I’m on a workgroup through Our Streets Mpls, and I’m asking you to show your support for safer bikeways through downtown, specifically on 9th and 10th streets. These streets were added to the Bicycle Master Plan back in 2016, but there is currently no plan or schedule for improvement. Currently, the infrastructure afforded to me […]
If you don’t know about downtown Saint Paul’s Pedro Park controversy — or even how to correctly pronounce the name “Pedro” (hint: you probably don’t) — here’s a quick summary from the recent Pioneer Press article, “Six residents quit St. Paul’s Pedro Park design committee in protest”: On Saturday, residents of several downtown St. Paul […]
Road salt eats away at concrete in multi-story parking garages in a process known as “Spalling”. Salt accelerates the rate at which water gets into cracks, causing the concrete to pull away from its Rebar reinforcement. This is what happened to the River Center parking garage in downtown Saint Paul. A section of the garage […]
A new exhibit at the Landmark Center of photographs of downtown St. Paul from 1978 has ties to the once-proposed downtown people mover that was nixed in 1980. Aaron Isaacs briefly recounted the never-built people mover’s history on this site last year. Here’s the map of the preferred route and stations from the March 1979 […]
May 21, 2016 Lowertown, Downtown 15 miles The grand and solemn Saint Paul Union Depot is a train station. Although this seems patently obvious, Union Depot in fact took a 43 year break – from 1971 until 2014 – as the train station for Saint Paul. Today, Saint Paul Union Depot is a transit hub, […]
A January 18, 2018 walk down Nicollet Mall and what used to be Nicollet Avenue and the Gateway District. Music: freemusicarchive.org/music/The_Good_China/Masters_Remastered/From_the_New_World_Theme_from_Dvoraks_9th_Symphony Bill Lindeke’s piece about the Gateway District of Minneapolis the other day (and the Super Bowl infrastructure going up) inspired me to record my walk down Nicollet on this fine day.
I’m as obsessed with Minneapolis’ lost Gateway District as anyone who hasn’t written a book on the topic, so I read with some relish the peerless local historian Larry Millett’s recent Star Tribune opinion piece: Minneapolis’ notorious Gateway District was razed almost 60 years ago. It’s time to stop mourning its loss. I came away disappointed. […]
It’s hard to find anyone who wants more billboards in downtown Minneapolis. So where is the political will coming from to advocate for them?
A few weeks ago, we learned (many of us via Twitter, and more on that later) about Metro Transit’s plans for transit access the day of the “Big Game.” We learned (via the NFL’s web page and Metro Transit’s web page) that the plan was to restrict gameday transit traffic on all of the Blue […]
Buses return to Nicollet Mall Once again it’s a pretty quiet schedule change, mostly putting the buses back on Nicollet Mall. Returning from exile on Hennepin Avenue are Routes 10, 11, 17, 18, 25 and 59. The detours worked operationally, but caused substantial ridership reductions, so hopefully riders will return over the next year or […]