What is an apartment building? It can be a place to hang your hat. It ...
Having clear sidewalks in the winter is an important issue for a lot of people. People should be able to move around their city or town year-round, and they shouldn’t have to use cars in order to get around easily. For my family, we need clear sidewalks in order to walk to the library and […]
Last week, an extensive discussion of parking garages and parking as an employee benefit occurred here at streets.mn. As I read the discussion, one thing really stood out to me: Commuter benefits are wildly inequitable, and companies are given more incentive to provide parking than any other possible benefit. Beyond issues like the Fed garage, the issue […]
This year, the City of Minneapolis is addressing the future of neighborhood organizations. The city’s Neighborhood and Community Relations Department (NCR) released a set of recommendations that will change the way neighborhood organizations operate moving forward. Why the change? A couple of reasons. Minneapolis has been funding neighborhood organizations since 1991, and the source of […]
Direct transit links are not only good for urban quality of life but improve regional competitiveness. They should be a no-brainer. Being able to land in a city and board a train with assurance you’ll be downtown in a fixed amount of time provides peace of mind for residents, tourists and businesspeople alike. A pleasant […]
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. […]
Airlines utilize hub-and-spoke models of route mapping. For Delta, the Twin Cities’ local dominant airline, Atlanta (ATL) is a major hub of that map, along with Minneapolis-St. Paul (MSP), Salt Lake City (STL) and other airports. Remember the refrain that the path to hell passes through Atlanta? Whatever your destination in the Southeast, chances are […]
My workplace is on an outer edge of the Twin Cities, and since it is not readily accessible via transit I had never tried to take the bus there. It would be easy to drive (and parking is plentiful), but I decided a couple of years ago that I could no longer maintain a lifestyle […]
Getting around A Car-Free, Car-Less, and Car-Lite Guide To Surviving Bemidji from Henry Pan describes how he gets around Bemidji without driving (or driving much). “As difficult as it is living in Bemidji without a car in the winter, it is indeed possible to live without one. But it would even better if there were more […]
The day after my walk through the northern part of the King Field neighborhood, I was back for more. As on the first day, the route map’s main loop is shown in a mixture of blue and teal due to mapping issues. The A and B at the intersection of 38th and Grand are the start […]
I thought I needed to have a car for my assignment. In August, I was offered a position that had me relocate to Bemidji. In Northern Minnesota. 200 miles away from the only home that I’ve known outside of San Francisco, away from the friends that I’ve made. I thought I was going away too […]
Welcome to Winter! In addition to the cold and snow, we are in the early parts of the the 2019-2020 Minnesota Legislative Session. Among the many hundreds of bills that have been introduced so far, bicycle-related legislation has been introduced in the House (HF 462) and the Senate (SF 1014). This proposed legislation, which seems […]
Recently, I met with Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board District 4 Commissioner Jono Cowgill across the street from Gateway Park to chat about the current state and future of the park. Welcome to Gateway Park 🦖 Gateway Park is a plaza located at the intersection of Hennepin Ave and S 1st St and is bordered […]
Recently, the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis proposed the building of an 800-stall parking ramp on land that it bought in April of 2018. The land is currently a 300-stall parking lot that is adjacent to the Fed campus. As my colleague Alex Schieferdecker discussed in his article on Tuesday, the proposed “Heritage Landing Parking Ramp” would […]
Metro Transit seems to have quietly cut service on the express service route I have used to get to work for years. I say “quietly” because it hasn’t been announced anywhere I’ve seen. There is no service announcement. But last week my bus just stopped coming. Did I miss an announcement? Is my bus service […]
As you might have heard, the Minneapolis branch of the Federal Reserve has proposed a new 800 space parking ramp in the North Loop. The ramp would replace an existing 300 space surface lot. Plans for the ramp, which you can view here, call for a structure of five stories on the northwestern side of the site, abutting […]
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. […]
I really love biking in winter, as I recently wrote, but I have experienced a definite learning curve. Here, I have compiled some of the lessons I’ve learned over many years of winter cycling. I would love to hear your mistakes (or “learning opportunities”) too! Optimal winter routes are not the same as summer routes. […]
Here’s a map from erstwhile rail and transit blogger, Alon Levy, with a proposed “high-speed” / low-speed rail network that would connect to Minnesota. First, the map itself: For Levy’s proposal, the Chicago-to-Minneapolis travel time would be 2 hours and 30 minutes. There would also be connection north to Duluth. Here’s what Levy writes about […]
There’s been a lot of talk about the potential upcoming disruption of self-driving-cars, including their effect on private vehicle ownership and travel. One of the most optimistic is the 2017 article “Rethinking Transportation 2020-2030.” Authors James Arbib and Tony Seba make some bodacious claims regarding Transportation as a Service (TaaS) — the idea that soon we’ll all […]
Winter haters in Minnesota have had much to complain about in the last week with lots of snow, cold temperatures, and lots of events and activities cancelled. Perhaps our writers are hunkered down awaiting warmer weather (or failed to read Amy Gage’s post or still enjoying a post-City of Lakes Loppet high), but it was a […]
