Sadie Sigford is learning first-hand the meaning of “no good deed goes unpunished.”

Twice, in less than a month, Sigford and two other workers from Duluth’s Dorothy Day House, have received tickets from Duluth police for impeding traffic as they bicycled on the city’s East Fourth Street while bringing donated food to a soup kitchen.

The story is rich with irony, but in the end, the 20-year-old University of Minnesota-Duluth junior will be spending part of Sept. 15 in a court room rather than a classroom.

(FROM LEFT TO RIGHT: Sigford, Cartwright and Schultz)

“The second time we told the cops, ‘this is a weekly event for us for the past two years. Are we going to get a ticket every week?’ ’’ Sigford said.

While the ticketing by police is an extreme example, the design of too many roads throughout Minnesota do not easily allow people to walk or bicycle to jobs, school, shops or parks. That is why Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy is working with other organizations to push a “Complete Streets” policy that would require state and local authorities to consider ways to make roads more friendly for pedestrians and bicyclists when new roads are built and old roads are repaired.

A local co-op donates food to the hospitality house at 1712 Jefferson St. where Sigford both lives and works with homeless men and women. Every Friday, she and others bicycle to the co-op, load some of the food in a trailer pulled behind one of the bicycles and then head over to Damiano soup kitchen at 206 W. Fourth Street.

After making that delivery, they head back to the co-op and load the rest of the donated food for the pantry at the Dorothy Day House.

On July 31, Sigford, Greg Schultz and Erin Cartwright, who was visiting the house from Indianapolis, were bicycling back to the co-op about 11:30 a.m. on Fourth Street, when someone opened a car door and knocked Cartwright off her bike. Her helmet was scraped, as were her knees and elbows. The trio exchanged information with the driver and continued on for a block before a police officer stopped them near Sixth Avenue, Sigford said.

“We thought the cop must have seen what happened to Erin and wanted to talk to us,” Sigford said. 

Instead, he told them he was giving a ticket to Sigford and Schultz for impeding traffic.

“He said you have to ride as far to the right as practicable and we agreed,” Sigford recalled. “But we said she just got doored, so we were going to ride a few feet out into the street. He said, ‘how are you going to ride if I take your bikes away?’ ”

When he pulled the trio over, a taxi cab was double parked nearby, but when they pointed that out the officer said that was not an impediment, Sigford said.

“At first I was really mad because I knew we hadn’t done anything wrong,” Sigford said. “It’s appalling. These are the people who are supposed to be enforcing the law and they don’t know the law.”

Equally frustrating for the trio is the fact that on city bike maps, Fourth Street is designated as a bike route, Sigford said, even though it is just one lane in each direction and parking is allowed on both sides of the street.

“This is one of the more egregious examples of how we have allowed decision-making about transportation to be reduced to only a concern about maximizing the number and speed of vehicles on the roads,” said Jim Erkel, MCEA’s director of land use and transportation program. “A complete streets policy would shift decision-making from vehicles back to people and what they need—for getting around, meeting their families and friends, shopping, and going to school or to work—without ticketing them for their decisions.”

While it will ultimately be up to the courts to decide, Minnesota law appears to be on the side of Sigford and her friends. Chapter 169.222 says that bicyclist may ride two abreast, as they were, and as close to the right hand edge of the road as practicable except “when reasonably necessary to avoid conditions, including fixed or moving objects, vehicles, pedestrians, animals, surface hazards, narrow width lanes that make it unsafe to continue along the right-hand curb or edge.”

The following week, the bicycle run was done earlier in the morning and they were not stopped. But on Aug. 14, within a block of where they were stopped the first time, one of the officers who had been called in as backup on July 31, pulled them over again. He, too, tagged them for impeding. This time, it was Sigford, Schultz and Alex Strachota who received the tickets.

“I sort of expected it, because I saw we were being pulled over and I figured we had to suck it up and take it because we are getting pulled over every week. We told the cops what we are doing and it didn’t faze them,” Sigford said, referring to the food run to the soup kitchen.

She said the group is looking for a lawyer who also bicycles to represent them in court.