New Transportation Law Hopes to get Minnesotans Moving
Eight things you should know about the historic transportation bill and how it will affect drivers, cyclists, train users and walkers throughout Minnesota.
Tag Archives: gas tax
National Links: Transit and Housing
National Links examines why transit matters: in where we work, in the urgency to coordinate transit and housing, in the need for federal funding.
National Links: The Commerce Clause and Exclusionary Zoning
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. […]
What Does Greta Thunberg Want?
If you have a pulse, you can’t have missed the demonstrations that Swedish schoolgirl Greta Thunberg has been organizing around the world. Whether you call it Global Warming, Climate Change, or, lately, the Climate Emergency, our changing climate is what she is organizing schoolchildren globally to protest about on Fridays. Most people have a favorable […]
Sunday Summary – April 14, 2019
Final Four? Check. April snowstorm? Check. Taxes filed? Check. Sunday Summary? Yup, here it is: Roads A History of Minnesota’s Interstates, Part Two by Monte Castleman, “is the second part of the history of Interstate Highways in Minnesota. Part One covered the early plans and conceptions of the interstate system, from the 1930s to the Interstate […]
Why You Should Oppose a Gas Tax Increase
There are many reasons to oppose Tim Walz’s proposed gas tax increase. When a DFL governor last tried to increase the gas tax in 2015, Charles Marohn of Strong Towns wrote two excellent pieces detailing all the ways that The Minnesota Department of Transportation’s road building policies are hurting Minnesota’s cities and towns, fueling suburbanization […]
Chart of the Day: Gas Taxes Around the World
Via Barry Ritholz’s blog, here’s a chart showing the US Federal gas tax relative to other nations: Ritholz cites US Chamber of Commerce pressure to increase the Federal gas tax, but also the Congressional dysfunction that makes such an increase unlikely. Here’s a quote from his conclusion: This may be a symptom of national […]
The Gas Tax is Too Damn Low
The price of gasoline in the Twin Cities is very low right now, averaging $2.22 a gallon across the metro. Cheap gas is a short-term benefit to people who drive cars, but is horrible for just about everyone in the long term. Cheap gas incentivizes people to drive more miles, make more solo trips instead […]
Chart of the Day: Road Funding by Source
Via the Strong Towns Podcast, here’s a chart from a report called “Who Pays for Roads?” by a public policy think tank called The Frontier Group. Note that this shows all levels of government: Here’s what the report says about the chart: By the early 2010s, road user fees accounted for less than half of current highway […]
A Twin Cities Paving Moratorium
Last Wednesday (February 4) I attended a public presentation by Ramsey County engineers for a proposed redesign of the Randolph and Lexington Avenue intersection. They are proposing to spend a million and a half dollars to purchase four properties on the northeast corner of the intersection and bulldoze them to make space for a dedicated […]