Chicago’s Street Grid I used to live in Chicago and it had a great street ...
I have been known to harshly criticize St. Paul for its consistent—one could say unconscious, institutional—prioritization of car speed and convenience over the safety and comfort of people traveling sustainably. But this past fall St. Paul did something incredible, illuminating how different things could be with nothing more than a change in mindset. In October, […]
Mary Ward was the first person to be killed by a vehicle that we would recognize as a car. The 150th anniversary of her death was August 31, 2019. She lived in Ireland, raised some children, and published scientific work about entomology and the wonders of microscopes, a developing field at the time. You can […]
Are you ready to respond to our climate emergency? Are you interested in what this means for land use and transportation in particular? Join streets.mn’s newest committee this coming Sunday afternoon, January 26th, from 3:00-5:00 at CoCreatz on the Green Line. We’ll be talking about the ways streets.mn intersects with climate breakdown and how we […]
Former Streetsblog USA writer Angie Schmitt has recently been making the point on Twitter that, despite the extremity of our climate crisis, the transition to sustainable transportation can’t be instantaneous because of our sprawling built environment. We therefore will need both EVs (maybe including ebikes, though she doesn’t address this) and smaller/safer vehicles for people […]
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. […]
As I have shared before, I drive a hybrid hatchback, a 2015 Toyota Prius. To reduce my carbon footprint, I try to walk or scoot for many of my shorter trips, and I also check bus schedules for medium trips, like to a coffee shop in another neighborhood. It can be very frustrating, even living […]
Some parkland, a school, a church, a restaurant, and a whole bunch of single-family homes. That’s what I saw on my first day walking the Lynnhurst neighborhood. But also some fall colors, a statue, a solar-powered Little Free Library, and a whole bunch of pumpkins. The neighborhood is bounded by 46th and 54th Streets and […]
In May of 2016, I wrote about Rethinking the Status Quo on Summit Avenue. I made some quick back-of-the-napkin sketches based on rough Google Map widths (e.g. I assume street curb-to-curb is 30′, it is actually 28′). It was meant as an overall test around the city’s vision for the future of our premier bike […]
I wanted to take a moment to pause and look back at 2019, which was a brutal year for people walking in Saint Paul. Last year, five people were killed by automobile violence, making it an especially tragic year. For every name here, there were many more people hit and injured by people driving cars […]
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. […]
On Jan 7, a meeting on the Minnesota Statewide Passenger Rail plan was held at the McColl Pond Environmental Learning Center in Savage, and streets.mn was invited to join other local media outlets and elected officials to hear about updates to the plan. No one else from streets.mn said they were going, so, because I […]
Many of us traveled for the holidays, and many of the Streets community shared their experiences of traveling by Amtrak. It is very true that when moving on flat ground in a straight line, trains on steel wheels and rails are the most efficient form of transportation. Rolling on steel rails reduces rolling resistance and […]
Theodore Wirth Park, the largest park managed by the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board, is home to what MPRB superintendent Mary Merrill has described as a world class facility that serves as the jumping off point for year-round outdoor activities. However, these activities – which include snow tubing, cross country skiing, mountain and fat tire […]
There is a gentleman who rides the 747 bus from downtown Minneapolis to the TCF Corporate offices in Plymouth. This gentleman walks with a slight limp, a gait acquired through years of blue collar work performed while standing on concrete floors. When he walks from the bus stop north on Hennepin County Road 61 (Xenium […]
I started writing this piece in my head on December 2nd, a cold, slushy evening on which I attempted to take the bus from downtown Minneapolis to Lyndale and 28th in order to attend a public meeting about street safety. I say “attempted” because—although I did eventually get to where I wanted to go—very little […]
This is the context, and we all know it: • Climate change is real and already causing devastating effects • Climate change is primarily caused by CO2 • Transportation accounts for the largest part of Minnesota’s CO2 increase • We need to act now Given that, let’s say you have a street (well, more […]
In 2020, Tesla is expected to release the Model Y, a battery-electric hatchback “SUV” that will compete with the recently announced Ford Mustang Mach-E and other crossover-type electric fastbacks. Putting aside all the arguments why electric cars will not save the planet in general, let’s explore whether these new family wagons are even better than […]
On a beautiful fall day, I walked all of the Lyndale neighborhood that I had missed on my prior walk. Actually, not quite all. Construction activity closed much of Stevens Avenue even for pedestrians, so those blocks appear in neither route. One indirect consequence is that this second route isn’t a closed loop; it starts under […]
I started 2019 with what seemed a relatively simple goal: to ride my bike every day in January. I succeeded with that, and then kept going. I rode through February, March, and April, before finally deciding to keep it up as long as I could. I kept a log of my adventures on Twitter, and […]
I wish I could sing or play an instrument, because I’d like to make a recording of the alternate lyrics I made up for the classic Dionne Warwick song “Don’t Make Me Over,” written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David. I may have been inspired by the version of “Old Town Road” about Saint Paul’s […]
