I just got back from Seoul, South Korea. I had a great time thanks for ...
By now you’ve all seen the news about the amazing Amazon HQ. 50,000 high-paying jobs landing in some North American city is basically the mega-fantasy of every economic-development-person slash tax-base-loving-politician in the country. And the Twin Cities is among them. Cue the Amazon takes: Governor Dayton, cautiously optimistic; Chris Coleman, running for governor, releasing a […]
Here’s a fun chart from Bloomberg and data viz whiz Dorothy Gambrell. It shows US cities plotted along two axes. On the Y-axis, you have what they call “the good stuff,” a metric that combines education, tech investment, biking / transit, and other economic measures that match the Silicon Valley / Bay area. On the […]
Here’s an eye-opening chart for your Thursday. It comes from a RethinkX (a think tank) report released earlier this Spring. The report is titled “Rethinking Transportation 2020-2030: the disruption of transportation and the collapse of the internal-combustion vehicle and oil industries.” The chart shows a projected shift away from individual car ownership and to something […]
Technology is a mixed bag. Nowhere is this more evident than in transportation. Hyper-mobility, the ability to quickly travel across long distances gives the illusion of bringing us all closer together. Yet the ability to quickly traverse space causes us to live farther apart (because we can) and it has the unintended negative impact of […]
When I was in school as a child I took the bus. Nearly everyone I knew took the bus or walked. Now, my children are in the very small minority who walk or bike to school. Many children are still bussed to school, but my memories of 1985 do not include a long line of […]
Here is the latest in our Saint Paul mayoral candidate questionnaire. These responses are from Trahern Crews. 1. How do you get around in Saint Paul? Bike, Walk, Bus & Train. 2. In your opinion, what is Saint Paul’s greatest transportation challenge? How would you plan to address it while in office? Traffic congestion, the […]
I know I can’t be the only one who has wondered, while waiting through a full light cycle for a walk signal only to see that my button pressing was in vain, what it would be like to have the power of Tsar Peter the Great to create through imperial decree a city tailored to […]
State Fair, done. Defeat of Jesse James Days, almost over. School open, yes. Local apples, definitely. Must be Fall! A light week here on streets.mn, but here’s what we’ve got: A Walk in Eastern Como is the next walk in the alphabet from Max Hailperin and the third in the Como area of Minneapolis. As always, […]
Much of the Como neighborhood lies between two diagonal sets of railroad tracks. The more northerly was originally the Northern Pacific, while the more southerly was the Great Northern. Today both belong to BNSF. (I previously photographed these tracks running southeast out of Northtown Yard in Columbia Park, adjacent to the Shoreham Yard interchange.) The one exception […]
August 1st, 2007 was Minnesota’s day of infamy, when one of the most heavily used bridges in the state collapsed into the Mississippi River. Looking back 10 years and a month later, it’s time to reflect on some of the changes since then. It Ended the “Funny Money” Era at MnDOT The 1990s were a […]
A few weeks ago, Bill Lindeke, Mike Hicks, and myself toured the Red Line. I’ve taken it a few times before for errands, but never to just explore. It’s an unique mode of transit here in the Twin Cities that tries to be LRT on rails and…well, determine for yourself how well it does this […]
Shared Wednesday, August 30, 2017 on the streets.mn Twitter feed (which you should be reading!), this amazing 1970 Mobil ad will resonate with local pedestrian advocates: Text: There are very few principles worth dying for. Last year, 9,800 pedestrians laid down their lives for this one: “The pedestrian always has the right of way.” […]
As of right now, Thrivent Financial owns a collection of surface parking lots and one uniquely shaped 18-story tower in Downtown Minneapolis. For what seems like ages, their tower loomed over a vacant corridor of the city where even surface parking was off limits, contracted only to the employees of Thrivent Financial. But following the […]
When controversy happens….when tempers flare….we read the comments, so you don’t have to. On Sunday, as teased on Twitter by our own @streetsmn account, the Star Tribune posted an article It’s not your imagination — parking is disappearing in Minneapolis. The subhead and picture on the article gave a taste of what was to come, with a […]
Happy September! Labor Day weekend traditionally signals the end of summer when we get back to school and buckle down to work. You could use your new pencils/laptop to write for streets.mn. streets.mn welcomes new writers at any time to extend current discussions, bring new perspectives to issues on streets.mn, or add new voices to […]
The Saint Paul City Council hearing on the Snelling Avenue South Zoning Study is on September 6th, 2017. Highland District Council, Macalester Groveland Community Council and Union Park District Council voted to support the Study. The Snelling Avenue South Zoning Study recommends Traditional Neighborhood rezoning of Snelling and its commercial nodes. Traditional Neighborhood zoning will […]
“There aren’t enough bikes here to justify a bike lane…” I hear some variation of that line with almost every bike project, no matter where it’s located. Especially for people that rarely ride bicycles, it can be a pretty convincing argument! But it’s not that simple. Bicycling is deeply connected to street design, and (as […]
Part two of “A New Vision Zero for St. Paul” was about the first of the “Five E’s”: Evaluation, which very quickly led to rudimentary Engineering solutions simply to gather data and attain target goals for a transportation plan. Engineering is the second of the “Five E’s”, and often the most contentious, as it often controls […]
Here’s a chart from a new study (via Ritholtz) about the big picture of US demographics. To make a long story short, older people! The report, titled “America’s Demographic Challenge: Understanding the Role of Immigration“, is all about how aging and population dynamics intersect with ethnic and racial difference. In Minnesota, as in the rest […]
A couple of days before the Nice Ride season started this year, I looked at their map to scout out stations by TCF Stadium. I was getting ready to go to a soccer game there and was looking forward to being able to use Nice Ride to get to or from games. But my neighborhood […]
