‘Good Enough’ Isn’t Good Enough on Summit Avenue
St. Paul’s most popular bike route is already halfway to achieving greatness. If we invested in some cycling upgrades, the payoff would be huge.
Category: Infrastructure
A History of Minnesota’s Highways: Part Four
This is Part Four of an ongoing series of the history of Minnesota’s trunk highway system. Part One covered the early days of government and privately built roads. Part Two covered the events leading up to the establishment of the trunk highway system in 1920. Part Three covered the coming of the U.S. numbered highways […]
Abolish Transit Fares
Abolish Transit Fares. Everyone stands to gain. Transit Riders will enjoy a heavier wallet. A few extra bucks every day to spend as they choose, not as they must. Service on non-rapid routes will speed up because bus drivers will no longer have to act as cashiers and security guards. Drivers, especially suburban commuters, […]
Edina’s Many Roundabouts
The City of Edina could teach fully developed cities like Minneapolis and St. Paul about the recently rediscovered wisdom of implementing roundabouts.
Unsafe Streets Are Inequitable: For Vulnerable Road Users, “Doing Everything Right” Isn’t Enough
On July 30, 2015, I was riding in the bike lane of Marshall Avenue, commuting home from work, when I was hit by a car driver turning left (midblock, into a parking lot). I am only just this month—May 2018—settling with the driver’s insurance company. Here are just some of things that have to go […]
Winter Walking & The City of Minneapolis Maintenance Study
The long-anticipated City of Minneapolis’ Winter Maintenance Study is being presented to the City Council’s Transportation and Public Works committee on Tuesday. The Study looks far afield for solutions, analyzing municipal winter maintenance responsibility across the country, but without ever evaluating the efficacy of either our current system or the ones studied. Despite its importance […]
Park and Portland Restriping
Park and Portland, as you may have heard, are in the process of being restriped to add a peak-hours-only transit lane between Lake St and 14th St. This isn’t covered in the web presence for the $239 million project, but it is happening. At the time I’m writing this, Park has been restriped, and Portland […]
Map Monday Bonus: Saint Paul’s Sand Rock Tunnel Sewers
Via Dana DeMaster and Than Tibbets’ Twitter conversation, here is a map of a mysterious and unknown subterranean engineering feature in Saint Paul, Minnesota’s weirdest city in some ways. Here is your map. The “sand rock tunnels” are in yellow. [.pdf is here.] The initial query came from yet another West 7th Street rumor: […]
A History of Minnesota’s Highways: Part Three
The Construction Programs of the 1920s Previously, Part 1 of this series discussed some early roads in Minnesota’s pioneer era and the privately maintained auto trails in the early motoring era. Part 2 discussed the generation-long ramp-up of state involvement in highway construction, culminating with the inauguration of a system both owned and maintained by […]
The Privilege of the Minneapolis Comprehensive Plan
My name is Carol Becker and I drive an automobile. I feel like I am coming out of the closet by saying this. I don’t drive a car because I especially like driving. I drive because I don’t have a choice. The proposed Comprehensive Plan does not support a balanced transportation system where the needs […]