National Bike to Work Week is coming up and, for once, Saint Paul has something to celebrate. We passed a bike plan back in March and already we have three potential bikeway projects up for public discussion. We’ve moved from having public meetings about plans (many of which never got implemented) to having meetings about […]
Macalester-Groveland, West End, Downtown 13.4 Miles September 20, 2014 There are sales galore in Mac-Groveland on this beautiful Saturday. I made two stops on the same block of Palace Avenue in Mac-Groveland today, both for ornamentation so unusual they could (and may still) be recognized on the “Quirky Saint Paul” page of this blog. First, […]
Much has been written over the past year on the upcoming reconstruction of the Hennepin/Lyndale commons area just outside downtown Minneapolis, to be done later this year. Today’s Map of the Day looks back at the proposal for I-94 in the commons area from 1957. It comes from the study report “Freeways in Minnneapolis” conducted […]
This Sunday, Saint Paul’s Pioneer Press published an article about how ballgames at the new CHS Field may effect downtown Saint Paul in regards to total parking capacity. Although the article quotes Mayor Chris Coleman saying, “a recent study shows there is as much as four times the amount of parking required to accommodate fans,” the article continues […]
A debate exists online and perhaps in real life over whether or not we ought to close Portland Avenue through the new, not-yet built or even designed or paid for Downtown East Commons in Minneapolis. Many smart people do not want to close Portland Avenue. Others think closing Portland Avenue would be just fine. A […]
Protected bicycle lanes were installed on the Plymouth Avenue bridge while it was undergoing repairs in 2013. Since that time the bridge has seen an 81% increase in bicycle traffic; quite the increase indeed. How are we to interpret this? On the one hand it is obviously a success in that riders clearly have chosen […]
I previously wrote about the horrors that make up Lasalle Avenue, arguably downtown Minneapolis’s worst street (in a post the thesis of which the jack-booted totalitarians of the editorial board insisted be changed from an interrogatory to a declaration). I’m sure all (7?) who read it thought to themselves, “that’s okay because all of the […]
Next* summer, Hennepin County will be reconstructing Washington Avenue S from Hennepin Avenue to 5th Avenue in Downtown Minneapolis. And to the glee of Twin Cities urbanists, it will have a cycle track, with bike paths on each side of the street raised above the roadway. Since this cycle track is a bit of a first for […]
(Editor’s Note: There’s another streets.mn post today about the Downtown East Commons park that covers many of these same points and describes the process a little more thoroughly, and so you could probably consider this post to be a wacky spin on the first. We’re going to publish both at the same time.) Earlier this […]
I enjoy a good Christmas Market. It’s fun to wander through the booths looking at crafts and talking to other shoppers and shopkeepers (who are usually the craftsfolk responsible for the creations we’re oogling). The wooden toys that are often in abundance are my favorite, topped only by the abundance of treats from homemade stroopwafels to gelato […]