Last week’s article calling for a ban on slip lanes in Saint Paul is spot ...
Minneapolis’s Kenwood neighborhood is intimately associated with the Lake of the Isles, more so than the other three neighborhoods that ring the lake, even the two that have “Isles” in their names (Cedar-Isles-Dean and East Isles). As shown in the route map, it nestles into the recesses of the northwestern shoreline. That makes a view such as the […]
There’s a very cool new report out from the Institute for Transportation & Development Policy titled “Indicators for Sustainable Mobility.” The study attempts to boil down what makes a transit-friendly city into a few simple measures, attempting to solve what they call the “black box” problem of many transit metrics. The study looks at Minneapolis […]
As described in streets.mn’s Mission and Core Values, one facet of better places in Minnesota is that they’re “delight cultivating.” I’ve been contemplating what sorts of places bring me delight, and one of my biggest joys recently has come from an unexpected source: my work commute route. After years of part-time bicycle commuting, I elected to sell […]
Every day at The Overhead Wire we collect news about cities and send the links to our email list. At the end of the week we take some of the most popular stories and post them to Greater Greater Washington, a group blog similar to streets.mn that focuses on urban issues in the DC region. […]
How incredibly stupid. The newly appointed Met Council Chair has fired the best General Manager in Metro Transit’s history and replaced him with someone who has no transit background. What? The CEO sets the tone for the organization. I know how important a good general manager is to this transit system because I served under […]
Today I took the A Line rapid-transit bus south on Snelling, meaning to get off at University and catch the Green Line train. But I wasn’t paying attention and missed the stop at University. That meant I had to ride the bus all the way down to Marshall Avenue (which is about twice as far […]
This is Part Three of a photour along Old Highway 61 from St. Paul to Duluth. Part One covered St. Paul to White Bear Lake, and Part Two left off just before Hinckley. Now it’s time to enter the town and beyond. Hinckley Most travelers know Hinckley as the place with the casino, Tobie’s bakery, and a […]
Dignity. Housing. Help. Five dollars. That’s what some people clamored for when they saw us on the Blue Line one July morning. With our safety vests on and our clipboards wielded, they recognized us as staff (volunteer or paid, it didn’t seem to matter to them) conducting the Point-In-Time Count. It’s a quarterly – now […]
Most days I commute to work using the Margaret Street Bicycle Boulevard. This east/west street has been a designated bikeway for a while. St. Paul recently received federal funds for some major improvements: The intersection with Johnson Parkway was closed to cars. The intersection with White Bear Avenue got a flashing HAWK light. The intersection […]
The “High Bridge” is best known as an iconic place for photographs of Saint Paul’s downtown, either as a symbol framing the city or as a place to take pictures of the city. But it’s also a key transportation corridor for people on the West Side and West End, a half-mile link between two historic […]
Here’s a fascinating map put together by Scott Shaffer for a new post on the blog of streets.mn Board alum Nick Magrino. It shows the current home values of homes in the city minus their purchase price, or as Magrino states “a rough way of estimating how much equity people have on top of whatever […]
Last Week’s Posts An Easy Way to Make Suburbs More Walkable: Sidewalk Shortcuts by Eric Ecklund. Even if the street network is winding, “there is an easy way to make the suburbs more walkable without requiring significant investment: simply adding a sidewalk connecting streets and neighborhoods can incentivize walking for more purposes than just recreation.” Reclaiming Mississippi […]
Here’s a cool chart from the New York Times, that has interactive charts for each state showing changes in electricity sources over time. Minnesota’s chart looks like this: The Times follows up the chart with a brief caption: Coal has been the top source of electricity generated in Minnesota for the past two decades. But […]
Making the suburbs, especially outer ring suburbs, walkable will require a significant shift in how we treat pedestrians in terms of infrastructure investment and in terms of interacting with them while driving. However, there is an easy way to make the suburbs more walkable without requiring significant investment: simply adding a sidewalk connecting streets and […]
Here’s a chart from a recent Star Tribune article about the price of gasoline. It’s not a great chart, but you can look at it anyway: First, here’s the article’s main point, which is about how price per gallon has dipped below $2: The lowest price anywhere in Minnesota on Thursday was $1.88 per gallon […]
The new book, A People’s History of the Seward Neighborhood, provides a narrative on Seward West Neighborhood that is needed for a comprehensive account of the 35-block area of the Seward Neighborhood. Most of the information is accurate. However, other passages fall short due the writers’ not being able to gain a needed grasp of […]
[Part of the Saint Paul Field Guide to Public Spaces, put together by a Geography class at Macalester College in the Fall of 2018. See introduction here.] by Michael Wood Whether it be a train or bus—where public transit stops tells you who is included in the public. Viewed this way, riding the Green Line […]
I want to talk about Lake Street. Specifically, East Lake Street. More specifically, East Lake from about 35W to about 36th Ave S. There’s a ton I like about this stretch. Every tortilleria, taqueria, and independent grocery, for example. The proximity to Powderhorn Park, a jewel in the Minneapolis Park system. The Midtown Global Market. […]
Here’s some bad news for folks concerned about climate change: national greenhouse has emissions have gone up markedly over the last year. In a New York Times article today, Brad Plumer has a story about the 3% uptick over the last year. Here’s the chart: According to Plumer, there are a few reasons for the […]
