Earlier this year, Minnesota was chosen as one of three finalists in the bidding to ...
I realize that New Ulm is the urbanist’s dream and I truly do enjoy New Ulm (Herman the German – great!). However, Bemidji is giving New Ulm a run for its money. I adore Bemidji. Work travel used to take me there once or twice a year and now vacations do. Take note, urbanists! Over […]
Earlier this year, Minnesota was chosen as one of three finalists in the bidding to host Expo 2023. Every five years, some city hosts a World’s Fair, and sometime in between those five year events is a smaller expo. That’s what Minnesota is bidding to host. The other finalists are Buenos Aires, Argentina, and Łódź, […]
Here’s the most interesting chart IMO from the recent NTSB report on the connection between speeding and fatal crashes in the US. The report is lengthy, and tends to focus on automobile crashes on highways, but there are some interesting takeaways. Here’s the chart itself [emphasis mine]: Here’s how the report describes the data behind […]
The podcast this week is a conversation with Jim McDonough, who is a County Commissioner on the Ramsey County board representing the East Side of Saint Paul. Commissioner McDonough and I sat down in his office a few weeks ago to talk about the recent “public works test” along Maryland Avenue on Saint Paul’s East […]
This is part of a series of posts about a study on Little Canada’s transportation infrastructure for people who take transit, walk, and/or bike. Transit: Parts One and Two, and Walking addressed Little Canada’s buses and sidewalks. This part has an analysis of Little Canada’s biking infrastructure. What Exists Now And What Is Planned For Biking Biking can be rather difficult […]
Here’s a pretty simple chart from “Dangerous by Design“, Smart Growth America’s three-year-old report on pedestrian safety: The key point on the report’s summary explaining these statistics: Who are the victims of these collisions? People of color and older adults are overrepresented among pedestrian deaths. Non-white individuals account for 34.9 percent of the national population but make […]
About two weeks ago, the Planning Commission finally passed Saint Paul’s plans for the old Ford factory in Highland. The vote was unanimous to support to support the city’s plans, which called for around 4,000 units of housing and plenty of mixed-use, along with a host of other amenities. (Note: there was also an amendment […]
On a 6-1 vote on August 3, the Blaine (MN) City Council approved an actual high-density housing development. I have previously questioned Blaine’s priorities for development, including years of bizarre hand-wringing over putting high-density housing in other locations, like in The Lakes development. However, Blaine has decided that it is time to approve some density. […]
Metro Transit has been working hard to become greener, with quite a bit of success. The results were recently presented in a staff report to the Met Council, excerpted below. Increasing bus MPG from 4.1 to 4.7 may not seem like much, but it’s a 15% improvement. Buses aren’t the only area of improvement. Metro […]
Here’s a chart from the must-read City Observatory website, written by Joe Cortright. This one has a great chart that shows the link between “distance from city center” and poverty rates. The data comes from a recent study by the Joint Center on Housing Studies at Harvard. Here it is: Here’s the takeaway from Cortright, who […]
Here’s a map via Governing Magazine that shows how the trend in “supercommuting” has shifted over the last year or two. It has some fun stats embedded in here: This is my favorite bit from the article: Oil and gas workers were the most likely to have super commutes, at 19 percent in 2015, […]
In part one of this Vision Zero advocacy piece, I outlined “five Es” of implementing the plan: Evaluation, Engineering, Enforcement, Education, and Encouragement. In this part, I will briefly touch on Evaluation, as well as how quickly it intersects with implementation and some of the other Es. Evaluation Saint Paul has taken important first steps in the […]
Summer is waning with less than two weeks until the start of the Great Minnesota Get-Together and three until Labor Day weekend. Election season will be heating up, too, and the Saint Paul side of the streets.mn Voter Guide continues to expand with responses by mayoral candidate Pat Harris. You can find all our election […]
On October 1st, Metro Transit will increase fares on all buses and trains by 25 cents. While that small dollar amount may seem inconsequential, this decision comes as a culmination to a protracted debate. Transit advocates have argued that the fare increase unfairly and disproportionately affects the poor. Proponents do not necessarily disagree, but argue […]
Several acquaintances, knowing that I’m walking Minneapolis’s neighborhoods, expressed confusion when I announced that Como was up next: “In Minneapolis??” Apparently the name brings St. Paul more readily to mind. St. Paul was where the name first immigrated to Minnesota, when Charles Perry in 1848 named Como Lake after Lake Como, despite the substantial differences between […]
Many people have observed on this site and others that we’re not building enough housing in the United States, and that this has a significant impact on affordability. Housing lasts for a long time if properly looked after, so if the population and people’s household arrangements don’t change, we don’t need to build much housing. Neither […]
I got kicked out of my house a month ago. I was renting a little three bedroom house tucked into the armpit of a highway in southwest Saint Paul. I paid my rent on time and did all the repairs the house needed myself as things broke. I’d bill for the repair out of my […]
Here’s a chart from an excellent ten-year-old report out of the Victoria Transport Policy Institute called “Socially Optimal Transport Prices and Markets” that stands up pretty well today. The 50-page report goes into detail about different country’s incentives for driving, walking, transit, and bicycling in an effort to explain why country’s transportation systems are so […]
For a thorough description of the trail, please see Ken Avidor’s great article here. I was visiting just for a few hours on my drive home from Washington D.C. My brief ride around, however, left a very strong impression. The first thing I noticed was that Indianapolis has a lot of wide one-way streets. This […]
Here’s a chart that shows the results from a recent survey put out by a group called A Place For Mom. It shows the preferences for walkability, transit, and safe streets from a nationwide sample of senior citizens: Via the Curbed article, here’s a quote from a developer describing the typical designs of senior living […]
