It’s a bit of a head-scratcher, but a recent report puts Minneapolis-St. Paul’s walkable urban ...
It’s a bit of a head-scratcher, but a recent report puts Minneapolis-St. Paul’s walkable urban places fourth among the nation’s 30 biggest cities for social equity. Social Equity Index rankings aren’t the main focus of “Foot Traffic Ahead: Ranking Walkable Urbanism in America’s Largest Metros,” but it’s the subcategory where the Twin Cities shine the […]
Bloomington’s 2040 Plan, titled “Forward 2040” was officially adopted by the city on Aug 5, 2019. Unlike in Minneapolis, it passed with little notice and little controversy. Here are a few points that caught my attention. Housing and Diversity Although the need for more high density housing is acknowledged like in the Minneapolis plan, here […]
“Meet a Roundabout” is a new series of posts about roundabouts in the Twin Cities area that are improving traffic efficiency and safety. Posts include pictures and video of the roundabout and a history of how it came to be. This is the third post in the series. On Saturday, I drove my father to […]
One of the best things about Fall in Minnesota is apples – local apples. Delicious (but not Red Delicious®) apples progressing over the next month or so, starting with State Fair (a little too tart and squeaky for me) and First Kiss® (a juicy tangy winner in the early season apples) along to Zestar!® and […]
Recently, I wrote about the usage emissions of gas (internal combustion engine), hybrid, and electric vehicles. When we only look at emissions out of the vehicle tailpipe or electric plant smokestack, electric vehicles are clearly the cleaner option for the marginal mile of travel. But as several commenters noted, we really need to look at […]
Thousands of new apartments have been built on the fringes of downtown Minneapolis in the North Loop, the Guthrie Theatre area (Downtown East) and across the river in Old St. Anthony. These new residents ought to be prime candidates for bus service, but Metro Transit has made no service changes or improvements to try and […]
Earlier this year Metro Transit and the City of Minneapolis did a demonstration of rush hour bus lanes on Hennepin Avenue between Franklin Avenue and Uptown Transit Station. Bus service has always been extremely slow due to morning backups from I-94 and afternoon backups from Lagoon Avenue. The demo worked just fine, but relied on […]
I’d like to talk about the most fun part of my morning commute: biking along Pennsylvania Ave between Rice St and Lafayette. And by fun I mean exhilarating. And by exhilarating I mean terrifying. When I moved away from the East Side, I did so knowing that getting to work was going to be quite […]
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 D.C. region. […]
One sunny day, I saw one of Lime’s new Gen 3 electric scooters parked on the plaza near the Guthrie Theater. Lime introduced the Gen 3 in October of 2018, but I haven’t seen any of the new scooters hitting Minneapolis streets until now. Excited to test ride the new model, I took it for […]
July 2, 2019 Merriam Park, Hamline-Midway, Como Park Living in the southwestern part of St. Paul means I almost always have to ride east, north or both, and so it was with this ride to the Como Park neighborhood. From the pause at Charles, I moved almost due north along Fry Street until Taylor Avenue, […]
Here in Northfield, from whence this Summary emanates, it is the real end of summer. Labor Day is observed here, but the Defeat of Jesse James is celebrated. The bank raid is reenacted every couple of hours, the cheese curds from the State Fair have drifted south and everyone is wearing bandannas and cowboy boots. […]
I recently took a test-drive in a Tesla Model 3. It was an impressive car, but the ride left me wondering: with all the electric horsepower under the hood, was it really better than a hybrid? The EPA has a dated, but functional website with all the fuel economy and energy efficiency information a driver […]
One eats first with one’s eyes. So I ate first (before walking even a single block) and did it with (but not only with) my eyes. And then I proceeded to keep on using my eyes as I wound my way through the remaining corner of the Longfellow neighborhood, everything south of my first walk and east […]
The ongoing conversation over the role of enforcement in creating safe streets and cities has raised a number of important points, both on streets.mn and elsewhere. I believe camera enforcement is a key component in creating safe streets and can be done without sacrificing our commitments to equity, privacy, and safety through better design. To […]
There’s no war on cars, there are people trying to live their lives while making positive choices for their families and the environment. Scott Lambert, president of the Minnesota Auto Dealers Association and the Greater Metro Auto Dealers Association, authored a Star Tribune commentary on August 16th, “Counterpoint: Let people choose how they get around, […]
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 D.C. region. […]
So, if you looked closely at the surveyor’s description for our garage slab last time you would have seen it said “(No Structure)”. That is because we sold it! (+$1000 to our budget) Apparently selling a garage to be rebuilt elsewhere is a thing you can do, and it saves us the expense of sending […]
Over the past several months, I have been disappointed with the availability of scooters, even in downtown Minneapolis, where they seem to be on every street corner. In the afternoon, as scooter batteries start to deplete, the nearest one with a full battery can sometimes be blocks away in the wrong direction. If you want […]
Yes, I do enjoy it when the Sunday Summary and the start of a new week land on the first day of a new month. Here’s the end of August from streets.mn Big picture Evan Roberts writes Minneapolis Needs Better Street Design, but Minnesota Needs Better Enforcement and shifts the focus of enforcement saying, “An […]
