In May of 2016, I wrote about Rethinking the Status Quo on Summit Avenue. I made some quick back-of-the-napkin sketches based on rough Google Map widths (e.g. I assume street curb-to-curb is 30′, it is actually 28′). It was meant as an overall test around the city’s vision for the future of our premier bike […]
The bridge over Summit Avenue will be rebuilt during the 2019 construction season. This is an exciting opportunity for the City of Saint Paul to start making Summit Avenue, the premier bike route in the city, safe and comfortable for all riders. Details about the project can be found on the project website as I […]
Saint Paul is not lacking for one or two story commercial buildings topped with billboards. This is frustrating on many levels – they are designed for drivers, not pedestrians; there are no design standards; and they are often ignored in “neighborhood character” discussions. The first two of those frustrations, driver-focused design and lack of design standards, are […]
Since I advocate for change in St Paul, an often Sisyphean task against the forces of KSPB, I often think about neighborhood character and what it means – especially what it means to different people. I have also struggled to find empathy and understanding for views that don’t exactly align with my own, and I […]
Perpetuating the status quo is sadly the way things are done in Saint Paul. The inertia of what has always been carries a lot of weight here. The latest example can be found on Summit Avenue in the form of the annual repainting of the door zone lane. Below is the current Summit lane sizing: […]
I want express my excitement surrounding the site plan for the Snelling-Midway Redevelopment. The density, return of the street grid, and mixed-use will be an asset to St. Paul for years to come. However, I need to express some concerns about the right-of-way widths at the proposed development. As shown above, the proposed rights-of-way for internal […]
Snow can expose things about our car-dominated landscape that wouldn’t normally be so obvious. Much like a sneckdown, a “snarking violation” is when one can clearly observe that a vehicle hasn’t been moved and has violated posted parking ordinances. Over the course of Monday night, the Twin Cities received their first snow storm. I took the opportunity, […]
When my wife and I moved back to the Midwest after nearly a decade on the West Coast, we chose Grand Avenue. We chose it for a number of reasons, but first and foremost was the walkability. We didn’t own a car during our eight years in San Francisco, and we became accustomed to the […]
I wanted to piggy-back off of Bill’s great piece on Lowertown’s perceived parking problem, where he notes that people walked nearly a mile from their parking spot on Energy Park Drive to Midway Stadium and were completely okay with that but parking a couple blocks away from CHS Field and walking through a vibrant downtown is somehow asking too […]
Here is my open letter to Saint Paul Public Works and Mayor Coleman. As a new resident to Saint Paul, I wasn’t present for the leg work and public meetings that went into creating the bicycle boulevards. I have, however, been using them extensively over the last 9 months since moving here. I’m a daily bicycle commuter […]