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Minnesota Vikings Stadium Needs Better Urban Design

By on May 14, 2013 in Infrastructure, Land use, Smart Growth

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 Odyssey. This is not a compliment. However, be this as it may, preference on architectural styling, no one should [...]

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The electric future is quietly arriving

By on May 10, 2013 in Infrastructure, Transportation

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 [...]

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Lakeside Commons Beach

Too Little Parking? It Does Happen, In Fact

By on May 9, 2013 in Infrastructure, Land use

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, [...]

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Suburban Cyclists: Bridging the Gap

By on April 19, 2013 in Bicycling, Infrastructure, Transportation

This post is an editorial recap of one of the Metropolitan Council bike study meetings focusing on outer ring suburbs to identify major bike routes. There are still opportunities for people to attend in their area: Plymouth: April 24, 6:00 – 8:00 p.m. Plymouth Library 15700 36th Avenue N, Plymouth Chanhassen: April 25th, 6:00 – 8:00 p.m. [...]

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Reconsidering the Nicollet Mall Redesign

By on April 16, 2013 in Environment, Featured, Infrastructure, Land use, Neighborhoods

There is a $20 million sum of state money that may be dedicated to redesign Nicollet Mall. While $20 million could bring some impressive changes to the pedestrian mall, these funds would represent an unfortunate misapplication of limited resources. We need to reconnect Nicollet Avenue- not redesign Nicollet Mall. Nicollet Mall, the nation’s first pedestrian transit way, [...]

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Duluth train finishes major stage of environmental review

By on March 29, 2013 in Featured, Infrastructure, Transportation

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 [...]

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The Non-Motorized Bottleneck: 15th Avenue SE

By on March 18, 2013 in Bicycling, Bridges, Infrastructure, Transportation, Uncategorized

After reading Prescott Morrill’s great article on the continual growth of the Minneapolis bicycling population, I was initially shocked at certain count levels in specific areas. The counts in the Bike Walk Twin Cities study were within a 2-hour time period during evening rush (4pm – 6pm), and occurred in a week timeframe in mid-September. [...]

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Inducing demand for sustainability

By on March 15, 2013 in Featured, Infrastructure, Transit, Transportation

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 [...]

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A Glimpse of Biking Network Effects

By on March 8, 2013 in Advocacy, Bicycling, Bridges, Infrastructure, Streets, Uncategorized, What I love about Minnesota

Recently I’ve become the steward of an amazing and rich set of non-motorized transportation data through work with Bike Walk Twin Cities (BWTC), a local non-profit administering the federal Nonmotorized Transportation Pilot Program (NTPP), since 2007 (part of the SAFETEA_LU legislation). This $28M pilot program, awarded to 4 communities around the country and luckily our [...]

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A view of the US Capitol

The National Bike Summit’s Legislative Record: Progress or Hype?

By on February 28, 2013 in Advocacy, Bicycling, Featured, Infrastructure, Transit, Transportation, Walking

The National Bike Summit, sponsored by the League of American Bicyclists, is scheduled for next week — March 4-6, 2013 — in Washington DC. As happens every year, the NBS is the “most important one yet!” where attendees voices are needed to maintain the “momentum” of the bike movement. It’s the “advocacy event of the [...]

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