Minnesota Transportation Bill Basics The Republican-controlled House has passed a transportation bill that uses General Fund money to support billions in new road funding, cuts transit, and ignores walking and biking. The DFL-controlled Senate has passed a transportation bill that uses a gas tax increase to support billions in new road funding, a metro-area sales […]
Marching out of March and into April, here’s the week on streets.mn beginning with March Madness, of course. So, while you should be working and March Madness is not yet a national holiday, use the commercial breaks from March Madness (the basketball variety) to keep up with streets.m(ad)n(ess) and this week’s round 2 results: Policy & Potpourri and Development & Transportation. Bikes […]
[This is part of streets.mn’s “transpo convo” series, which aims to be an oral history of getting around the Twin Cities, one person at a time.] Compiled below are statements recorded from people who have the means to drive and choose to usually drive over taking mass transit: “When I first got married, I used […]
The podcast this week is a conversation with Scott Dibble, who represents Minnesota Senate District 61 covering southwest Minneapolis. For the last ten years, Senator Dibble has been a leading voice in Minnesota conversations around two key issues; the first is the equal rights movement round sexual orientation, where Dibble sponsored the gay marriage legislation […]
Here are the all week’s posts summarized and sorted for strategic reading. Why read the Sunday newspaper when the Sunday Summary has the stuff you really need? Telling good stories Urban Living is Good for Your Health is a good story about how our built environments shape behavior without technical details, policy language or other formalities. Living […]
What if you built a transit line, and nobody came? More and more that’s a distinct possibility because, as projects face tighter fiscal realities at all levels of government, it’s getting harder to fund the actual pedestrian infrastructure that makes transit useful in the first place. The SWLRT offers a good example. You’re probably so […]
Here are two maps showing the same basic dynamic: for all its talk of geographic inequality, rural Minnesota has been getting more than its fair share of road money for a long time. These two maps come from the excellent Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy, which is one of the many groups attempting to create a more sustainable policy […]
Transportation is one of the top issues at the State Legislature this year and is already getting a lot of media attention. As it should–investing in a modern transportation system is critical for Minnesota’s economic competitiveness and quality of life. But walking and biking have mostly been left out of that conversation so far. The […]
This chart is taken out of this amazing new report from the Pew Charitable Trusts, called Intergovernmental Challenges in Surface Transportation Funding. The report covers the challenges that are facing governments around road and transit construction and maintenance, paying especial attention to the shifting relationships between Federal, state and local funding streams. For example, here are funding source […]