Pat Thompson • October 5, 2020 Like many transit riders, I have been riding much less since the pandemic, mostly because I have been sticking closer to my home and neighborhood. (Though note: there is starting to be evidence that transit-riding is not a big contributor to COVID-19 rates.) That decrease is a personal sadness because of the lost human connections […]
The City of Minneapolis recently approved agreements with two electric scooter operators, Bird and Lyft, under the Nice Ride nonprofit banner. Under the agreements, the two operators can each deploy 1,250 scooters, with a cap on scooters in Downtown. They also require a minimum number of scooters to be available in areas lacking last-mile transit […]
This year, prior to COVID-19, Nice Ride Minnesota promised to release 2,000 new electric-assist bikes. Those bikes arrived a few weeks ago, and we got a chance to test ride them. The new blue-wheeled bikes are on a promotional pricing right now, so all of my rides have been less than a dollar. During the […]
In November of 2019, Nice Ride announced that for 2020 it was planning to add, “2,000 pedal-assist electric bikes to fleet beginning in April 2020.” The world has changed a lot since last fall, and many in the rental community were wondering if we would ever see anything electric on the streets this year. With […]
Is it me? Or is everyone who is brave enough to go outdoors these days a little friendlier, a bit relieved to see another human being? With a record number of people unemployed, and only “essential” workers (a term that makes me feel dispensable) now allowed to report to their offices or shop floors, fewer […]
This article is the story of how I ended up recording the following activities on Strava, all in one day: But before we talk about my day of skiing for four-and-a-half hours in between two two-hour bike rides, we have to talk about why that seemed like a good idea at the time. The problem […]
As I have shared before, I drive a hybrid hatchback, a 2015 Toyota Prius. To reduce my carbon footprint, I try to walk or scoot for many of my shorter trips, and I also check bus schedules for medium trips, like to a coffee shop in another neighborhood. It can be very frustrating, even living […]
[This is part of streets.mn’s “transpo convo” series, which aims to to be an oral history of getting around the Twin Cities, one person at a time.] One Friday night, my family and I had the luck of catching the Holiday bus. As we rode, we noticed other holiday lights and decorations along the route. […]
I traveled to Europe for the first time in October, basing in Amsterdam because I wanted to experience a city built for multi-modal transportation. How heartening to see the possibilities: adults of all ages cycling to work, ready rail service to nearby towns, having officers stop traffic so pedestrian throngs could cross the street. A […]
Every year I make an expedition to the Mall of America on Black Friday with no specific agenda. Living in downtown Minneapolis, I can buy an all-day Metro Transit pass for $5, saving $1.55 in gasoline, 13 pounds of carbon dioxide and a chip out of my soul. We were riding the lemon yellow light […]