Monthly Archives: January 2016

Crowdsourcing the Battle Against Sidewalk Hogs

There’s a sizable patch of sidewalk out in front of Leaning Tower of Pizza, and in milder months they rope off almost all of it as a dining area for their customers. The sidewalk is big enough to comfortably share between diners and pedestrians. But Leaning Tower chooses not to. Maybe it’s because outdoor dining […]

Sunday Summary – January 31, 2016

Current events A recent UCLA study on Exclusionary Land Use Regulations and Income Segregation is the entry point to considering the current neighborhood opposition to a 6 story hotel in Uptown/Lyn-Lake Minneapolis (see more streets.mn criticism of neighborhood associations). Anton Schieffer urges “In order to create a more equitable city, Minneapolis must realize that neighborhood groups in desirable […]

Route 54 Ridership and Why We Cannot Skip the Route to the Airport

Recently, posts about the Riverview Corridor have been generating a LOT of comments on streets.mn. One of these posts suggested that, in order to ensure the old Ford factory in Highland Park develops in a way that would not be thoroughly suburban, that the Riverview Corridor should be rerouted through Highland Park on the old […]

Chart of the Day: One Man’s Carbon Footprint

A friend of mine was recently discussing her problem with air travel, and how impactful emissions from flight can be in ways that people seem to ignore. In other words, even people that care a great deal about the environment and reducing climate change emissions seem to fly around an awful lot. Here’s a chart […]

Chart of the Day: Renting and Ethnicity in Minnesota

Here’s a chart from this great “statistics and demographics” article in today’s Star Tribune. Check it out: CJ Sinner at the Star Tribune reports on how and why these data were created: Recently, a sharp drop in median income among Black Minnesotans prompted the Minnesota State Demographic Center to take a deeper economic look at ethnic […]

Redesigning the Franklin/Cedar/Minnehaha Intersection

If you have ever traveled through the intersection of Franklin/Cedar/Minnehaha, you know how confusing, wide, fast, and unfriendly it feels. With the second-most bicycle crashes, this is the second-most dangerous intersection in Minneapolis. It’s also one of the most dangerous intersections in Hennepin County, with crash rates more than two and a half times the […]

Changes May Be Coming to SWLRT Station Names

The Green Line Extension (Southwest LRT) is considering renaming several of the proposed stations in order to finalize construction plans. The proposal, first shared with partner government agency staff on January 14, 2016 and with the project’s community and business advisory committees in late January, will be considered by the Metropolitan Council on February 24th. […]

Five Light Rail Lessons for the Riverview Corridor

Planning transit takes a long time, and there are so many ways it can go wrong. For my money, the best remaining urban transit project in Saint Paul is the so-called “Riverview corridor” running from downtown along West 7th street down to the airport. As the latest ridership numbers show, rail has been the key to […]

Rainbow Shoreview

The Re-Rise of the Local Grocery in Shoreview

Our local grocery wasn’t really very local. It was a 68,000 sq ft Rainbow big-box that closed last fall. This made our nearest general grocery a big-box Cub Foods (90,000 sq ft?) that is three miles farther away (there is also a Fresh & Natural about a mile away that we use often but it does […]