Now that Joe Biden is president-elect, he must ask Congress to include a rail infrastructure package in any upcoming coronavirus relief bill. For the sake of the economy—and the climate—any economic relief bill must fund rail infrastructure investments at a massive scale. The United States has underinvested in passenger rail for decades, leaving our country […]
In my previous post I discussed rail-trails, which are abandoned railroad right-of-ways repurposed as trails. The Twin Cities has many of these, but the region also has several so-called rail-with-trail corridors. Rail-with-trails are trails alongside active rail lines. They provide a safe path for people, deterring trespassing on railroad property while still allowing train movements, […]
For several decades, railroads have abandoned many miles of track in the United States due to several factors including redundant routes, bankruptcies, mergers and significant government investment in roads that made shipping freight by rail less competitive than by truck. While some railroad right-of-ways have disappeared from redevelopment, others have been converted to trails that […]
In a few weeks, the Robert Piram Regional Trail will officially open between Saint Paul and South Saint Paul. Here’s why it just might be the Twin Cities cycling community’s new favorite trail.
Amtrak’s Empire Builder, the only intercity rail service in Minnesota, will be reduced from daily to tri-weekly service beginning in October due to the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. I decided to take it one more time before the cuts went into effect, as there’s no way of knowing how long it’ll be before daily […]
Every day at The Overhead Wire we collect news about cities and send the links to our email list. At the end of the week we take some of the most popular stories and post them to Greater Greater Washington, a group blog similar to streets.mn that focuses on urban issues in the D.C. region. […]
The third of a three-part series detailing the rapid transit and regional rail requirements for the Twin Cities to become a transit-oriented, climate-neutral metropolitan region.
Part one of a three-part series detailing the rapid transit and regional rail requirements for the Twin Cities to become a transit-oriented, climate-neutral region.
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Public transportation policy and funding in Minnesota over the past several years – if not decades – has focused on roads, bridges and airports. As Minnesota’s population changes, these modes alone cannot satisfy all of our transportation needs. The time has come for investment in a truly multi-modal transportation system. Many Midwestern states have invested […]
A few months ago, I was privileged to be a guest lecturer for a colleague’s environmental sociology course at the UW-La Crosse. For those unfamiliar, La Crosse, Wisconsin is one of the larger small cities in the region. It’s a city with a metro area of about 130,000 people located in a magnificent spot on […]