I’ve appreciated the streets.mn blogging about Central Corridor coulda-woulda-shoulda’s. Other than signal-timing, I think it’s fair to say they mainly relate to pedestrian needs. Well, pedestrian needs have gotten short shrift to date for the SWLRT West Lake Station (also future Midtown terminus) – although it may not appear that way at first glance. Unfortunately, until now, […]
I gave this presentation to the Lowry Hill Neighborhood Association (LHNA) Annual Meeting in May 2014. Several people requested that it be made available to the general public, so I have created this brief overview for Streets.MN in anticipation of a Hennepin-Lyndale Reconstruction Project Open House Monday August 4th, 2014 at 6:30 PM at the Walker Art Center. Special […]
After many decades as a sad parking crater, the eastern side of Downtown Minneapolis is being rebuilt. The next few years will see the completion of the new Minnesota Vikings Stadium, a two-ish block public-ish park, a two-ish block set of matching office towers filled by Wells Fargo employees, a block-sized ~1,600 space parking ramp, […]
Streets belong to you…and me…and everybody else; streets are public spaces – like parks – and might just be our most undervalued and underutilized community resources. Northfield and Rice County are beginning to plan a reconstruction project on Woodley Street and this particular street is a golden opportunity to add value and change the conversation, too. What […]
By U.S. standards we have fairly good pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure around the Twin Cities. For many years Minneapolis was ranked number two in the nation and quite proud of it. In 2011 we even jumped up to number one briefly. How times change. We were back to our comfortable number two in 2012, the […]
For the folks who missed the West 29th Street Reconstruction Open House in May, you missed the ultimate rarity: a public meeting in which everyone seems to agree on something! 29th might in fact be the most pot-holed and least attractive street in the city, but this didn’t seem to sway folks’ decidedly pro-pedestrian enthusiasm. […]
The Minnesota Department of Public Transportation has released a draft of its new five-year Strategic Highway Safety Plan (SHSP) at http://www.dot.state.mn.us/safetyplan/pdf/2014_SHSP_060914.pdf I encourage people to read the plan and comment on it. The public only has until July 8 to make comments. Comments should be sent to [email protected] Below are my own comments. They’re super wonky […]
St. Anthony Village is an interesting suburban town. It has an excellent school district. It has pretty good “bones” – a solid grid system which has worked for centuries. Not much of the twisting, un-navigable dead-ends found in a traditional post WWII suburb: St. Anthony Village has sidewalks(!). And the intersections even have stuff like […]
Some of my recent posts have seemed to bemoan some of Minneapolis’ public realm or proposed projects, asking for better. I intended to shake that up, but I couldn’t swing it. Instead, I’ll keep the theme going by bringing up a place near and dear to me as a U of M alum – Dinkytown. […]
If you grew up in Minnesota, you may have heard the story of Saint Paul’s narrow streets—In downtown, the streets were so tight that the city eventually decided to shave off the fronts of buildings downtown, in order to make the streets wider. Today, however, many of downtown Saint Paul’s streets are too wide, or […]