Chart of the Day – Bridges in Fair or Poor Condition
Today’s Charts of the Day deal with the state of Minnesota’s Bridges. Source: MnDOT Annual Transportation Performance Report 2012
Category: Bridges
The Lower Bridge to St. Anthony
The Lower Bridge used to cross the Mississippi between 10th Avenue in Minneapolis and 2nd Avenue in old Saint Anthony. The bridge was built in 1874 as part of the Minneapolis and Saint Anthony merger agreement. This iron truss structure had a 17-foot roadway and sidewalks on both sides. Construction on a new 10th Avenue […]
Final Design for Stillwater Bridge may Exceed Budget
Announced plan includes 8-lane lift bridge, Callatrava-designed gusset suspension Oak Park Heights, MN – Imagine speeding across a brand new Stillwater lift bridge, only inches from the pristine waters of the Saint Croix. This bit of science fiction may soon become science fact, according to the final plans for the new Stillwater bridge crossing. At […]
The Non-Motorized Bottleneck: 15th Avenue SE
After reading Prescott Morrill’s great article on the continual growth of the Minneapolis bicycling population, I was initially shocked at certain count levels in specific areas. The counts in the Bike Walk Twin Cities study were within a 2-hour time period during evening rush (4pm – 6pm), and occurred in a week timeframe in mid-September. […]
A Glimpse of Biking Network Effects
Recently I’ve become the steward of an amazing and rich set of non-motorized transportation data through work with Bike Walk Twin Cities (BWTC), a local non-profit administering the federal Nonmotorized Transportation Pilot Program (NTPP), since 2007 (part of the SAFETEA_LU legislation). This $28M pilot program, awarded to 4 communities around the country and luckily our […]
Utilizing the Space Beneath Bridges – Some More Examples
I want to thank Reuben for posting Utilizing the Space Beneath Bridges Since I cannot put images in comments, I will post these as further examples, from Borough Market, London, Brixton, and the Darling Harbour, Sydney, respectively. The first three pictures are under railway bridges, the last a freeway bridge.
Improving Community through Progressive Approaches to Construction Mitigation
(Re)building urban infrastructure is expensive. But consider, too, the intangible costs to local businesses and residents during construction.
Stillwater Lift Bridge Closes; World Doesn’t End
In a taste of what the world would be like if a new boondoggle St. Croix River Bridge were never built, the Stillwater Lift Bridge closed on September 10 for a 3-month rehabilitation project. Thus far, the world has not ended. It should be remembered that one of the key arguments for the new bridge project […]
The Fall and Rise of the I-35W Mississippi River Bridge – Part 8: Policy Implications
Unlike bridges, transportation networks are seldom “fracture critical”. While the Interstate Highway System did what it could to sever local streets and channelize traffic onto fewer, larger, limited access link to achieve economies of scale and higher speeds and throughputs and the expense of redundancy, there was enough remaining redundancy to ensure that this one […]
The Fall and Rise of the I-35W Mississippi River Bridge – Part 7: Replacement
The replacement bridge cost $251 million, funded almost entirely by federal government. We can debate whether the federal government should have paid for it (it was originally built with 90 percent federal contributions, 10 percent state, but matches recently are much more balanced), since most traffic using the Bridge both originated in and is destined […]