One of my first articles for streets.mn was on Bloomington’s Four Lane Death Roads, (four lane undivided roads) written in response to Bill Lindeke’s introductory article on Four-Lane Death Roads. Four years later it’s time to revisit the subject with updates and additional background material. The Problem With Death Roads: Conflict Points Imagine a typical trip […]
The podcast this week is a conversation with Jim McDonough, who is a County Commissioner on the Ramsey County board representing the East Side of Saint Paul. Commissioner McDonough and I sat down in his office a few weeks ago to talk about the recent “public works test” along Maryland Avenue on Saint Paul’s East […]
It’s been depressing to read the recent stories about the capital improvement budget (CIB) in Saint Paul. A group of East Side neighborhoods commissioned a study to point out the inequity and imbalance in infrastructure spending in the city. Fair enough, even though some of the results are a bit arbitrary or unclear — for example, the […]
Larger version of map (24×36 PDF) Preface Since Bill did a phone interview with me about this map and wrote about it last Monday, I figured I should explain this map in greater detail, such as my reasoning behind creating it. This article contains my motives, the process of creating the map, the limitations of […]
I’ve been following the progress of erstwhile streets.mn commenter and cartographic wunderkind Al Davison via Twitter as he has been putting together a map project showing the road diet potential of Saint Paul’s 4-lane streets. This kind of map is a big deal given the increased conversation around pedestrian safety in Saint Paul. (See also today’s […]
Highways in St. Paul have divided our city and created major barriers for anyone not in an automobile. The “East Side” of St. Paul is informally defined as the portion east of I-35E. Many people avoid it, and Bill Lindeke has been known to refer to it as “the St. Paul of St. Paul” because […]
This past Saturday afternoon, a cyclist was struck and critically injured on Excelsior Blvd west of Lake Calhoun, in a section where the roadway is surrounded by the Minikahda Club. This section of Excelsior Blvd is a 4-lane undivided roadway, what some colloquially label a Four Lane Death Road. There are no bicycle facilities and […]
Here’s the week on streets.mn plowed curb to curb to keep your reading clear: Collaboration Sustainable City Logistics in ʼs-Hertogenbosch is a cool video describing the Dutch city of ‘s-Hertogenbosch’s smart and sustainable distribution systems. With collaboration and cooperation from the business community and city government, the city coordinates deliveries, waste removal and other logistics in […]
Here are two charts for you, both on the 4-3 road diet topic. The first is from a Federal Highway Administration (FHWA)-Michigan Division powerpoint overview, and the second is from a 2012 Michigan-DOT study. They have quite different things to say about 4-3 road diets, and suggest some of the reasons that the design change might be […]
The recent post about four-lane undivided roads made me think about how many there are in Bloomington. Although I absolutely love living there in general, I tend to agree with virtually everyone else that these roads are a bad idea for all modes. Bloomington had the misfortune to grow in the 1960s with the bad […]