I have written about cars before. Up until recently, I drove a 2015 Toyota Prius, and test-drove the Tesla Model 3 and Tesla Model Y. I wanted to get an electric car, but someday, and one that put me in the driver’s seat. The future became the present this summer. With the wildfire smoke burning […]
Last February, I wrote a shopping comparison report looking at in-store shopping at local grocery stores, including co-ops like Seward and national warehouses like Costco. As I wrote then, Costco was the winner-winner five dollar chicken dinner. It’s been a year, and I apologize for not writing as frequently. The global pandemic has really taken […]
In the “before-times”, housing advocates in Minneapolis worked with a progressive city council to pass the 2040 Plan. The New York Times proclaimed, “Minneapolis, Tackling Housing Crisis and Inequity, Votes to End Single-Family Zoning”. These were all great achievements, and it is clear that 2040, inclusionary zoning, and other reforms and investments have made real […]
Much has happened in the year 2020, and this survey is designed to capture how COVID-19 has affected our reader community. This survey will also take snapshot of our reader community demographics to help the volunteers at Streets.mn reach a wider audience and bring on more diverse voices. The survey only takes a few minutes […]
Yesterday, we received the dismal news that the promised route for the Bottineau Blue Line light rail extension was only a dream, and that dream is now officially scuttled. What is more troubling is that $129 million in local, county, metro, and state funds were spent on engineering and planning the project when rail company […]
Electricity prices are not directly related to creating safer streets for all, but they are related to our interests in housing and the environment. It is important to recognize some of the turning points in the history of sustainable energy. One of those turning points happened just last year, when onshore wind power (like that […]
The City of Minneapolis recently approved agreements with two electric scooter operators, Bird and Lyft, under the Nice Ride nonprofit banner. Under the agreements, the two operators can each deploy 1,250 scooters, with a cap on scooters in Downtown. They also require a minimum number of scooters to be available in areas lacking last-mile transit […]
This year, prior to COVID-19, Nice Ride Minnesota promised to release 2,000 new electric-assist bikes. Those bikes arrived a few weeks ago, and we got a chance to test ride them. The new blue-wheeled bikes are on a promotional pricing right now, so all of my rides have been less than a dollar. During the […]
In November of 2019, Nice Ride announced that for 2020 it was planning to add, “2,000 pedal-assist electric bikes to fleet beginning in April 2020.” The world has changed a lot since last fall, and many in the rental community were wondering if we would ever see anything electric on the streets this year. With […]
The other day, I talked for over an hour with an old friend who now lives in Madrid. They teach English in a public school in the capital and have been on lockdown for the past two weeks. With over 110,00 confirmed Covid-19 cases in Spain, lockdown for them means that only people with dogs […]