The other thing I think that drives it is health care costs. That’s the greatest thing about this new kind of urban design is that you don’t have to talk about smart growth any more, you don’t have to talk about density, you just have to talk about how we design a community that’s healthy for people. And if you don’t build biking and walking into how you live your day, then we’re going to continue to see obesity rates rise here. So there’s a strong health care component.
Speaking of costs…dream big. Say $100 million dollars of bike/ped funding drops down from the sky. No string attached. You’re in charge. How will you spend it?
On the big picture, the goal is that you spend it in a way that we’ll beat Portland. That’s the goal; we want to be better than Portland in being the most bikable, walkable city. That means a whole lot of things, from adopting complete streets policies and putting them into fruition, filling the gaps in the regional trail system, building a transit system that works.
The best way to get people to walk and even bike is to build that 10-minute walk to their light rail stop or bus stop or street car stop into their daily lives. It means commuter bicycle facilities that serve people’s needs. It means looking at our bike trail system to see what other amenities would make them workable for the community. And that means wayfinding, so people know what is nearby. It also means what people need bathroom facilities, water facilities, and furniture along these regional trail systems to really support them. We need a bike system where people go, “That’s what I use all the time. And you know what? -- I don’t need that second car anymore. In fact, I might not even need the first car!”
Anything else you want to say?
I think one of the things that’s important, and that I sometimes get pushback on, is that people know this can work in a cold-weather climate. People will say that this is not like Portland, that they have cold weather, but not like here. I think one of the things that we need to understand is that this works no matter what the climate. But we need to know what that means. That even has to do with how we manage snow removal, ensuring that we maintain our trails year round. It’s getting better; it used to be, even after we started building bike trails, that we thought they were only for use part of the year. And that’s not true. We’re seeing more and more commuters commute year round. So what does that mean? How do we design it so it works, even in Minnesota?
