Monte Castleman • September 14, 2020 Nationwide Electronic Toll Collection (ETC) Interoperability has been an elusive goal for some time. In practical terms that would mean you’d be able to use your MnPASS transponder to pay tolls on a road trip to Chicago or in your rental car in Florida, and in turn, residents of those states would be able to […]
Monte Castleman • August 13, 2020 This is Part Four in a loosely-related series of the evolution of retail and parking issues. Part One covered the alleged dislike of people for parking ramps and why it’s causing problems for the Shops of West End. Part Two covered the evolution of regional retail from downtown to lifestyle centers. Part Three compared several […]
This is the third article in a series on the evolution of retail and parking issues. Part One looked at issues with West End’s parking ramp as described in a Twin Cities Business magazine article. Then Part Two followed the evolution of regional retail from urban downtowns to suburban malls to suburban lifestyle centers. Now […]
On why structured parking is allegedly problematic for regional retail in general, which is causing problems at West End. This installment will look at the overall evolution of regional retail – from downtown, to the regional malls, to lifestyle centers like West End. Downtown 2.0: The Mall With the massive movement of people to the […]
A Parking Problem St. Louis Park’s lifestyle center, The Shops of West End, has problems. Its vacancies are more than double the metro average and a 20,000 square foot block has never been filled. In March, 2019 the Twin Cities Business Magazine did an article on why. The article is well worth a read; it […]
On Jan 7, a meeting on the Minnesota Statewide Passenger Rail plan was held at the McColl Pond Environmental Learning Center in Savage, and streets.mn was invited to join other local media outlets and elected officials to hear about updates to the plan. No one else from streets.mn said they were going, so, because I […]
As part of an occasional series of posts on looking at the causes of crashes, here’s an investigation of one that occurred in the town of Waseca. (See also “The Causes of Crashes and Tesla’s Self-Driving Car Euphoria Gets Jolted. Although my intent in this series is not to come across as “victim blaming”, in […]
Earlier I wrote about the history of our Interstate Highway System (Part One and Part Two) and how they were partly a 1930s response to growing urban congestion, as big of a threat to the freedom of mobility as mud and ruts were only a few decades before. However the dream of ending congestion didn’t […]
Bloomington’s 2040 Plan, titled “Forward 2040” was officially adopted by the city on Aug 5, 2019. Unlike in Minneapolis, it passed with little notice and little controversy. Here are a few points that caught my attention. Housing and Diversity Although the need for more high density housing is acknowledged like in the Minneapolis plan, here […]
The Moonlight Towers While traveling along the freeways you may have noticed that some lights are mounted on huge towers rather than short poles. The idea of lighting a large area with high-mounted lights dates from the dawn of the electrical era, with carbon arc lights. Here’s one from San Jose. And here is one […]