Joseph Totten • September 24, 2020 Sweeny’s Saloon has a parking lot across Dale Street from the bar. While COVID-19 might reduce the bar’s crowding, it should not prevent safety improvements! My parents and I live relatively close to each other, only about a 3 block walk separates my apartment and their townhome. As such, when my printer is giving me […]
John Edwards • September 21, 2020 It was a moment that forever shaped the way I think about street reconstructions. A mom speaking at a public meeting, holding her child, asking the city’s public works department for a street with sidewalk space to push a stroller. Even more than that, she wanted a street designed with aspiration for the future – […]
Dan Marshall • September 17, 2020 Many suburbs have retrofitted bicycle infrastructure, usually so that vulnerable users won’t slow automotive throughput. Along the way, many of these projects have spawned tunnels, which are always fun.
Alex Schieferdecker • August 31, 2020 On Monday, August 3rd, the Metropolitan Council and a coalition of groups supporting the METRO Blue Line Extension (also known as Bottineau LRT) made a major announcement. After years of fruitless negotiations with the Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) railroad over an agreement to run light-rail trains in their right-of-way, the public partners announced that […]
Monte Castleman • August 13, 2020 This is Part Four in a loosely-related series of the evolution of retail and parking issues. Part One covered the alleged dislike of people for parking ramps and why it’s causing problems for the Shops of West End. Part Two covered the evolution of regional retail from downtown to lifestyle centers. Part Three compared several […]
Planted medians are one of those “nice things” people always seem to be referring to in snarky social media posts. They bring visual relief to people near them and inspire traffic calming. We all know this. But where there’s soil, there’s also a place for weed seeds to fall, and those seeds grow into plants […]
Yesterday, we received the dismal news that the promised route for the Bottineau Blue Line light rail extension was only a dream, and that dream is now officially scuttled. What is more troubling is that $129 million in local, county, metro, and state funds were spent on engineering and planning the project when rail company […]
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. […]
Following the reprehensible conduct of police in the treatment and death of George Floyd on May 25th, 2020, peaceful protests became agitated by subsequent aggression and retaliation by police in riot gear. Some strayed from the initial focus of the peaceful protestors upon the Minneapolis Police Department Third Precinct building, setting fire to neighborhood buildings […]
The Old ShakopeeRoad/98th Street Corridor is one of the east-west thoroughfares of Bloomington. It’s also an outdated roadway. Several segments are a four-lane death road, the sidewalks are narrow and buckling, and traffic typically goes 5 to 10 miles per hour over the speed limit. The route has several high-traffic destinations, including the Mall of […]