This past Saturday afternoon, a cyclist was struck and critically injured on Excelsior Blvd west of Lake Calhoun, in a section where the roadway is surrounded by the Minikahda Club. This section of Excelsior Blvd is a 4-lane undivided roadway, what some colloquially label a Four Lane Death Road. There are no bicycle facilities and […]
As a follow-up to Friday’s Chart of the Day showing a scatterplot of Minnesota population change versus population level, here is a map showing that population change spatially (i.e. geographically): As discussed in the Friday thread, the largest counties in the state tended to grow while the smallest counties tended to shrink. While the largest […]
Much has been written on Streets.MN about the Southwest LRT project (or Green Line Extension if you prefer). Contributors have been arguing the strengths and weaknesses of the approved 3A (Kenilworth) and dropped 3C (Uptown/Nicollet) routings for years. 3A allows for direct interlining with the existing LRT lines (providing operational savings for Metro Transit) and […]
A couple weeks ago, I posted a map showing average jobs+population density along the planned Southwest LRT corridor. By request, I have created a similar map for Hennepin County as a whole: This map was created in the same way as my previous map, taking 2010 Census population data and 2011 jobs data (also available […]
With yesterday’s announcement that the price tag for the proposed Southwest LRT line (or “Green Line Extension” if you prefer) has jumped to $2 billion, there’s been a lot of chatter both inside and outside of Streets.MN about what this holds for the project. Some have said the corridor should be dropped as it was […]
Much has been written over the past year on the upcoming reconstruction of the Hennepin/Lyndale commons area just outside downtown Minneapolis, to be done later this year. Today’s Map of the Day looks back at the proposal for I-94 in the commons area from 1957. It comes from the study report “Freeways in Minnneapolis” conducted […]
A lively discussion in a recent post about highway taxes vs. highway spending boiled down to one question: “Who drives more: rural, suburban, or city residents?” The data to answer this question is not easily accessible, but we can use available data to estimate it. We know from National Household Travel Survey (conducted by the […]
These maps show the 10-year traffic trends from 2003 to 2013 at MnDOT’s automatic traffic recorders (or ATR’s). The ATR’s, also called Continuous Traffic Recorders, are permanently installed at select locations on Minnesota highways (a mix of interstate, state highway, county highway, and local roads) and continuously measure traffic volumes 24/7. There are 91 locations […]
This chart, from the Federal Highway Administration’s 2011 Highway Statistic series (most recent year available) shows the changes in both rural Interstate highway traffic volume and loading since 1970. Loading here refers to the weight of vehicles. The 2002 peak in volume is noted on the chart (Urban Interstates peaked in 2007 per FHWA figures), […]
Yesterday featured a quick write-up on advisory bicycle lanes, with a bit of discussion on what they are and where they could possibly go in Minneapolis. The rationale behind the advisory bike lane is to stripe a bicycle lane on narrow, low-traffic streets, with vehicles using the remaining center space and merging into the bike […]