The podcast this week is a conversation with Dacia Durham and Matthew Hendricks, leaders of the Twin Cities Greenways project on Minneapolis’s North Side. The Greenways initiative is aiming to build a series of greeways, or pedestrian and bicycle streets through Minneapolis and Saint Paul, that would give people transportation options similar to the successful [...]
No Parking and De-Signing Streets
I was traveling down St. Anthony Boulevard with my then 3 year old daughter. She ...
Podcast #34 – The Future of Car Sharing with Christopher Bineham
This week’s podcast is a conversation with Christopher Bineham, program manager for Hourcar, a local nonprofit car sharing operator in the Twin Cities. Christopher and I sat down last week on the patio at Fabulous Fern’s on Saint Paul’s Selby Avenue to talk about the debates over car sharing policies in Minneapolis, why car sharing [...]
SPUD
This post will be unpopular. I went with my family to an event for National Train Day (as suggested by a recent post by Julie). We drove to St. Paul since the Green Line is not yet open. Driving is break-even with paying for 3 fares on the bus round-trip, and my once non-driving, Amtrak-riding [...]
Washington Avenue proposed layouts are posted
Bill, David, and I have all written posts about the upcoming reconstruction of Washington Avenue, primarily to comment on questions we have with the traffic analysis. In advance of the public open house meeting on Tuesday (at the Mill City Museum, you should attend), Hennepin County has posted four potential street layouts (thanks to @mplsbike for [...]
Streets Weekend: Hooray! Hooray! May 11 is National Train Day!
Saturday, May 11 is National Train Day. In the past, I wrote a post about local train-related activities for the wee ones and their posse of elders. Today, there are a number of local activities of interest to rail fanatics, kids, and the curious to celebrate National Train Day. Amtrak has a National Train Day [...]
Streets.mn Voter Guide – Chris Lautenschlager, Ward 12
Our latest (11th) response to the Streets.mn Voter Guide is from Chris Lautenschlager, candidate in Ward 12, which includes south Minneapolis on either side of Hiawatha Avenue. 1. What do you believe is the most significant land use and/or transportation issue facing Minneapolis in the next 5 years and how do you hope to address [...]
2035 Predictions for Washington Avenue Offer Precision Without Accuracy
Yesterday, Brendon Slotterback (my colleague here on Streets.mn) tweeted something that caught my brain. It was about the plans for Washington Avenue through downtown Minneapolis: The comment was a reaction to a debate taking place online this week (in admittedly small circles) about the recently released Hennepin County study on over traffic projections and alternatives [...]
The electric future is quietly arriving
Something remarkable happened last year: The country’s mix of alternative-fueling infrastructure for cars suddenly flipped from being dominated by biofuels and lighter fossil-fuel byproducts to being primarily composed of electric charging stations—at least if you go by the pure numbers.There is an asterisk by “Electric” in the legend of the chart above, and the footnote [...]
Let’s stop calling people “NIMBYs”
In my first post here, I come to you, oh humble readers of streets.mn, hoping to change your mind about one of the trendy words we urbanists throw around too often. The acronym NIMBY, which of course stands for “Not In My BackYard”, popped up at some point a few decades ago and has since [...]
Too Little Parking? It Does Happen, In Fact
I’ve written previously about the angst and mayhem surrounding the parking situation at Blaine’s Lakeside Commons Park. To recap the history of this park and its parking situation: Lakeside Commons Park was opened in 2010 and built using standard set-aside land and monies from housing development in Blaine. The park has many features and amenities, [...]
Traffic on Washington Avenue – Raw data edition
Prompted by Brendon’s recent post (and a Twitter conversation with Ethan and Janne), I got interested in some of the traffic counts and engineering on Washington Avenue. I looked at the Washington Avenue Traffic Operation Analysis by Alliant Engineering for Hennepin County. On p.11 of this document are traffic “counts” the report said were collected [...]
Time Evolution of Twin Cities
Google Earth Engine lets you see the evolution of Landsat photos. We did this for the Twin Cities. Go here: Timelapse of Minneapolis – Saint Paul Andrew notes: I think the most amazing thing is seeing the path of the Minneapolis tornado appear in 2011
We Must Build More Transit and Better Urbanism
Kate Wolford’s Star Tribune commentary calling for more transit was spot on. Our peer cities (Denver, Portland, Charlotte, Salt Lake City, hell, even St. Louis!) are ahead of us in terms of built rail miles, lines and stations. We must do more than catch up to remain an attractive metro area for all. Rail miles, [...]
