No one can agree on whether SWLRT sucks too much to exist, or if it’s just OK enough to merit being built with a bunch of free money.
But I think we can all agree that a light rail train going through a sea of parking and office towers says Minneapolis the way Painted Ladies say San Francisco.
Photo by Nick Benson via the Streets.mn Flickr pool
lol, I like how the sidewalk/drainage channel peters out about 40 feet into the block
Aah, thriving downtown Bloomington. Excellent investment. I’m glad that Western and Hamline had to fight to get stops in Saint Paul while thriving downtown Bloomington has three (count ’em) stops within a 1/2 mile (of its thriving walkable downtown with many pedestrians and high ridership numbers.
https://twitter.com/BillLindeke/status/449572969967128576
Blomington’s “downtown” comp plan is eerily similar to the comp plans of Eden Prairie et al. Just because you zone for TOD and spend massive (not-free) money on infrastructure doesn’t mean that it actually ends up getting built.
Here’s a light rail stop about 5 miles from the center of Brno, Czech Republic (pop. 385,913, 810,000 metro) http://goo.gl/maps/vl2ie
I think this must be what people are imagining when they say “TOD” over here. Funny how it doesn’t seem to happen this way.
It’s sad how long it took for the Twin Cities to get behind urban-style development (Mpls & St Paul not excluded), and this is compounded by the timing of their eventual coming-around, which in the case of Bloomington was right before the real estate crash. There hasn’t been a whole lot built in Bloomington that’s not-TOD either, but it should be noted that there is an approved plan to build 420 units of urban-ish residential in the midground of this very photo. So yes, it does seem to be getting built, slowly but surely.
I don’t so much mind that it goes through those parking lots on the way to the its MOA ultimate destination. I mind that there are three stops in a five block stretch like that!
I just find it frustrating that the ones making the decisions ignore their own numbers that blatantly state, “this is a pretty f!ckin dumb idea and we’re still talking about this, why?”. Yet we’re not talking about getting city residents from one dense neighborhood to another in a timely manner. What!?