In these lean economic times, almost anything can be reused as, uh, decor:

It’s practically art compared with this dashboard, and less dangerous — except, of course, to the driver’s arteries.

Katherine Kersten discusses the automobile’s role in the economic crisis, while multimedia maven James Lileks shares his thoughts on the Southwest light-rail line.

A photo from alert reader Dan:

He writes:

I took this picture a while ago because the placement of these signs seemed pretty funny.  It doesn’t look like a very big project and maybe a few orange cones would have done the job just fine. This was on E. 70th St., an airport service road just North of the Fort Snelling National Cemetery.

If only all work zones could be so quickly traversed.

Roadguy does not post every news release that lands in his mailbox, not by a long shot. But he loves both parkways and burritos, so here’s something that arrived via e-mail earlier today:

In honor of the reopening of the West River Parkway, Longfellow Grill will give away free breakfast burritos to travelers commuting along the important Twin Cities route Thursday morning, October 9th, 2008. Twin Cities’ residents can show their support for the reopening of West River Parkway and fuel up with a breakfast burrito at the same time. The Longfellow Grill booth will be positioned near the exit to East Lake Street off West River Parkway.

I gave the restaurant a call to make sure the deal is real, and they said c’mon down between 6 and 9 a.m. Lemme know if you go.

A short item I put together for this morning’s paper about the three possible Southwest alignments has generated nearly 60 comments. There’s also an online poll.

Alert reader Morg sent along this cell-phone pic yesterday afternoon:

Morg writes:

I guess this postal carrier thought they worked for UPS, as in Unlimited Parking Spaces. They decided it wasn’t enough to park illegally in ONE handicapped space, so they straddled the line and took TWO!!

Maybe the truck was, you know, on fire, and the driver didn’t have time to think, or, um…

Hmm. Nope. Pretty much inexcusable.