In honor of International Car-Free Day (September 22), here’s a few recent cartoons on the subject of transportation and urban planning. A lot of folks, including myself would like to see cities and towns get rid of parking requirements for new building construction. The goals are to reduce traffic and increase density and the supply […]
Not Everyone Lives the Same Way You Do, and That’s OK
People who have spent their entire lives living a suburban, car-centric life cannot necessarily understand what an urban, car-light lifestyle is like. It’s not a hellscape of driving in circles forever trying to park. It’s the opposite of that. A car-light life is different for every person. For me, it means walking to my friends’ […]
National Links: More Gender Equity in Toronto Planning
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. […]
Dispatch from Car-Free MSP Day
My 5am chariot awaits! @MoveMpls @MplsChamber @jweinhagen #carfreemsp pic.twitter.com/2BmLkctI64 — Andrea Carver (@AMCarver72) September 19, 2019 Andrea Carver, of Becker, started her car-free journey at 4:46 a.m. when she took the Northstar Commuter Rail to Minneapolis. At 6:10 a.m., she took the Blue Line light-rail train from Target Field Station to Nicollet, then walked on […]
Rebuttal to a Rebuttal: Let’s Talk Functional Density
Carol Becker is right about one thing in her September 18 opinion piece in the StarTribune (“Let’s Talk About What Density Really Is“): Having 150- to 250-unit apartment buildings spaced a half mile apart or more, with little in between, is not functional density. That’s it, though; the rest of the opinion piece is, well, […]
Sunday Summary – September 22, 2019
It has been a very quiet week here on streets.mn. You could help us have busier weeks in the future by writing for us…about your experience at the Climate Strike last week, the latest decision/project/development in your community, or how Fall is a great season for streets on foot, bike, scooter, or transit. Here’s last […]
Walking All the Streets of Loring Park, Day 1
Big houses, bigger apartment buildings, really big churches. Even though there is no direct cause-and-effect linkage, it makes sense that a neighborhood with some dense housing also has a cathedral, a basilica, and four other churches that are of similar grandeur. I saw half those churches on my first of two days walking the Loring […]
Report Ranks Mpls.-St. Paul’s Walkable Urban Spaces 4th for Social Equity
It’s a bit of a head-scratcher, but a recent report puts Minneapolis-St. Paul’s walkable urban places fourth among the nation’s 30 biggest cities for social equity. Social Equity Index rankings aren’t the main focus of “Foot Traffic Ahead: Ranking Walkable Urbanism in America’s Largest Metros,” but it’s the subcategory where the Twin Cities shine the […]
Bloomington’s Comprehensive Plan: Forward 2040
Bloomington’s 2040 Plan, titled “Forward 2040” was officially adopted by the city on Aug 5, 2019. Unlike in Minneapolis, it passed with little notice and little controversy. Here are a few points that caught my attention. Housing and Diversity Although the need for more high density housing is acknowledged like in the Minneapolis plan, here […]
Meet a Roundabout: U.S. 61 in Forest Lake
“Meet a Roundabout” is a new series of posts about roundabouts in the Twin Cities area that are improving traffic efficiency and safety. Posts include pictures and video of the roundabout and a history of how it came to be. This is the third post in the series. On Saturday, I drove my father to […]
Sunday Summary – September 15, 2019
One of the best things about Fall in Minnesota is apples – local apples. Delicious (but not Red Delicious®) apples progressing over the next month or so, starting with State Fair (a little too tart and squeaky for me) and First Kiss® (a juicy tangy winner in the early season apples) along to Zestar!® and […]
Report: Electric and Plug-In Cars Have 21 Percent Fewer Lifetime Emissions Than Gas Ones
Recently, I wrote about the usage emissions of gas (internal combustion engine), hybrid, and electric vehicles. When we only look at emissions out of the vehicle tailpipe or electric plant smokestack, electric vehicles are clearly the cleaner option for the marginal mile of travel. But as several commenters noted, we really need to look at […]
Downtown Apartment Areas Deserve Better Bus Service
Thousands of new apartments have been built on the fringes of downtown Minneapolis in the North Loop, the Guthrie Theatre area (Downtown East) and across the river in Old St. Anthony. These new residents ought to be prime candidates for bus service, but Metro Transit has made no service changes or improvements to try and […]
The New Hennepin Bus Lanes
Earlier this year Metro Transit and the City of Minneapolis did a demonstration of rush hour bus lanes on Hennepin Avenue between Franklin Avenue and Uptown Transit Station. Bus service has always been extremely slow due to morning backups from I-94 and afternoon backups from Lagoon Avenue. The demo worked just fine, but relied on […]
Opportunities to Extend Bruce Vento Trail Westward
I’d like to talk about the most fun part of my morning commute: biking along Pennsylvania Ave between Rice St and Lafayette. And by fun I mean exhilarating. And by exhilarating I mean terrifying. When I moved away from the East Side, I did so knowing that getting to work was going to be quite […]
National Links: The 30 Minute Constant
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. […]
Review: Lime Gen 3 Electric Scooter 🛴
One sunny day, I saw one of Lime’s new Gen 3 electric scooters parked on the plaza near the Guthrie Theater. Lime introduced the Gen 3 in October of 2018, but I haven’t seen any of the new scooters hitting Minneapolis streets until now. Excited to test ride the new model, I took it for […]
Como Mingling: Eyeing the Historic, Scenic Oddities of St. Paul
July 2, 2019 Merriam Park, Hamline-Midway, Como Park Living in the southwestern part of St. Paul means I almost always have to ride east, north or both, and so it was with this ride to the Como Park neighborhood. From the pause at Charles, I moved almost due north along Fry Street until Taylor Avenue, […]
Sunday Summary – September 8, 2019
Here in Northfield, from whence this Summary emanates, it is the real end of summer. Labor Day is observed here, but the Defeat of Jesse James is celebrated. The bank raid is reenacted every couple of hours, the cheese curds from the State Fair have drifted south and everyone is wearing bandannas and cowboy boots. […]
Graphic: What’s a Vehicle’s Carbon Footprint?
I recently took a test-drive in a Tesla Model 3. It was an impressive car, but the ride left me wondering: with all the electric horsepower under the hood, was it really better than a hybrid? The EPA has a dated, but functional website with all the fuel economy and energy efficiency information a driver […]