The University of Minnesota, along with M-Health, are about to open a new branch of the Museum of Surface Parking (the MSP) on Oak Street at Fulton in southeast Minneapolis, in front of the new Ambulatory Care Center. This is wonderful news for those in the local Museum-going community, the site will help 21st century college […]
This post is authored by various streets.mn writers. Please donate to streets.mn for the “streets to the max” day! Thank you for your support. Cities are subject to the observer effect, the observer cannot observe the city without changing it. So, as we approach our 4th Birthday, what have posts on streets.mn done to change the […]
h/t Dan Malouff, Greater Greater Washington
In the Fall of 2015, the electric vehicle maker Tesla remotely upgraded its most recent model year cars (about 50,000 vehicles) with “Auto-Pilot”, making them semi-autonomous (according the NHTSA scale, late Level 2, early Level 3). Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, says he expects fully autonomous vehicles within 3 years (i.e. by 2018). I got to […]
The London Underground is famous for its iconic posters (as well is its maps, logo, and font). While Twin City Rapid Transit had some posters as well, they did not reach the same level of artistry. (If anyone has a link to an online trove of such local posters, link in the comments). As an in-class exercise […]
We have new officers effective 12:00 am October 25, 2015. At our most recent meeting on October 24, held at the Hennepin County Central Library in Minneapolis, the streets.mn Board elected unanimously the following officers: Bill Lindeke, Chair Nick Magrino, Vice Chair – [Chair of Personnel Development Committee] Betsey Buckheit, Secretary – [Chair of Editorial Council] Sam Newberg, Treasurer – [Chair […]
In September of 2014, I wrote One Way to Deal With a Desire Line, describing the University of Minnesota’s attempt to deal with a desire line by planting a tree in the middle and placing concrete curbs to reroute traffic, costing pedestrians several seconds a day each. That tree died, as documented in A Tree […]
We at streets.mn have been fairly critical of the excess of traffic control devices on the Washington Avenue traffic mall [1][2][3]. We have questioned the purpose of all the lights, including mid-block walk signals, when there is no motorized cross-traffic. The response from users of the traffic mall has been a great many violations of […]
The quality of masonry in the built environment has dropped significantly in the past century. I would like to blame this on the rise of the Anti-Masonic Party and William Wirt, unfortunately for my desire for a tidy history, that was in 1832, and preceded the decline of masonry by about a century. Furthermore, freemasonry and stonemasonry in practice are not terribly […]
Rather than spending decades coordinating on farecards and behind the scenes payment technologies, transit agencies, and other organizations with their own currency, should join the rest of the world and just use standard modern payment technologies. Not special edition MasterCards. Not new consortiums of region-only standardized fare cards. Use soon-to-be run of the mill NFC-enabled smart phones, cash, and credit […]