Recently, Ramsey County and Saint Paul joined forces to delay the opening of the B-Line, to coordinate transit studies, ranging from the Riverview study to a streetcar study and this arterial-“BRT” (a.k.a. faux Bus Rapid Transit) study. This was a good move for the city and transit users. Due to changes to the 54 since the line was initially planned, […]
While I would love to berate the Red Line for bad planning/engineering with an “offline” station, making pedestrians as unwelcome as possible or the general confusion of why the metro needed the line, but let’s try to be positive and constructive instead. Here are some easy and rather cheap improvements to the Red Line that […]
Yesterday there was a great post about coupon parking, and how it can be used in parking critical areas to make use of an entire street’s built parking infrastructure instead of using only permits to exclude people from using the spaces. The economics of most markets look similar to the following chart, as price rises, […]
When the Green Line was under construction I pondered, “The Blue Line is very popular, it not only has a high daily ridership, but people WANT to ride the train! A family of four is not uncommon to see on the train to a Twins game. Buying four tickets at a park and ride and riding […]
A metro resident views tiny Park Rapids, Minnesota, a popular vacation getaway, through an urbanist lens — and finds much to admire!
The 3 bus has several different letters associated with route variations, the A, B, C, E, S, U and K. All of the routes run along Como Avenue in Minneapolis, except for the K. The K runs a few blocks south of Como, along Kasota Avenue. It connects transit riders to jobs in the corridor from […]
Recently I completed a series of posts on Bus Rapid Transit (BRT). Although I had mentioned it as being complete, there should be a quick introduction for those unfamiliar with developing transit techniques. Thus, this post will discuss what Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) is, and the main advantages/disadvantages to using such a system. What is BRT? […]
This is the third and final post in a series (directly) based off of a term paper for a transportation class (full paper here, Red Line evaluation here and Campus Connector evaluation here). Here the ITDP (Institute for Trasportation and Development Policy) Scorecard, used in the other posts to evaluate BRT (Bus Rapid Transit) service, […]
The city of Saint Paul recently announced that despite the upcoming Green Line, and planned renovations in the city’s “urban core”, the struggles of being a city were too much. In a surprising vote the City Council approved a measure to dissolve itself and put in place the framework for a township to replace the […]
MetroTransit releases a factbook every year, and 2013 was just released (2012 here). The formatting makes this an attractive way to showcase the entirety of work that MetroTransit does for the community, from outreach to the U-Pass, the details add up to a trove of possible calculations begging to be analyzed, or just toyed with, […]