Sunday Summary - May 19, 2019

Every Sunday here at streets.mn our longtime member and Board Secretary, Betsey Buckheit, has been cleverly summarizing the week’s posts. I’m filling in for her this week, and have categorized posts according to the core values of streets.mn: people-centered, future-oriented, justice-driven, and delight-cultivating. Of course, many of our posts fit into multiple categories, or might require categories of their own (like events!). It’s an experiment!

People-Centered

Grieving the Life We Trade Away for Driving by Kyle Constalie features some of life’s most fundamental pleasures, like smelling the blooming lilac trees or watching some cuddling possums. He explores how much of life we miss while we’re driving a car, concluding that we should make more space for people and animals, not cars: “A more alive, more community-minded form of traffic actually deserves the right of way.”

A turtle greeting cyclists from the grass along the Greenway.

Future-Oriented

From John Edwards: Drive-Through Ban Gets Positive Reception at Minneapolis Planning Commission, an ordinance which would align with the city’s 2040 Plan. No changes are proposed to already-existing drive-throughs.

Predictions on the Future of Mobility by Conrad Zbikowski takes a deeper drive into May 8th’s Chart of the Day. He predicts that the future will: 1. be electric; 2. minimize human labor costs; 3. be won by those who have to raise the least capital.

Monte Castleman imagines a future for self-driving electric cars, from “micro” to “full size” versions, in A Roster of Potential TaaS Vehicles.

Justice-Driven

Plans for a long-term closure of a critical safe bike/pedestrian route between Minneapolis and Hopkins are examined by Christa Moseng in Share The Pain: SWLRT Related Trail Closure, where she proposes that part of Excelsior Boulevard should be used as a protected bikeway for the duration of the closure. There’s no reason the full brunt of this construction-related impact should fall on the most vulnerable road users: “Causing car drivers to share some of the pain could also motivate project planners to value more highly the burdens being placed on cyclists and other trail users for this planned closure.”