Today is Father’s Day and if you believe the marketing, fathers would like to barbecue, get gifts of neckties and tools and wear something saying “World’s Greatest Dad.” For streets.mn-related Father’s Day gifts, could I suggest taking a ride on the newly opened A Line, biking with kids, or walking around your Dad’s favorite place (and talking about how it got to be the way it is) are some possibilities.
Streets.mn event
Come Meet Mexican Urbanist Gustavo Gutiérrez on Wednesday, June 22, 2016 from 5:00-7:00 at a streets.mn fundraising event at East Lake Brewery in Minneapolis. “Gustavo Gutiérrez was arrested for the infraction of riding his bicycle at night in his hometown of Aguascalientes, Mexico. Today, there are 25 new miles of bike lanes in Aguascalientes and a strong bicycle lobby whose members participate in local government and in the national bicycling movement.” Gutiérrez is an advocate for sustainable mobility and a part of the international team at Community Design Group who will speak about his work plus beer and free appetizers – hosted by Community Design Group – at East Lake Brewery. Come learn, socialize and support streets.mn.
Gustavo Gutiérrez
Bikes
Bike culture
Cultural shifts
Dan Choma writes An Open Letter to Saint Paul Business Owners from an Average Millennial which asks “Why am I as a millennial seemingly invisible to Saint Paul business owners?” Noting that Saint Paul’s median age is 31 – millennial! – business owners seem not to want to attract the bike-riding, transit-taking, shop-local, eat-and-drink-local millennials, but choose instead to focus on older conceptions of customers who care about driving, complain about bike lanes, and fear change.
Transit
Several weeks ago, streets.mn published a preview of the A Line, the metro’s first urban BRT; this week David Levinson took a ride and provides The ‘A Line’ — A Review. There are a few small criticisms, but overall “the A-Line is the best new investment Metro Transit has done since I have moved here. As a new capital investment, it is not as high quality as some routes with exclusive right-of-way, but it finds the optimal trade-off between quality and cost, maximizing benefit/cost and minimizing dollars spent per rider. This is important. It means more things can be done. It’s just too bad this wasn’t opened sooner.” Plus, the Map Monday is about the A Line, too.
An Alternate Universe of Transit, Or, Explaining the Political Ideology Gap in Transit Funding asks “What if the Minneapolis-St Paul region chose to intentionally grow as a truly multi-modal region rather than one dominated almost entirely by private vehicles starting back in the 1950s?” Alex Cecchini answers this question by using guiding principles on land-use and transportation expansion including “Build grade-separated transit at a faster pace than (but coordinated-with) our urban interstate and highway network, serving existing population and job centers but also areas for future growth” to consider a scenario for how this could work and what it would cost. This is the post to send to your state legislators for its thoughtful consideration of the politics of transit and what good transit would do.
A Line Information Pylon
In depth
Warrants for Traffic Signals, Part 1 is Monte Castleman’s next installment of what is becoming an encyclopedia of “every facet of traffic signals, including how they work, how timing and phasing are set, and even how to identify who made a particular signal. But what about how it’s decided whether to add or remove a signal in the first place? That is done through ‘warrants’ and ‘justification.'” Plus, the warrant analysis is applied to some actual intersections around the metro area.
c1950 Eaglelux Signals at Grand Avenue and 34th Street
Quick looks
Map Monday: Accessibility Analysis of Metro Transit A-Line BRT maps the number of jobs accessible within 30 minutes by transit with the opening of the A Line.
Chart of the Day: Shopkeepers Travel Mode Share Estimates (Bristol UK) compares actual mode share with Bristol UK shopkeepers estimated mode share (spoiler alert: shopkeepers believe more people drive than actually do).
Sprawl Tax Links: Bike Lanes, Redlining, and the Edge is the next installment of links from The Direct Transfer
And that’s the week on streets.mn. We’ve got some events coming up – join us for our annual potluck picnic on July 16 moving from Minnehaha Park to Boom Island this year. Or, get to work at our next volunteer work hangout on June 29 at Lakes & Legends Brewing Company (Minneapolis this time, after the Saint Paul first ever volunteer work hangout last month). Have a great week!