Category: Bridges

Pedestrian Infrastructure Alignment Chart

    Lawful good: Sabo Bridge. High above the car traffic, Sabo Bridge provides a safe, comfortable, and extremely legal way to cross Hiawatha (as long as you’re not in a hurry). Neutral good: Nicollet Mall. Undeniably good, but for the light timing issues. Chaotic good: Crossing Snelling Ave in front of the Loons stadium […]

Black Dog And Strada

Minnesota River Bridge: an E for Effort

The new I-35W Minnesota River Bridge will include a “pedestrian trail” to accommodate walkers and bikers across the Minnesota River. This is great news for folks commuting across the Minnesota River, as the nearest year-round crossing of the river is seven miles downstream at I-494.  There’s a catch, though. The Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) […]

Samatar Crossing

Samatar Crossing Now Open for Engagement

Samatar Crossing is now open, a bike/ped path bridging the Cedar/Riverside and Downtown East neighborhoods together. This alone is a nice step forward to engage with each other’s neighbors. “This is saying to our Somali population, to our new American population, ‘Yes you are part of this city, you matter and we want you here,’” said Minneapolis […]

The Kellogg Bridge Protected Bike Lanes

Have you ridden the protected bike lanes that already exist on the Kellogg / 3rd Street bridge connecting Saint Paul’s Lowertown and Dayton’s Bluff neighborhoods? No, me neither. In fact, they are closed on both ends because they’re actually just barriers to keep cars from using the entire, structurally insufficient bridge. Is there any reason […]

The Stillwater Bridge Story, Part Five

To Build a Bridge Several years ago, I wrote a four part series about the story of the Stillwater Bridge across the St. Croix River. Part 1 covered the  project from 1950s promises to build a high bridge and get traffic well away from downtown up to the point the original iteration of the 1980s proposal was […]