Back in 2013 I was a bit too excited about bus lanes, which is one of the more frustrating enthusiasms a Minnesotan could have, up there with polylinguism and being a Vikings fan. But with all the talk about how a ridiculous amount of buses are going to be jammed onto Hennepin Ave, some of […]
You may have heard the news about a little apartment building proposed for a site at 24th & Colfax in the Wedge. After a long, bitter battle over whether the houses currently on the site should be demolished, the proposed building is finally up for review before the City Planning Commission. One of many reasons […]
Around these parts, it’s not an unpopular belief that the Hennepin-Lyndale Bottleneck is a bit – ah, how to put it? – oversized. The City of Minneapolis’ Public Works Department does not appear to share this belief, as they’ve submitted a design for the Bottleneck that retains its massivity. When a loved one has a […]
The animated gif is probably the most important thing that ever happened to historical maps. A recent powerpoint presentation to the Transportation & Public Works committee had an awesome series of maps showing the change in the bikeway network from 1997 to 2013 …(and beyond!) and I just couldn’t resist (and had some time on […]
Welcome Minnesotans to another round of Ice, Mud, or Puddle! Just when our tundra homeland relents on its annual attempt to kill us with skin-peeling winds and lung-piercing temperatures, it turns the entire state into a swirling cauldron of glare ice, inescapable mud, and bottomless puddles. Pretty much every block has a stretch of sidewalk […]
Don’t get me wrong, Grand Marais is probably my favorite town in Minnesota, even beating out my ancestral homeland, New Ulm. I wrote a fairly extensive piece about this gem of the North Shore on my personal blog (full disclosure: my personal blog is written by me personally). But I gotta wonder about the perversity […]
Just like with contraception, the pull-out method doesn’t work for transit. When a bus is required to exit a through lane to make a stop, then to reenter the through lane, there is inherent delay in the additional movement required. Then more delay when the bus has to yield to vehicles in the through lane […]
Almost fifty years ago, the City of Minneapolis actually did something for its residents who use transit. It created an exclusive guideway for buses down the center of the main shopping street Downtown, reducing buses’ exposure to congestion and (probably) speeding up trips (a little, sort of). Since there private cars are not allowed on […]
Take a look at the two images below. If the squiggly red lines didn’t refer to a specific mode, but instead to some pure form of transportation like a wire for an electron, and you had to choose one to rely on to transport your electric self around the city, which would you choose? Those […]
The nasal vowels, the multifunctional but monosyllabic ya’s and sure’s, the rs so deep they threaten to suck in the entire sentence… I love Minnesota accents. We’re not supposed to be ironic on the I Love series, and I’m not even going to try to defend its aesthetic merit. But whenever I return to the […]