Tag Archives: Minnesota

Northern Lights Express

Local View: Arguments against proposed NLX train are ‘insincere’

• June 23, 2022

Also, across the U.S. and around the world, the public and private sectors are investing billions in building and/or expanding passenger-train networks. Passenger trains are bringing their communities, especially transit-underserved communities, numerous benefits. These include the development of businesses in and around stations, which attracts and retains young professionals, many of whom prefer public transit to private automobiles. This all reduces regional economic disparities.

Map Monday: Population Change in Minnesota, 2017-2018

• February 10, 2020

Here are four interesting maps from Minneapolis map guru and sometime streets.mn writer Scott Shaffer, posted on Twitter the other day. They show population change trends in Minnesota by county over the last year. Check them out:   The takeaway? The metro is growing, and that goes double for the core cities. Anyone see any […]

Lakeville

A Lukewarm Defense of Lakeville

• January 29, 2020

Your author has spent a good deal of time in Lakeville. My wife grew up there, and it’s where my in-laws still live. In fact, our family of four lived there for a summer in between selling and buying a house. My father-in-law runs a small business there, and I’ve even spent a number of […]

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What Does Greta Thunberg Want?

• October 7, 2019

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 […]

Highway 100 History

A History of Highway 100 Part One: Overview

• June 12, 2019

Previously I covered the history of Minnesota’s trunk highway system. At it’s inception in 1920 the system contained what still is the core of the system. But the new governor, Floyd. B. Olson, championed a massive increase in size and scope of the state government, including a proposal to vastly increase the mileage of the […]

Why You Should Oppose a Gas Tax Increase

• April 9, 2019

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 […]

Relief Map

A History of Minnesota’s Interstates, Part One

• March 13, 2019

Previously I’ve written a six part series of Minnesota’s trunk highway system. Now it’s time to go back periodically for topics that were skipped as outside the main story arc, or that were deserving of separate articles. One of these is the story of our interstate system. The Dawn of the Dream As late as […]

Lrtgovernmentplaza

A Back-Of-The-Napkin Proposal For State Transit Funding

• December 19, 2018

After a midterm election that saw DFL candidates sweep the statewide offices and make massive gains in the suburbs, transportation funding is in the air once again in St. Paul. To mark the occasion, a coalition consisting mainly of business groups has assembled to push for more money to go to transit. The group, which […]

Highway 61 and Main Street North Branch, 1950s, looking east

Along Old Highway 61 to Duluth, A Phototour, Part Two

• December 12, 2018

This is Part Two of a phototour of Old Highway 61 to Duluth. Previously we covered St. Paul to White Bear Lake, now we continue north at Forest Lake. Forest Lake Early on the cutoff to where the road from Minneapolis met the road from St. Paul to Duluth moved from White Bear Lake to […]