Last Tuesday, the Lake Elmo city council voted 3–2 to reject further involvement in the Gold Line project, also known as the Gateway Corridor. The service has been planned to run through 2.5 to 3 miles of Lake Elmo, but that would take it through some undeveloped areas with very low population density and limited […]
It’s way easier to get a child into a stroller than a car seat. Most Minnesota drivers ignore the crosswalk laws. But they’re more likely to stop for you when you have a stroller. There are two interpretations of this pattern. Strollers genuinely make you more visible. Or, there’s a lot of chosen ignorance of […]
Having recently moved away from downtown, I’m spending more time in other parts of the city, which means I find new things to critique/complain about. Case in point, a problematic intersection that stands between my new home and the closest grocery store: Cedar Ave & East Minnehaha Parkway. Let’s set aside for the moment how […]
Road construction season in Minnesota is winding down and, as a result, many of the orange signs that are seasonal visitors to our urban landscape will soon be warehoused away. If you’re a slab of concrete in Minneapolis with the purpose of providing space for people to walk, this may give you some breathing room. […]
This Friday, the Minneapolis City Council will likely adopt new ordinance language that reduces or eliminates minimum parking requirements for multi-family development near high-frequency transit stops. I won’t provide a full summary of the new policy here, or the controversy surrounding a potential exemption for North Minneapolis, but if you’re not familiar with the changes, […]
One of the most highly-used, dangerous, and non-ADA compliant streets in Minneapolis needs to change right now. On my way to work yesterday morning, I witnessed a man in a motorized-wheelchair stuck on the sidewalk of Franklin Avenue (a bit west of Portland Avenue). He was not stuck because his battery died or because of […]
Over at MinnPost, Peter Callaghan writes of the proposed River Balcony in Downtown St. Paul. This is a planning effort to connect Downtown St. Paul to its riverfront alongside large-scale redevelopment from the old West Publishing and County Jail sites to the west to the old Downtown Post Office being redeveloped as the Custom House […]
This coming Wednesday, June 17, at 5:30pm, the Saint Paul City Council faces its first test for implementing the city’s Bikeways Plan. The plan calls for bike lanes on Cleveland Avenue. The question is: Will they vote to implement the plan, or will they listen to claims of bike lane opponents and scrap a major […]
(This article is cross-posted at the Center for Transportation Studies’ Conversations blog) Sunday, June 14, marks the one-year anniversary of the start of service on the Twin Cities’ Green Line LRT route. At the Accessibility Observatory, we like to celebrate transportation anniversaries the way we wish everyone would: with a detailed evaluation of access to destinations. […]
From the newly released Access Across America: Walk 2014, this map shows the number of jobs that can be reached within 30 minutes in the Minneapolis-St. Paul region. Similar maps are available for the top 50 metropolitan areas. [Full Disclosure: I am a co-author of the report.]