Podcast #33 – Minneapolis Ward 4 with City Council Candidate Kris Brogan
The podcast this week is another in our string of city council candidates, a conversation with Kris Brogan, who is running for city council in minneapolis’s Ward 4. The fourth ward covers the top of north Minneapolis, along the northern border of the city before it turns into robbinsdale and Brooklyn Center. Kris Brogan was [...]
1st Annual Minneapolis Bike ‘n’ Brew Tour
Whatcha’ doing this Friday night at 5pm? Nothing? Oh, that’s cool. Kinda. Join local urban and transportation celebrity bloggers on the 1st Annual Minneapolis Bike ‘n’ Brew Tour. The route is a simple 8 (eight) miles that start at Harriet Brewing Company at 5pm. The route will then progress up through Northeast as the night goes on. [...]
“Downtown is For People” Fifty-five Years Later
I discovered Jane Jacobs rather late. It was 2003 a few years after college. Due to insufficient funds, I’d recently moved home from New York City, into my mother’s basement back in Saint Paul, and was spending much of my time reading books. The way I remember it, I was reading through a book of [...]
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Bikes and Businesses Must Unite
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Minnesota Vikings Stadium Needs Better Urban Design
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Why I’m proud to be “offended” by the judgemental map of Minneapolis
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Washington Avenue proposed layouts are posted
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No Parking and De-Signing Streets
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No Parking and De-Signing Streets
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Podcast #35 – Twin Cities Greenways with Dacia Durham and Matthew Hendricks
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The Yard at Downtown East
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Minnesota Vikings Stadium Needs Better Urban Design
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Clarifying the Minneapolis Event Rate Meter Parking Debacle
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Jeff: As far as signs go, there does seem to be a lot of...
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Ross Williams: "We have induced demand for car storage by provid...
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Alex Cecchini: Ross, you bring up a good point that as long as ou...
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Matt: My point is that if we unbundled parking from tran...
From the network
- Riding Minnehaha Ave with Kids. Or not.: A few days ago, I was out for a ride with Isaiah's dad, Michael. You might remember Isaiah. He's the now 10-year-old who rode 150 miles in two days as a fundraiser for the Coalition. O...
- Pedestrians prohibited on streets.mn: Today on streets.mn I examine Bloomington’s latest bungle. Bloomington is the suburb I lived in the longest, it has some really nice topography for the Twin Cities that great parks like Hyland,...
- A Call for a New Model: Building a Strong Town is a complex, long-term endeavor. Much as a successful family balances their short-term spending needs with their long-term savings and financial commitments, so too must a Stro...
- NLX Promotional Material: Just for the historical record, please find attached a scan of the 1 page / 2 sided brochure that the promoters of the Northern Lights Express distributed at the May 11, 2013 National Train Day event...
- 2012 Nice Ride flows revisited: For the last two years, I’ve mapped the flows of the Nice Ride bikes. I’ve always been slightly dissatisfied with the results, since bikes were obviously shown taking routes that any san...
- Do Local Policies Explain the Decline in Driving?: Driving is declining. Reports like this recent one by USPIRG claim that "The Driving Boom—a six decade-long period of steady increases in per-capita driving in the United States—is over.
- A Bold Vision for a Downtown Park and a More Beautiful City: The great mayor of Charleston, Joe Riley, likes to say “there is no reason to build anything that won’t add to the beauty of the city.” Inspiring words. It behooves the Mayor of Minneapolis, R.T...
- 7 Reasons Conservatives Should Embrace Bikes: There’s a certain bar in my city that is famous for being right-wing. It’s an old family joint in a run-down corner of downtown. The people are surly but friendly, and the inside of the place is h...
- The budget tax deal: mnpACT! Progressive Political Blog Sausage may make a fine meal, but don't watch it being made.And so it is with budget legislation. The DFL Legislature has agreed to a tax bill and...
- Bikeway Functional Class: I’ve been reading a lot of bike plans lately, and there seems to be a pretty wide variety of frameworks used by agencies to categorize bikeways. In particular, I’m intrigued by the variet...
- Minnesota Vikings Stadium FAIL – We need better urban design: The architecture of the Minnesota Vikings Stadium: take it or leave it? Personally, I think it looks like a cross between a laser jet printer, a drunk Frank Gehry and something out of 2001: A Space Od...
- What is the Constituency of a Local Land-Use Decision?: cross-posted at Streets.mn In the Linden Hills neighborhood of Minneapolis, a local entrepreneur put together a proposal to develop a surface parking lot into a 5-story condo building with retail s...
