The Minnesota Department of Transportation is currently finishing the planning process for re-decking the Smith Avenue Bridge over the Mississippi River in Saint Paul. As part of this 2018 project, they are also repaving Smith Avenue, from Grand Avenue all the way south to Interstate 494. The Smith Avenue Bridge, also known as “The High […]
Last Thursday afternoon I was driving westbound on West 7th Street (Highway 5) in St Paul. As I approached the crossing in front of Mickey’s Diner, I saw someone crossing in the crosswalk from Mickey’s towards the bus stop on the north side. As I watched him cross, I was thinking what an awful crossing […]
There should be a complex German compound noun describing “the feeling of arriving in a new city and staring at an intersection in amazement.” I’ve felt this feeling more than once, in San Francisco, Copenhagen, and most recently in Boston, where I spent a week visiting friends and family. Boston is famously non-linear, eschewing the ubiquitous […]
Every day at The Direct Transfer 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. […]
Analyzing a Corridor Previously we went into what the warrants for signals were and went through some examples. So now let’s look at all the signals on a corridor. I picked South Lyndale Ave (with the exception of the signal at the ramp to MN 62, which is Mn/DOT operated. I’m going to cheat and just […]
On May 23rd Erin Durham was killed while trying to cross Maryland Avenue at Greenbrier Street. Just a few days later on June 7th Channy Kek was killed in a crosswalk trying to cross Cayuga in the same St. Paul neighborhood. The Payne-Phalen Transportation Committee hosted a community forum on June 9th to get information […]
Early this week, after five days in critical care at Regions Hospital with major head trauma, Erin Elizabeth Dunham succumbed to her injuries and died. Her story is a terrible but predictable tragedy: a woman tried to cross the street in a legal marked crosswalk when one driver stopped for her but was hit by another […]
The City of St. Louis Park has a problem — a pretty good problem to have. They have two spectacular east-west trails, running through pleasant natural corridors, on their own rights-of-way. Those trails are the North Cedar Lake Regional Trail and the Cedar Lake Trail (this is often called the “Greenway”, since it becomes the […]
Here’s the week’s posts from streets.mn read, digested, sorted and summarized for your reading convenience. This week news of the Southwest Light Rail cost increases seize writers’ attention as well as much attention to some biking and walking issues, along with the usual roundup of charts, maps and videos. Southwest Light Rail Headlines this week […]
The City of Minneapolis is asking citizens for input on the signals at major intersections of Hiawatha Avenue. Yesterday evening, when the “smart” pavement sensor recognized my car and gave me a green light, I passed a pedestrian stranded on a porkchop island who should have had a Walk signal as part of that light phase. As […]