Late last month, one of the most unique chapters in Minnesota’s transportation history was permanently enshrined in the public record through the National Register of Historic Places, the official list of the nation’s historic places worthy of preservation. The newly-listed steamboat Minnehaha is the lone survivor of the Twin City Line’s once-famous “streetcar boat” service. […]
It has been a long time since I’ve posted an installment of my “Suburb of the Month” series on transit in the Twin Cities suburbs, mostly due to my limited ability to take pictures at this time. However, I have a picture relevant to the Excelsior area, and even though it wasn’t my planned next […]
We’re having another streets.mn Virtual Happy Hour this Thursday. Plus, we’re going to kick off a new presentation feature, where folks stop in and present info about a topic they like. First up, streetcar history expert Aaron Issacs is going to share a video of a 1950s streetcar trip from Minneapolis to Richfield. Stop by […]
As Saint Paul’s population grew in the late 19th Century, people began moving out of the city’s core and into residential areas adjacent to downtown. The Selby Avenue streetcar line was built in 1888 to provide people with transportation from their homes on top of the hill to the offices, factories, and shops downtown, and to […]
It’s the last day of May, students are graduating, kids at the school bus stop are wearing shorts and counting days…yes, it’s almost summer. But after a little Memorial Day lull, we here at streets.mn are back at work bringing you perspective on the news of the day, some fun, and some big picture thinking; […]
Streetcars: They’re hot right now. However, in Minneapolis, in 2014, in the places they are proposed, they are also probably not a good idea. Or at least, they are certainly not a good use of hundreds of millions of dollars in transit funding that’s already too scarce and ill-budgeted. Will Not Improve Mobility The specifics […]
(The following is from an email sent to Saint Paul Smart Trips and my City Council Representatives. I was asked to post it here.) This is the lead photo from the email sent out by St. Paul Smart Trips encouraging me to support streetcars in St. Paul by attending a public meeting. I was not able to […]
This isn’t a chart, but it’s a great map that the folks over at MN2020 put together, juxtaposing the historic streetcar grid against current densities. (It’s worth remembering that historic 1950 densities in Minneapolis and Saint Paul were far higher than is reflected here. Much of the dense housing was bulldozed, and current household sizes have […]