A stoplight that won't change vs. a man who won't budge

What do you do when you're stuck at a stoplight that never changes?

For Richard Masur, the answer was to fight City Hall.

But after more than a year of trying, he's gotten nowhere.

On a typical night, Masur, a 66-year-old semi-retired Minneapolis physician, visits his elderly mother in Edina. "I see her almost every day, so I come back a variety of ways so I don't get bored."

But when he wanted to use the most direct route home, traveling northeast along Excelsior Boulevard through St. Louis Park, he found himself stuck at a stoplight at 38th Street that has a sign saying right turns are allowed only on a green arrow.

Trouble is, at night, the arrow never turned green.

"I would wait and wait and wait, and the arrow wouldn't change," he said. The only time the arrow turns green at night is if a vehicle comes up 38th Street toward Excelsior. But because it's a quiet neighborhood, that rarely happens.

"I thought it was a malfunction," Masur said, and eventually he would run the light. But he could never understand why the city set up such a dysfunctional signal.

Turns out the city of St. Louis Park wanted the light just the way it was.

After writing the city's mayor last June, Masur received a response from the mayor's office thanking him for his concern but telling him the light best met the "needs of the community" and that there were no plans to change it.

Not satisfied, Masur pressed on. He took his case to Hennepin County because Excelsior Boulevard is a county road. But a policy aide for County Commissioner Gail Dorfman referred him back to the city, saying St. Louis Park controls the stoplights.

The city's public works director, Mike Rardin, was familiar with Masur's complaints. But, he said in an interview, "I see no way that the city would want to change it. ... The signal was designed so it would discourage cut-through traffic" from Excelsior Boulevard to get to other major thoroughfares.

Rardin said the light was initially designed during the Excelsior & Grand project. The city's intent was to keep traffic out of the Minnikahda Vista neighborhood, and it's worked. Before the light was regulated so it did not turn green at night for drivers who wanted to turn right onto 38th, the street would carry nearly 5,000 cars per day through the neighborhood. Over the past five to seven years of monitoring, the traffic has been reduced to 3,000 cars per day.

For every one person like Masur who is irritated by the light, Rardin said, "There are 700 people who would like to leave it just as it is."

Then why, Masur asks, doesn't the city simply prohibit a right turn at the intersection during nighttime hours? He said the attempt to control traffic with a misleading sign amounts to "an intentional deception."

"My only hope is that [the city] would be more forthright," he said.

Masur also said it was his understanding that people running the light at night would not be ticketed because of the unusual setup. But Rardin said if a driver does make an illegal turn and a police officer sees it, the officer will issue a citation.

Rardin said there are other options for Masur: "He doesn't have to sit there and wait. He can use another route."

Masur acknowledges he has options and says he's certainly willing to go a block past the light to go home.

And he concedes that the light issue is not a big deal. He says it's the principle of the thing that has motivated him.

But he feels his work as a citizen-protester has come to no end. "I've gotten nowhere through the system.

"You can't fight City Hall."

Joy Petersen is a University of Minnesota journalism student on assignment for the Star Tribune.