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 [...]
The Problem of Hiawatha Avenue
Hiawatha Avenue has been a thorn in the sides of south Minneapolis residents for years, and it has been the source of much discussion, including here on Streets.mn. In a recent post called The Urban Future of Hiawatha Avenue, Sam described the corridor as follows: Hiawatha is a “Stroad,” in the words of Chuck Marohn. Marohn [...]
More Kids’ Bike Rodeos = More Adults on Bikes
Want to see more adults on bikes? Encourage communities to hold more kids’ bike rodeos. And it’s not just about “raising little cyclists,” although indoctrinating educating them young as to handling skills and traffic navigation is a lovely contributor to the goal of putting more adults on bikes in 10-20 years. I’m talking about right [...]
4/3/12 TPW Committee: Parking > Biking
Sorry I’m a bit late with the TPW Committee this cycle. Actually it’s a good thing, because they had a special meeting on Thursday the 12th that I’ll cover below. As always, if you’re curious, see the rest of this year’s summaries here. The big news in this TPW Committee is that Minneapolis is continuing [...]
Northeast Ride: Cycling + Art = Community
With Spring in full bloom, I’m getting more and more excited about this summer’s group cycling rides. Metro Mag just released their “Best of” guide to communal bike rides happening in the Twin Cities over the next few months. What excites me most is the idea that many of these rides will serve as fun, [...]
The Urban Future of Hiawatha Avenue
It is time to create a more humane, livable Hiawatha Avenue. I believe a portion of Hiawatha Avenue should become an urban boulevard that unites neighborhoods rather than divides them, particularly near light rail stations where pedestrian counts have steadily increased since light rail service began and development continues to occur. More exciting is Hennepin County, through its [...]
Cycletracks on Park and Portland: The Single Best Idea to Improve Minneapolis’ Streets
[Following on up Brendon's call for ideas about Park and Portland, my suggestion for the best way to improve these streets!] Anyone who walks or bikes around the Twin Cities will have a head full of ideas about ways to improve the experience. These mental lists quickly grow long: a crosswalk here, a spot for [...]
Time for a change on Park and Portland
This morning I witnessed a very near miss between a cyclist and a school bus on Park Avenue South (also known as County Road 33). This “bad interaction” would be classified as a “left-hook” where the bus was slowing to turn left, and failed to yield to the cyclist in the bike lane (approaching from [...]
Twin Cities Ten Million!
Planning (and executing plans) is really about liking your future “self”. If you plan well, and do things in advance of their ultimate need, you are being good to your future self. You do things now (burying nuts, saving for retirement, filing paperwork, washing the dishes, forming habits about where you put your keys, etc.) [...]
Progress on Minnesota passenger rail projects, but funding is limited
For the past few years, the Minnesota Department of Transportation has been facilitating the Intercity Passenger Rail Forum, a monthly-scheduled meeting between policymakers at the state, city, and county levels plus various other organizations who are working on various projects to maintain existing passenger train service and add/restore other lines. Some meetings get canceled if [...]
Place and Non-Place
American cities and towns tend to have a large amount of “non-place.” The concept of Place and Non-Place has been described by Nathan Lewis and is a great way to think about the urban built environment. Lewis characterizes Places as areas where end-purpose activity occurs. Homes, offices, restaurants, parks, backyards are all Places, or locations [...]
How well do regional parks agencies promote utilitarian cycling?
Take a look at the following three photos, and see if you can spot the similar theme. These are all photos of the trail along West River Parkway taken since the Fall of 2009 (click images to enlarge). The parkway is owned and maintained by the Minneapolis Park & Recreation Board (MPRB). Each of these [...]
Opportunities to show up
Woody Allen (or perhaps it was Harry Truman) famously said decisions are made by those who show up. Streets.MN readers who are also Minneapolis residents may be interested in these opportunities to show up (and make decisions): Bicycle Advisory Committee: advise the Mayor, Council and Park Board on bike-related issues. (13 vacancies) Pedestrian Advisory Committee: advise [...]
Part 1: Small News, Big Impact: Roseville’s Controversial Ordinance 1417
[Note: Have you ever started researching something and quickly realize that you've got in over your head? Ordinance 1417 is exactly that ... If I missed anything here, please fill me in. I'd love to get to the bottom of this issue. This is part 1 of 2.] [Above: Four scenarios for Twin Lakes redevelopment [...]
Assessing our Future
The concept of a special assessment contains little dark secrets that city officials like to keep to themselves. The ability to assess the cost of maintenance — a questionable concept at best — is the only thing allowing many cities to avoid facing their true reality. Elected officials and the public need to understand assessments, [...]
Minneapolis, the Venice of the Upper Midwest
Special to streets.mn , April 1, 2012 The City of Minneapolis recently received Federal funding under the Advanced Quality Urban Waterways Initiative (New Starts) Retro-Transit program to investigate alternative scenarios for transforming city streets into canals. By revealing the underlying stream beds that have been paved over in more than 150 years of the city’s [...]
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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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SPUD
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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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Podcast #34 – The Future of Car Sharing with Christopher Bineham
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Jeremy Bergerson: What about the fact that cyclists lost a reliable,...
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Bill Lindeke: Incidentally, I spend a lot of time down at the SP...
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Brendon Slotterback: If meters are free (or cheap) you are less likely ...
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Justin Foell: Better ways to go to a Vikings game:
1) Take Pu...
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Bill Lindeke: Everyone (including Justin):
Feel free to comm...
From the network
- So, You're Addicted to GeoGuessr...: Don't worry. You're not alone....OK, that's a good point. You actually are alone, technically speaking, in the sense that you're sitting in your room staring at your computer, taking a break between r...
- 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...
- Friday News Digest: Four days on the road is about the max for me before homesickness becomes overwhelming. At least, if "on the road" is without my wife and kids. I feel really fortunate to have been able to spend the p...
- 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,...
- 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...
- Riding Minnehaha 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...
- 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...
- Why must I travel, why can't I tele-conference: Two times in two days last week I was asked to fly to an east coast city for a half-day meeting. The meeting organizers offered to pay my travel expenses. I asked to save the travel money and tele-con...
- 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...
- We Need Transit and the Urbanism that Surrounds It: 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 buil...
- Has There Ever Been a Streetcar Feasibility Study That Found Streetcars Unfeasible?: I ask this as a serious question: Does a streetcar study exist that concludes that a streetcar is unfeasible? Check out the studies that show up from a Google search (link). Without spending too much...
- MN Blog Cabin Roundup, 5/17: If the DFL wants to impress, leave earlyfrom Wry Wing Politics by Joe Loveland…of all the things that DFLers could do to impress Minnesota the swing voters who will determine in 2014 which party rem...
