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 [...]
About Mike Hicks
Mike Hicks is a computer geek at heart, but has always had interests in transportation and urban planning. A longtime contributor to Wikipedia, he started a blog about trains and other transportation after realizing it had been two decades since he'd first heard about a potential high-speed rail line from Chicago to Minneapolis. Read more at http://hizeph400.blogspot.com/
The Metropolitan Council’s anti-urban headquarters
This is the headquarters of the Metropolitan Council, the Twin Cities regional planning agency. It’s located in downtown Saint Paul. Notice anything about how it’s laid out? If you ever walk past, it may take a moment, but you’ll soon realize that the building doesn’t have any entrances onto the street. There are doors [...]
Duluth train finishes major stage of environmental review
The proposed Northern Lights Express train from Minneapolis to Duluth (“NLX”) took another step forward on Monday last week when the long-awaited Tier 1 Service Level Environmental Assessment was finally released. Initially expected to be completed by October 2011, the environmental review was delayed as the scale of the project was reassessed after early cost [...]
Inducing demand for sustainability
The idea of induced demand is a strange one. You would think that building a highway or widening a road would alleviate congestion by spreading out the existing traffic across more space, and that would be the end of it. Toss in a little extra width in anticipation of population growth, and it should be [...]
I love the U of M
I love the University of Minnesota. With 50,000 students plus large contingents and staff, it is a city within a city, and one remarkably distinct from the rest of the Twin Cities. There’s a tremendous degree of pedestrian activity each day, particularly between class periods. The better parts of campus are highly permeable, with small [...]
7-story mixed-use development planned for Totino’s site
The Minneapolis Department of Community Planning & Economic Development (CPED) has put up a document describing the development planned at the former Totino’s site in Northeast Minneapolis, the namesake of General Mills’ Totino’s pizza brand. The pizza joint had been a landmark of the city, but the building has fallen into disrepair. There are efforts [...]
Seeking the transit-friendly highway
As I first started exploring Metro Transit’s bus network in college, I was struck by how much freeway mileage in the Twin Cities doesn’t carry any transit service. Having grown up near Rochester and typically only visiting or driving through the metro area a few times per year, my mental map was mostly built up [...]
Saint Paul Union Depot reopening tomorrow
After laying dormant for 41 years, the concourse and waiting room of the Saint Paul Union Depot will reopen to the public tomorrow, Saturday, December 8th. The reopening comes after a two-year, $243 million rehabilitation of the massive building and the 33-acre site it occupies, which included $148 million in construction and renovation plus $95 [...]
Better balance in transportation possible as legislature swings to DFL
Just two years after the Minnesota State Senate and House of Representatives came under Republican control in the Tea Party wave of 2010, both houses flipped back to Democratic-Farmer-Labor majorities in the election this past Tuesday. This was a big surprise to local news outlets, who had expected Republicans to retain the upper hand. The [...]
When the humble bus stop is a little too humble
View Larger Map This is the busiest transit stop in the state of Minnesota, seeing about 4,300 boardings daily, though you’d never know it by looking. It’s on the south side of City Center on 7th Street and Nicollet Mall in Minneapolis, and lacks most of the amenities you’d expect to find at a location [...]
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Bikes and Businesses Must Unite
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Minnesota Vikings Stadium Needs Better Urban Design
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Washington Avenue proposed layouts are posted
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Why I’m proud to be “offended” by the judgemental map of Minneapolis
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No Parking and De-Signing Streets
From the network
- Jobs, economic development and housing budget bill makes important investments in our state: Minnesota Budget Bites As the 2013 Legislative Session closes, the final budget bills have been passed by the House and Senate. Last week the omnibus jobs, economic development and h...
- Washington Ave Public Meeting Recap: The Washington Avenue public meeting was held on May 14 from 5-7pm. It was an "open house," which means that people could drop in anytime in that two hour window to see the four different op...
- Signifying Nothing: My way was blocked by a sign signifying nothing. Same site as last fall, at The Commons hotel on Harvard.- dml...
- 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...
- 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,...
- 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...
- 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...
- 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...
- The Hassle of Airport Security is Not a Reason to Build High Speed Rail: A group of students in California have created a new high speed rail advocacy group called "I Will Ride." One of the members wrote an op-ed in support of the California high speed rail project in the...
- Financial Deformation: I'm in the final quarter of The Great Deformation - The Corruption of Capitalism in America by David Stockman. If the book was not so long I would want to do it twice because I feel like half of...
- 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...
- Today on Streets.mn: Comparing SABR to Critical Urbanism: Baseball is one of my favorite things, and I wrote a post for Streets.mn today about the lessons that SABRmetrics can teach critical urbanists.Lots of good stuff:First, baseball statheads rigorously t...
