Sunday Summary - March 3, 2019

Welcome to March and its Madness (although the finals at US Bank Stadium are in April) as well as the snow, melting snow, puddles, and mud. Before the snow melts, here’s the last week on streets.mn:

Transit

Transit Oriented Development: A Progress Report from Aaron Isaacs. The post features slides from a “recent staff presentation to the Met Council, reproduced here. It uses 2003-2017 data from the Annual Building Permit Survey & Development Tracker.”

How Houston Reimagined its Transit Network and Increased Ridership by Conrad Zbikowski reports on Houston’s 2015 “reimagining” of its transit system “The thesis was this: If the system removed duplicate routes and routes to low-ridership areas — and instead created a grid of high-frequency routes in high-ridership areas — this would result in increased ridership with faster service for riders.” See the numbers on ridership as well as some analysis of equity issues in the system.

Ride the Bus to Stillwater After Work Before They Cut Service announced Henry Pan since “On March 9, Metro Transit plans to severely cut service on express route 294. The Metro Transit line runs weekdays between St. Paul and Stillwater, making stops near 3M, in Oakdale and in Lake Elmo.” There will still be some transit service to Stillwater but routes making it harder for people without cars to explore the city and visitors to the state prison see their loved ones.

North Star Farm, Lake Elmo, MN. March 1, 2018

And other good stuff

#eBikeThoughts: Electric-Assist Bicycles from James Kohls describes his own transition to an ebike, describes what they are under Minnesota law and provides an extensive buying guide for those thinking about acquiring one (or just curious) with some input from other ebikers in the comments.

Things To Do In: A Google Exploration of The Twin Cities in which Julie Kosbab relates how “The other day, my beloved elder child was looking around on Google for ideas on what we could do on a Friday night that included both his father and I as participants that was not “go to movie” or “bowling.” He used the very sane query “things to do in Blaine MN.” And while some of the results were close, they were not quite in Blaine. And, searching other cities for things to do, Julie discovers the map algorithm should be taken with a grain of salt. To answer the question for Northfield, Google does quite well – top results are all within the city limits, although Northfield Garden Club is not really something to visit.

Conrad Zbikowski reports on a New Proposed Northeast Development Checks All The Boxes. LanderGroup’s proposal for a new development on vacant, industrially-zoned land in NE Minneapolis includes apartments and townhomes including ” 17% of townhomes affordable at 80% AMI and 20% of apartments affordable at 60% AMI.”