I love the University of Minnesota. With 50,000 students plus large contingents and staff, it is a city within a city, and one remarkably distinct from the rest of the Twin Cities. There’s a tremendous degree of pedestrian activity each day, particularly between class periods. The better parts of campus are highly permeable, with small […]
Last year on streets.mn, David Levinson wrote about a study which projected what accessibility in the Twin Cities might look like in 20 years under a variety of planning scenarios. I think accessibility is pretty great, and so I was very happy to get to work with David on another accessibility-focused project. “Access to Destinations: Annual […]
A new statewide poll conducted by Minnesota’s three largest Chambers of Commerce—Minneapolis, St. Paul, and TwinWest—shows for the second year in a row that support for expanding the transit system in the metro area is strong. Seventy-nine percent of respondents said that Minnesota “would benefit from having an expanded and improved public transit system, such […]
As I first started exploring Metro Transit’s bus network in college, I was struck by how much freeway mileage in the Twin Cities doesn’t carry any transit service. Having grown up near Rochester and typically only visiting or driving through the metro area a few times per year, my mental map was mostly built up […]
Of all the categories included in the Streets.mn “Best of” series, this category was the biggest blowout. With 92.2% of the votes, the winner of the award for the 2012 Best Current Multi-Million Dollar Public Works Project (by a landslide): Central Corridor LRT The eleven mile light rail project linking downtown Minneapolis with downtown St. […]
After laying dormant for 41 years, the concourse and waiting room of the Saint Paul Union Depot will reopen to the public tomorrow, Saturday, December 8th. The reopening comes after a two-year, $243 million rehabilitation of the massive building and the 33-acre site it occupies, which included $148 million in construction and renovation plus $95 […]
Just two years after the Minnesota State Senate and House of Representatives came under Republican control in the Tea Party wave of 2010, both houses flipped back to Democratic-Farmer-Labor majorities in the election this past Tuesday. This was a big surprise to local news outlets, who had expected Republicans to retain the upper hand. The […]
View Larger Map This is the busiest transit stop in the state of Minnesota, seeing about 4,300 boardings daily, though you’d never know it by looking. It’s on the south side of City Center on 7th Street and Nicollet Mall in Minneapolis, and lacks most of the amenities you’d expect to find at a location […]
I first went to Toronto when I was 12. I had been following the city for a few years, having written to the city’s economic development / tourism office asking for reading materials as a young wannabe planner the summer before (along with about 50 other North American cities, whose addresses I obtained from the […]
Metro Transit officially unveiled their first new Siemens-built light-rail vehicle on Wednesday, previewing what most of the Twin Cities light-rail fleet will look like just a few years from now. It also marked the first showing of vehicles with the new “METRO” branding which will be used on light rail and bus rapid transit lines […]