If you don’t read anything else on streets.mn, read Encouraging Diversity (and Hot Dog Eating) on streets.mn and the comment thread. As your Sunday Summarizer, I try not to be your weekend editorializer, but this post highlights an opportunity for thoughtful discussion about what streets.mn is now, could be soon and how you readers could become writers and shape streets.mn.
Transit: Adventures in Transit is 1st person perspective about what happens during a particular 1 hour and 40 minutes spent in transit (on public transit).
Current events, Green Line Edition: Green Line opens June 14! The Green Line Is Not Commuter Rail but connects parts of the Twin Cities to itself (themselves?) plus some interesting discussion about Green Line, buses, and related topics. Validating Green Line Travel Time Estimates gives some analysis of how Green Line travel times were calculated.
Historical events: Metering Motoring educates us about what freeway ramp meters are for plus provides a history of ramp metering in the Twin Cities.
Streets in other places: The High Line (and the Nicollet Mile) uses the rumor that the High Line designers might be redesigning Nicollet Mall to give us a tour of NYC’s High Line and some comparisons
Charts of the Week: TV Watching vs. Giving Drivers the Finger illustrates an interesting correlation; streets.mn posts by Gender shows just that and should be viewed in conjunction with Encouraging Diversity. Plus two charts about traffic: Traffic Flow v. Traffic Density (Unstable Traffic States) and The Traffic Jam Nonlinear Flow Loop.
Videos of the week: If you didn’t attend the Greenway Experience Open Streets event, you can watch this short video to find out what happened. How are we supposed to allocate scarce roadspace? is another short transportation economics video.
Other visual information: In the Saddle Again is a photo + commentary about a ghost sign. The carefully observed Sunday Sketch: Memorial Day in Minneapolis & Saint Paul shows us some of the variety of people at Memorial Day events; it’s a moving collection of small images of veterans and others.
Cycling series continued: Vehicular Cycling: If It Worked, It Wouldn’t Work is the third part of a series on vehicular cycling (with Part 1 and Part 2) which observes that trying to increase cycling’s mode share if those additional cyclists are riding with the cars will create more conflicts (both physical and emotional). But wait, there’s more – the post starts with a handy glossary about vehicular cycling and, as with the previous installments in this series, comments are very active with some opinion, examples, and argument about the relative usefulness of vehicular cycling as one part of the picture.
Main Street: A Small Town Template for Suburbia proposes ways suburbs could be retrofitted with some design features from real small towns (rather than strip malls called town centers) and is also something of a summary of other related writing on streets.mn with multiple links to other content. Jeff Speck is Almost Wrong About Biking on Main Street critiques Jeff Speck’s Walkable City perspective (and Mr Speck agrees on Twitter) on bike lanes with some discussion of shared space and how promoting walkability intersects with cycling facilities.
Have a wonderful week on the streets!