One strange technology that gets mentioned in passing in histories of the Twin Cities streetcar network is the “soda motor”. When I first read about it, I was sure it must have just been a play on words: soda must have come from the tail end of Minnesota, right? Further reading explained that no, [...]
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Trunk Highway Main Streets
One of the more challenging issues facing Main Streets in Minnesota is situations where that Main Street is also a Minnesota Trunk Highway. For most small towns, the designation of their Main Street as a Trunk Highway is bittersweet. Sweet, because it means the city is probably located along a trade route (or former trade route) deemed [...]
A Tale of Two Corners
Two intersections that I pass on my daily commute offer vastly different pedestrian experiences. Walking vaguely north-ish on 3rd St N in the North Loop you first encounter 6th Ave N, where despite the stop signs giving priority to cars on 6th over their automotive brethren on 3rd, I experience the most consistent yielding to [...]
An alternative design for Park and Portland
The Minneapolis Bike Coalition has put forward their preferred design for a redesigned Park & Portland (for background on these streets, see here and here). Full disclosure: I helped with the street rendering. From the Bike Coalition blog: Key features: Remove a traffic lane that isn’t needed. The core of this proposal is transforming one of [...]
Removing our Least Useful Bridges
There has been a lot of discussion across the internet lately about how we’re digging ourselves into a financial hole by overspending on infrastructure that isn’t very productive. Chuck’s post a few days ago called Paved with good intentions is a good example. For the purposes of this post, let’s just assume we agree with [...]
Hooray! Hooray! FHWA Non-Motorized Transportation Pilot Project Report Released Today!
We finally have the report on SAFETEA-LU’s Non-Motorized Transportation Pilot Program! The FHWA released the report today, and it is now available to all for their delight and edification (PDF). This final report has been being promised since 2009 or so, with delivery dates being pushed later several times. This report has been of great [...]
The Benefits of High Speed Rail
[V150 train, modified TGV, conventional World speed record holder at 357.2 mph from WikiCommons] The following post is by guest writer Matt Sindt, a recent graduate of the Hamline University School of Law who has worked in both state and local government, serving as a staffer on both the Business, Industry and Jobs Committee, and the [...]
Why urbanists (and others) should love the coming of the robot car (Part 1)
Much has already been written on the robot car, but streets.mn’s own Bill Lindeke posits that they “will not save us“, citing three problems. While I agree that we probably can’t be saved (from what exactly I can’t say, there are many options), but in my opinion Bill and other urbanists should welcome the robot [...]
The Magic of Streetcars, The Logic of Buses
The City of Minneapolis is promoting Streetcars in a number of corridors, including one in North along Broadway to compensate for the rerouting of Bottineau LRT to avoid North. Promoters of Minneapolis Streetcars, including Mayor R.T. Rybak, are engaged in magical thinking in their assertion that streetcars will have transformative effects. Famously, Minneapolis and St. [...]
Tracing the UMN’s Inter-Campus streetcar line
View UMN intercampus streetcar line in a larger map Many people in the Twin Cities are familiar with the University of Minnesota bus transitway connecting its Minneapolis and St. Paul campuses (the latter actually being in the suburb of Falcon Heights). Since the 1990s, its exclusive access has allowed buses to shuttle quickly between campuses—parts [...]
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The Magic of Streetcars, The Logic of Buses
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Urban Highway Removal in Minneapolis?
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The Problem of Hiawatha Avenue
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A Typology of Beg Buttons
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Time for a change on Park and Portland
