News Cut: July 22, 2008 Archive

Your bus-riding stories

Posted at 7:11 AM on July 22, 2008 by Bob Collins (10 Comments)

Last Friday, I watched a woman on 10th Street in St. Paul start running for a bus at the corner of 10th and Cedar, a block and a half away. "She'll never make it," I thought. My light turned green. I stayed to watch. She made it. The driver waited. "Nobody's ever going to hear about the good bus driver," I thought.

Some 90 percent of bus riders in the Twin Cities say they're happy with the service they get from the bus drivers here.

But you can't do a news story about that.

You can, however, write a blog post. Bus riders: What's your daily experience? Are you one of the 90 percent? Or one of the 10?

Comment on this post

Mississippi passage

Posted at 7:59 AM on July 22, 2008 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)

Occasionally the morning pile of press releases reveals an interesting story.

Here's one you'll probably hear about or read tomorrow. Ten kids are going to paddle down the Mississippi from North Minneapolis to Lake City over four days this week.

Adventure - Challenge - Curiosity. These are some of the same motivations that led these urban teens to become apprentices at Urban Boatbuilders. They each committed themselves to Urban Boatbuilders' after-school job training program. There they developed skills with hand-tools, learned about job responsibility, and expanded their sense of craftsmanship, teamwork, and capability while building wooden boats - building their lives one boat at a time.

Now, they're ready to put these boats, and themselves, to the test. For four days, they will join volunteers and staff of Urban Boatbuilders to cover 80 miles on the largest river in North America. Their voyage will end at Hok-Si-La campground on Lake Pepin on Saturday evening, the 26th, outside of Lake City. Along the way they will conduct water quality tests as part of an environmental initiative.

Read more about it here.

Comment on this post

Ford's vision

Posted at 10:43 AM on July 22, 2008 by Bob Collins (3 Comments)
Filed under: Economy

Ford has finally accepted what most people figured out a long time ago -- the era of big trucks and SUVs is over. Small is in, according to an article in the New York Times this morning.

Here's the paragraph that's got eyebrows raised and fingers crossed around here:

Among the changes, Ford is expected to announce that it will convert three of its North American assembly plants from trucks to cars, according to people familiar with the plans.

A truck assembly plant? We've got one of those. It's the one Ford announced two years ago it would shut down. The last word on the plant, however, is that Ford was thinking about delaying the closing for two years.

At the same time, Ford is expanding voluntary incentives of as much as $140,000 to its workers in an effort to get them out of the workforce. One of four plants where the deal isn't being offered, according to Bloomberg News, is St. Paul.

The St. Paul is plant is scheduled to close in 2009.

Comment on this post

Signs you're going to be late for work

Posted at 9:58 AM on July 22, 2008 by Tim Nelson (2 Comments)

(From Tim Nelson)

If your Orange County Transportation Authority bus is stuck in morning rush hour traffic on eastbound Interstate 94 in St. Paul, chances are you're not going to be at your desk in Anaheim any time before lunch.

This one was making its way towards Minneapolis this morning, although the destination sign on the front was just showing "###################."

I emailed the photo to OCTA spokesman Joel Zlotnik and he confirmed that it was a New Flyer, compressed natural gas vehicle. Orange County is getting 299 of them, which will be about half the fleet.

The New Flyer buses are manufactured, in part, in Crookston, Minn., so this one is apparently on its way, indirectly anyway, from northern Minnesota to California.

I couldn't help but wonder how it'll get there, since natural gas filling stations seem few and far between. I'm just glad I'm not behind the wheel, looking for one.

Comment on this post

Hall of Fame broadcast inductees

Posted at 12:38 PM on July 22, 2008 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)
Filed under: Media, Media

The Museum of Broadcasting today announced the 2008 inductees into its Hall of Fame today.

Jason Davis
of KSTP TV's On the Road

Lynn Dwyer
"Roundhouse Rodney"

John Gordon
Voice of the Minnesota Twins

Ron Handberg
of WCCO TV and WCCO Radio

Brad Johnson
Twin Cities Radio Program Director & Sales Leader

Chuck Knapp
Twin Cities Morning Show Host and Program Director

David Knutson
of KDLM / Leighton Enterprises

Chick McCuen
of WCCO TV and WTCN TV

Pat Miles
of KARE 11 and WCCO

Mel Paradis
of Paradis Broadcasting

Distinguished Service Award
Marion English Watson
of KUOM Radio and the University of Minnesota

Comment on this post

Casino bridge collapses

Posted at 8:51 AM on July 22, 2008 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)

Do boarding ramps to floating casinos have gusset plates?

A board ramp to the Horseshoe Casino in Hammond, Indiana (the one for which you can see billboards every tenth of a mile over much of I-90 in Western Indiana), collapsed today, sending several workers into the water.

The worker said they were all wearing life jackets. The worker said the water is about 18 feet deep where the ramp is.

The Horseshoe was closed at the time of the incident in preparation for the grand opening of the new casino, according to its Web site.

The casino issued a statement saying a "full engineering review" is underway.

(h/t: Tom Weber)

Comment on this post

Airline merger math

Posted at 1:44 PM on July 22, 2008 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)
Filed under: Northwest Airlines

The lower the stock of Northwest Airlines and Delta Airlines goes, and the higher the cost of jet fuel climbs, the more savings, apparently is to be realized by the merger of the two companies.

That's because Delta now believes the merger will produce $2 billion in savings and benefits, up from an original estimate of $1.2 billion, and will cost about $600 million, down from the $1 billion projected earlier.

"When we announced in April with oil at $110, we wanted to make certain we did not over-commit to Wall Street what the real value was," said Delta President Ed Bastian, in an interview with TheStreet.com. "We would rather under-commit and then deliver good news.

"Now that we've had an opportunity to do more detailed work, we've been able to validate the synergies we thought were there, but had a difficult time quantifying," he says. "With oil at $130 a barrel, we have to make sure we are getting every last nickel of synergies and also make sure we have good transparency."

$2 billion in savings between now and 2012. How much is that? That's about one-fifth of the total amount the two airlines lost -- at least on paper -- in just the first three months of this year.

Comment on this post

Minnesota Orchestra pulls plug on last concert

Posted at 3:22 PM on July 22, 2008 by Bob Collins (7 Comments)
Filed under: Economy

The sour economy has claimed another victim: the end-of-the-season Minnesota Orchestra concert at the Lake Harriet Band Shell on Sunday September 14.

Quoting the news release:

"In the current difficult economic climate, we are very sorry to report that we will not be able to perform the Orchestra's upcoming September performance at the Lake Harriet Band Shell," says Minnesota Orchestra President and CEO Michael Henson. "We apologize for any inconvenience this causes for audiences. This is a venue where our Orchestra loves to perform, and we hope to be able to return to this beautiful setting in future seasons."

How much does it cost to put on one concert? Good question. Why not just pass the hat during the concert?

"It's not a figure we're comfortable giving out," said Orchestra spokesperson Gwen Pappas in a voicemail message. She says the Orchestra is at the beginning of its fiscal year and it's presented a balanced budget plan to its board and they're being "fiscally prudent in what everyone agrees it what will be a difficult economic year."

The last concert will be a Sept. 11 memorial.

The Orchestra has performed an annual concert at Lake Harriet since September 2003.

Comment on this post