DDA meeting, downtown, today; I have 4 minutes on the agenda; here's what I said

Thanks all for your suggestions; I gave them my 4 minutes. Here's what I said.

1.  Not going to talk about the Link Bus and how bad the signage is; I did my own pocket schedule and now I'm OK.  This is not the right board to give that feedback to.

2.  Not going to talk about how the AATA Ridetrak is down and how it's been down for a month; that's a message to the AATA board, not this board.

3.  Not going to talk about Rob Goodspeed's article showing that structures are on average half empty (which got an immediate response from Rene Greff), because I don't generally drive to town.

What I did talk about:

Sidewalks are not promptly cleared after snow storms, to the detriment of pedestrians.  In particular there is a dangerous part at the curb, where the property owner (who is responsible for the sidewalk) and the city (who is responsible for the street) share responsibility for the failure to clear the curb, resulting in huge puddles at corners.

I showed the DDA my pair of Yaktrax (http://bit.ly/yaktrax) and suggested that someone could make good money selling them from a cart on the street on icy days. (thanks to John Hritz for that timely holiday present).

Look for more coverage from the Ann Arbor Chronicle.