Sunday Summary – June 16, 2019

After a couple of lazy weeks, last week’s haul has some meaty posts about highways, transit, and places to visit in Saint Paul.

Rapid buses, an in-depth look

Alex Schiefferdecker gives us a three-part series (which follows up his post from last year) about rapid bus transit starting with an overview of plans, politics, and routes in Building A Network Of Rapid Buses — The Universe of Alternatives sparked by Met Council plans “promoting a “vision” for rapid transit in the Twin Cities that—and I take no pleasure in pointing this out—is galaxy-brain stupid, plotting BRT routes through fields of corn while neglecting the places that best support transit.” These posts aim to offer a beginning to a better conversation for comprehensive planning and route. Evaluating the Corridors looks at some of the data on possible arterial corridors while  A Future Network proposes just that.

Minneapolis

Minneapolis Landlording for Dividing while Turfing by Paul Jahn calls attention to Safe and Affordable Neighborhoods Minneapolis, a recently formed group in response to Minneapolis efforts to limit landlords’ ability to use background information to screen potential tenants saying, “I found a sponsored post that piqued my interest titled ‘Make YOUR Voice heard, Minneapolis!’ regarding safe and affordable housing in Minneapolis. The initial concept sounds great, but their whole campaign and turfing is selectively worded so obviously behind their own thinly-veiled manipulation attempts for landlords to continue dividing the public and exploiting renters.” Commenters express concern that some of the criteria which might be ruled out are relevant to selecting tenants such as credit history.

Saint Paul delights

Robert Roscoe’s Saint Paul Places to See and Visit – A to Z is a list from “Art Moderne Storefront on early 20th century building”  to Zimmermann’s (“very narrow clothing store”) which a focus on history and architecture.

Series

Meet a Roundabout: Wentworth Ave courtesy of Conrad Zbikowski.  This is the first installment of “Meet a Roundabout,” “a new series of posts about roundabouts in the Twin Cities area that are improving traffic efficiency and safety. Posts include pictures and video of the roundabout and a history of how they came to be.” After a quick overview of the Wentworth Avenue roundabouts (there are three), the post provides some general roundabout information and crash statistics, so you can meet roundabouts generally. Comments question the safety of roundabouts for people riding bikes or walking, plus offer some details about other roundabout individuals.

Road geek Monte Castleman returns with A History of Highway 100 Part One: Overview.  Earlier posts told the history of Minnesota’s trunk highway system, but “Along with this came a special highway with a special number, Highway 100. Conceived as a bypass of the Twin Cities, it happened at the time where two separate movements were occurring. First was a move towards building expressways for speed, The second was a move to beautify our highways and parks as a sink for New Deal labor, primarily the Works Project Administration (WPA).”  This post highlights the aesthetic emphasis in addition to the contruction, history, and lots of photos as per usual for a Castleman post.

Biking in MN

BikeMN’s Annual Meeting Highlights Bike-Friendly People & Programs by Amy Gage reports on the meeting and the policies, programs, and people celebrated at the Bike Alliance of Minnesota’s annual meeting, “From honoring an African-American bicycling club that just celebrated its 20^th anniversary in Minneapolis to helping tiny Walker, Minnesota (population 934) earn national recognition as a bike-friendly community, BikeMN is at the forefront of propelling Minnesota into a second-place ranking among bike-friendly states.”

Regular features

Links! National Links: Expensive Projects and Parking Spaces from Jeff Wood at The Overhead Wire.

Map! Map Monday: Twin Cities Job Accessibility, Transit vs. Driving

 

Charts! Chart of the Day: Housing Unit Growth v. Population Growth and Chart of the Day: Property Value v. Distance from Minneapolis Lakes.