Right now, and up until Monday, the Metropolitan Council is accepting public comment on whether ...
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 […]
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. […]
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 […]
This past weekend Star Tribune metro reporter Eric Roper wrote about the census tract that includes the Mall of America and Bloomington’s South Loop being classified as Opportunity Zones. He notes that in the 2017 tax code overhaul, Congress created Opportunity Zones to offer tax advantages for investments made in designated distressed areas. The designations stay in […]
Today, a little past Thanksgiving 2018, I wrote a check for $2,500. I have the money in a savings account and will transfer it to checking shortly. Yes, $2,500 is a lot of money! I could buy a really nice bicycle for that amount, maybe even one with electric assist. Instead we are spending this […]
Happy New Year! With only a couple of posts last week, your Sunday Summarizer gave herself a holiday break, so here’s what happened on streets.mn for the last 2 weeks: Getting around and where to go Introducing the Saint Paul Field Guide to Public Spaces and introducing a new feature for streets.mn from members of the Political […]
