Transportation notes from the State Fair

The Minnesota State Fair set an attendance record this year, undoubtedly because of fine attractions like "Transportation Jeopardy" at the U of M building. As you can see, we were able to distract more than a few people from their Pronto Pups:

The Center for Transportation Studies put together the multi-category, multi-contestant game, while my role was to serve as the mostly congenial game-show host:

"How many times do I have to tell you people to answer in the form of a question?"

Actually, I may have been grimacing at the fact that, at various points, none of the contestants knew:

1) Who the current transportation commissioner is;

2) Who the state's only female transportation commissioner was;

3) What "HOV" stands for.

(As you can see, most of them were decked out in maroon and gold, but Roadguy didn't get the memo and wore his favorite color, asphalt.)

The CTS display also included an opportunity to play the "Gridlock Buster" traffic control game, which you can try online by clicking on the link.

Elsewhere at the fair....

Metro Transit provided a large satellite map of Twin Cities transit routes with rings that people could use to see how far they lived or worked from various stops:

Outside and up above, this half-mile bit of infrastructure proved to be popular: