In my recent streets.mn article, “Want Equitable Cities? We’ll Need More Women in Transportation Planning,” I argued that women’s under-representation in transportation planning and policy making leads to the creation of urban spaces that fail to meet the needs of girls and women. I ended the article with a bold question: What would cities look […]
The majority of people who use public transit in the United States are women, yet transportation planners and engineers are predominantly men. The underrepresentation of women in planning has created cities in which women’s needs are not met. This begs the question, what would public spaces and transportation look like if women had a greater role in […]
Most of my trips to the Mall of America aren’t to the actual mall but rather to the transit station for getting on a bus or train. For over half a year, however, I’ve made an effort to avoid using Mall of America Station, going so far as to walk from 28th Avenue Station to […]
The Climate Action and Resilience Plan (CARP) recently passed by the St. Paul City Council is an excellent, and necessary, first step to move St. Paul toward a sustainable future. You can read the plan here. Making the plan’s vision a reality will require developing many specifics that the plan does not flesh out. It’s […]
A wave of faster limited stop transit services will arrive in the next few years. The Orange Line BRT (I-35W Minneapolis-Burnsville, replacing Route 535) is fully funded and construction is underway. The B Line (overlaid on Route 21 Selby-Lake), D Line (overlaid on Route 5 Chicago-Fremont), E Line (overlaid on Route 6 Southdale-Hennepin-4th Street SE), […]
I’m proud to say I’m a second-generation St. Paul resident – not that I’ve known that for a long time. I was introduced to St. Paul when I started my bachelor’s degree at Hamline University, nestled comfortably in the Midway. It was only then my father first told me stories of his childhood growing up […]
Carol Becker is right about one thing in her September 18 opinion piece in the StarTribune (“Let’s Talk About What Density Really Is“): Having 150- to 250-unit apartment buildings spaced a half mile apart or more, with little in between, is not functional density. That’s it, though; the rest of the opinion piece is, well, […]
During the NCAA Final Four, Nicollet Mall achieved what the planners had only dreamed of. It was a packed, vibrant hive of pedestrian activation with visitors shooting hoops, dining outside and even riding a Ferris wheel. The festivities ceded the 24-foot-wide bus lanes to pedestrians, and the activities and outdoor dining attracted crowds. Months later, […]
I was walking through the skyway near Nicollet Mall on Monday and watching the backed up traffic below. Single occupancy fossil fuel vehicles, car commuters, were “blocking the box” and preventing buses full of other commuters from getting home on time. The flow of pedestrians at every signal cycle was more than the number of […]
Hey! It’s been a while, huh? We are out of spring and well into summer, and our project finally is getting into the swing of things. I owe y’all a few updates. When we last left off, we were concerned about what type of accessory dwelling unit (ADU) was possible on our property. So, we […]