The Twin Cities region has been slow to establish transitways compared to peer cities. While there have been a few new transitways since our first major transit project was completed, the region has a long way to go and will likely need major funding changes for more routes to be completed and in a reasonable […]
Walking All the Streets of Northeastern Jordan
Jordan is a mid-sized neighborhood, about 25 miles of walking, and I had already toured the western and southeastern thirds. One more segment let me see the rest of the places where folks live, study, work, and enjoy nature. I began at the corner of Fremont and Lowry Avenues North and wound my way back to that point as […]
Chart of the Day: US Rail Transit Ridership per Mile
Here’s a chart from a new book called Trains, Buses, People: An Opinionated Atlas of US Transit. It shows ridership per mile for every US metro area. (TC Metro Transit is highlighted): Third highest LRT ridership density is not bad. Thanks Green Line! Here’s a fun bit from the author’s critique of the Dallas LRT […]
Minneapolis Does Not Need More Police
Lyndale neighborhood, the only place I’ve lived and known as home in Minnesota, hosts the Fifth Precinct of the Minneapolis Police Department three blocks north of my apartment and garden on Nicollet Avenue. There is a community room meeting the corner of 31st Street with floor-to-ceiling windows on three sides, an architectural manifestation of the […]
Chart of the Day: Percent of Income Dedicated to Rent, 2009 – 2016
In case you missed the chart debate that broke out on Twitter yesterday, here are two highlights. The first is this chart, shared by Tony Damiano, (allegedly) showing a growing divergence between real wages and rents over the last two decades in the Twin Cities metro: It’s a chart that looks familiar to me, […]
Chart of the Day: Urban Density in Minneapolis & Other US Cities, 1900-1960
Here’s a fun chart (if blurry and too small) that shows historic trends around density and population growth in US cities, Minneapolis included. It’s from a 2001 paper by the Transportation Research Board that I found online about transit and land use, comparing the US and other countries around the world. Here’s the chart, with […]
Map Monday: Minneapolis Average Rents, 1934
Here’s a cool map I recently found from a 1939 Federal FHA report called The Structure and Growth of Residential Neighborhoods in American Cities. It’s very old-school urban geography, but has a bunch of cool maps including this one: Here’s part of the text, describing the rent trends in 30s Minneapolis vs. New York City: […]
Sustainable Saint Paul? Part 2
Last month I wrote an article about the history of the Saint Paul sustainable take-out container ordinance, where it started from and where it was going as of October 2018. A quick recap: 1989: Both Minneapolis and Saint Paul created sustainable take-out container ordinances; Minneapolis started enforcing theirs right away, albeit loosely. Saint Paul’s ordinance […]
Sunday Summary – November 25, 2018
Looking ahead – join us for winter fun and fundraising at our annual Winter Fundraiser on December 19 for food, conversation and The Theater for Public Policy – get tickets here! And looking back, here’s last week, a light holiday week, on streets.mn The Quarterly Transit Report — November 2018 is Aaron Isaacs regular feature with updates on […]
Walking All the Streets of Southeastern Jordan
My first day in the Jordan neighborhood featured churches, food, public art, a community garden, and a slipform paving machine. Spoiler alert: this time there was no slipform paving machine. My route began at the southeastern corner of the neighborhood, the intersection of Emerson Avenue North and West Broadway Avenue. A chain-link fence surrounded a big […]
The Palace Theatre, St. Paul’s W. 7th Place and its Pedestrian Mall
West 7th Place in St. Paul has often been a small and cool pedestrian area for me. It’s also been a pre-event meetup place at (now closed) Wild Tymes for a concert at the X a few blocks away, or next door to it at the least desirable venue in the Twin Cities. Dating back […]
Chart of the Day: City Typology by Mobility through Time
Here’s a complex and fun chart that shows the historical evolution of global cities according to mobility type. If you go back far enough, all cities were “walking cities”, and then they started to evolve along a transit v. private mobility spectrum. This chart from the Reinventing Transport blog plots those out: As you […]
National Links: Self Driving Cars Not Coming Anytime Soon
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 DC region. […]
Here’s Some Research Backing Up Minneapolis 2040
Some Minneapolis 2040 detractors have complained that no evidence has been offered that building more housing where people want to live (i.e. “density”) is good. “I just don’t see it as a way that we would get a measurable impact, and especially from an affordability standpoint,” Ward 13 Council Member Linea Palmisano told the Star Tribune. Another […]
The Quarterly Transit Report — November 2018
Dealing with a driver shortage, and a budget deficit Few people set out to be bus drivers. They select the job because the pay and benefits are good, even though the working hours tend to be inconvenient. So when unemployment is low, Metro Transit has difficulty recruiting enough drivers to offset retirements, let alone grow […]
Sunday Summary – November 18, 2018
Thank you all who Gave to the Max for streets.mn and to those who applied to join our board. streets.mn depends on its members, event volunteers, writers, board members, and donors to support its work. Yay! And here’s last week on streets.mn: Interesting journeys To the Gulf of Minneapolis by bike with Wolfie Browender. To […]
To the Gulf of Minneapolis
July 10, 2016 Downtown, West Side 18.3 Miles I frequently look at maps of Saint Paul. Call it a “blogupational” hazard. Sometimes I’ll plan a ride with the help of Google maps. Occasionally I’ll use an official City of Saint Paul paper map. Street maps from the mid and late- 1800s to the 2010s are […]
Walking All the Streets of Western Jordan
The Jordan neighborhood in Minneapolis’s Near North community forms a herniated right triangle thanks to the role of West Broadway Avenue as its southwestern border. In the route map, the light blue tint indicates the full extent of the neighborhood. My first day’s walk was restricted to the western tip of the triangle. The darker […]
Metro Transit After Dark
It is 2am on a hot Wednesday morning. We are at 7th & Nicollet, onboard the 5 to North Minneapolis. There was a mother and their baby, seated on their stroller, playing peak-a-boo. Towards the back, four guys ran off at the last minute because someone they knew was in the area. Still, others were […]
Single Family Housing – A Waste of Space
As southwest Minneapolis takes a strong stand against density by arguing for the preservation of the “character of their neighborhood”, let’s take a look at the inefficiencies of living in a single-family house. Take me, for example. I live in south Minneapolis in a single-family house. It’s 1,800 square feet. The occupants of the house […]