Links from The Overhead Wire to news from around the country. This week: why so many office workers are still staying at home, a political standoff over an Omaha bike lane and a discussion of America’s future climate havens.
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.
Yes, I know Wausau is in Wisconsin, but this Wall Street Journal article seems both locally important and interesting, and Wisconsin seems close enough to Minnesota right now. Check out this chart, showing growth in online retail in Wausau, Wisconsin, and the US: One big takeaway is that people seem to like small, local businesses, […]
To Build a Bridge Several years ago, I wrote a four part series about the story of the Stillwater Bridge across the St. Croix River. Part 1 covered the project from 1950s promises to build a high bridge and get traffic well away from downtown up to the point the original iteration of the 1980s proposal was […]
In my most recent two posts I looked first at the opportunities I see for passenger rail in Minnesota, followed by an entry examining Norway’s passenger rail network to make some comparisons. There are similarities between the two such as the fact that Minnesota and Norway have about the same population and have been growing […]
A drive to Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, on (yes) World Car-Free Day inspires a tourist to seek out history via ghost signs on old buildings.
A federal judge’s decision on a Wisconsin road project has shined a spotlight on the distorted ways people view “their” roads. On May 22, the U.S. Eastern District Court ruled that WisDOT didn’t adequately explain traffic projections or account for updated demographic data when deciding to expand Highway 23 to four lanes between Fond du […]
The following is a meditation on a personal experience and should not be cited authoritatively in academia. It sat half-written in drafts for about six months, and after Wisconsin’s loss to Duke earlier this week, it felt like a nice thing to finish. Wisconsin, America’s Dairyland, is my second favorite state. It occurred to me […]