urbanMSP

Nobody lives around here except for rich condo owners who are going to be driving anyway. Although I have agreed in previous posts that the cost/benefit of this project makes me raise an eyebrow, the way you put it makes you sound like an ass. Not sure what you consider rich, but if you mean enough...

As I get older I am becoming less enamored with the notion of quarter mile spacing of bus stops. If I was 25 and worked in an office I would be all for it, but now that I am in 40s and work on my feet all day sometime a quarter mile walk is painful. Extrapolating out to my 60s or 70s when my knees a...

To be honest I don't really see why there is so much love for the Star Tribune building. It is one of the ugliest "important" older buildings downtown. Aesthetically it is stuck in no-man's-land between baroque high Victorian and sleek minimalist modernism without doing anything very well....

This seems more like a civic vanity project rather than something that will benefit a large number of people. Nobody lives around here except for rich condo owners who are going to be driving anyway, nobody goes here except for Twins fans on game day, the rest of the time the Hiawatha line is always...

I think there are two possibilities: a) This small group of people is so well connected politically that it magnifies their importance beyond what it would otherwise be. b) They are being encouraged or given attention because the powers that be in Minneapolis want to kill this version of the line bu...

In 1987 my roommate lost $20 to a couple of dudes who set up a 3 card monte table in front of Shinders. I knew some people who would write little plays and act them out on the street on Hennepin. And of course there were all the other things too, but stuff like that just doesn't happen in today's Mi...

I miss the old E Block, it was like a Minneapolis version of (the old) Times Square. I used to hang out there all the time in the mid to late '80s and saw so much. A part of the cities soul died when they tore it down. Cities should be a little bit anarchic and rough around the edges. If you sanitiz...

Reducing lanes on University won't really affect people going from Minneapolis to St Paul. Most of the impact will be on local traffic within St Paul.

I think the best way to minimize car use is to upzone and encourage infill in all the parts of the core cities that are under 10,000 ppsm. If you look at the parts of the city that have a large number of people who live car free by choice it generally coincides with the contiguous swathe of higher d...

Most people don't live in cities for transportation reasons. If they are of middle class background they often do it for cultural reasons. In my case I find the suburbs to be extremely alienating, and am drawn to the creative community of the city (which I have been a part of for 20+ years). In othe...

Well, for starters, not everyone rides a bike or uses public transportation, or wants to. There are no laws banning bikes from using the roadway, but you want to close a lane so that we can accommodate a bike that is 20 inches wide.? I rode my bike all over the cities when I was younger, (yes, even...

Should transportation planning focus on moving cars, or moving people? What if it's a lot cheaper to move people than it is to move cars? And for that matter, not everybody drives, or wants to. Also let's not there will soon be a train running up and down University Ave, providing fast easy connect...

I lived in Frogtown for 15 years, and half of that was without a car so I think I know University Ave pretty well. The problem with this idea is that St Paul's built form lends it to being an autocentric city. It is a gigantic pain in the ass to live in St Paul without a car because it doesn't have ...

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Politics is about what is doable, not what is ideal. The number of people who see on street parking as "their parking" is significantly higher than those who see it as "evil car storage". So taking parking off of Hennepin is a non-starter regardless of whether or not it is a good...

I should say this to be clear: Despite our chatter in this thread, I haven't seen any serious talk of the 3C routing versus 3A at the moment. The current logjam only has to do with how to either cram everything into the Kenilworth corridor or possibly reroute the freight line (there's some chatter ...

Business will never go for the removal of parking on Hennepin. As it is, parking is the single most common complaint you hear from your customers if you run a business along Hennepin. People are allergic to parking on a side street and walking a block or two to their destination (which has always an...

If nothing else they should at least increase bus headways on Hennepin and Lyndale. It would probably be more useful than building suburban BRT that nobody will use or streetcars that don't improve service. Right now the 6, 17 and 4 are all like cattle cars during rush hour and are still mostly full...

A picture from yesterday:


mplsoct201309 by afsmps, on Flickr

As for the mall, pretty much any of these teams could've improved Nicollet's current state. Hopefully in 20 years it won't look dated like the current 90s pastiche.The Corner team will do what they can within their budget. In some ways I think this comment points to part of the problem with our app...