Peter Schmitt • September 29, 2021 Joy. Pure joy. Community. Safety. Relaxation. Riding down the middle of Hennepin Ave S, surrounded by 100 of my closest and/or newest friends. All ages, abilities, and an incredible array of bike types. We even had the first zero emission E Line bus join us on a bike trailer! Honestly, I haven’t felt this outside […]
Eric Ecklund • September 27, 2021 The Blue Line Extension hit a major roadblock when BNSF Railway refused to allow part of the light rail route on their right-of-way. This means delays and a higher cost to the project, but it’s also been an opportunity to reroute the light rail through North Minneapolis. What hasn’t been talked about however, is the […]
Pat Thompson • September 23, 2021 I spent three mornings in the last week volunteering to wear a yellow vest and hold a fluorescent poster board, just down the street from my local elementary school. The sign said “SLOW You’re Almost There,” and it was addressed to parents who were driving their children to school. As they approached the curve where […]
The way St. Paul Public Works and the Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) design pedestrian refuge islands is awful. It’s symbolic of how oblivious and uncaring they are about pedestrian and bicycle crashes. It’s also one of many indicators that little has changed in this state during the past 20 years. Consider these pedestrian refuge […]
Sarah and Jerry Shannon • September 1, 2021 Excerpt from Sparked: George Floyd, Racism and the Progressive Illusion edited by Walter R. Jacobs, Wendy Thompson Taiwo and Amy August. Reproduced with permission from the Minnesota Historical Society Press. On June 12, 2020, the Minneapolis City Council voted unanimously to disband the police department and replace it with another model, an extraordinary step. Like most white, […]
Jeff Wood • July 28, 2021 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. […]
Monte Castleman • June 18, 2021 As the 2021 construction season moves into high gear, I thought I’d try something different and write about a few things that have gone on around the state the past year, interesting enough to present here but probably not deserving of their own full article. The St. Francis Highway 47 Safety Project by St. Francis […]
Pat Thompson • June 16, 2021 After the I-35W bridge was rebuilt, there has never been a chance for the people who live adjacent to highway 280 to say what they think about the livability of having the relatively sudden incursion of a permanent interstate next to them. Now MnDOT plans to increase the speed limit on highway 280 to 60 mph and in 2024, remove the last traffic signal. Does MnDOT care about livability, as they say they do?
Jeff Wood • June 9, 2021 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. […]
Andy Singer • May 6, 2021 From the FHWA website:“The Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices for Streets and Highways or MUTCD defines the standards used by road managers nationwide to install and maintain traffic control devices on all public streets, highways, bikeways and private roads open to public travel”. It is “a compilation of national standards for all traffic control […]