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 […]
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) […]
“Meet a Roundabout” is a new series of posts about roundabouts in the Twin Cities area that are improving traffic efficiency and safety. Posts include pictures and video of the roundabout and a history of how it came to be. This is the third post in the series. On Saturday, I drove my father to […]
I have previously written about what a fantastic urban bikeway the Bruce Vento Trail is. My family and I continue to use it frequently, including my now 5 year old daughter on her own two-wheeler. However, there are some major safety issues. At intersections we would like the travel of the bicycle to remain parallel […]
From the worst — a concrete span caged in with chain-link fence — to the best (read for yourself!), our urban pedestrian bridges earn mixed marks.
The “High Bridge” is best known as an iconic place for photographs of Saint Paul’s downtown, either as a symbol framing the city or as a place to take pictures of the city. But it’s also a key transportation corridor for people on the West Side and West End, a half-mile link between two historic […]
After material delays and over 6 months and $2M in the making, the Nicollet-Boom Island bridge is open again! In one way, it’s just a footbridge. We had a neighborhood one growing up in Rochester. I don’t remember much of it other than being a 10-year old and using it as a quick shortcut to get […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]