urbanMSP

I went to another Passenger Rail Forum meeting today. I'll avoid saying whose mouth I heard it from since things are up in the air and I heard the answer after the official meeting -- there's still no official date, but maybe February or March. I have no idea of whether to believe that or not. I don...

I'm sure that refers to the CTIB funding and other sources. In other words, it's running under-budget even though the ridership is below expectations. I know some counties have gotten refunds for their contributions to operating costs for the line in the past.

Be careful with that thought -- just because a development is in a suburb doesn't mean that "suburban-style" development is appropriate. That's a phrase we should probably ban, actually. Minneapolis and Saint Paul themselves are suburban in style compared to many cities out on the East Coa...

Yeah, I suspect that beam had been hit before.

Yeah, I saw that they've started putting the rebar in place on a short block-long stretch at Emerald. No rails in yet, though. Rails are beginning to get aligned through the Huron/University intersection and between Huron and Oak. A recent CCLRT newsletter says that Washington Avenue should reopen b...

MinnPost's Cityscape column had an article on the Kmart area on Friday:

http://www.minnpost.com/cityscape/2012/ ... ake-street

The Interchange folks have sent out a newsletter update saying that Knutson has been doing site-clearing and interior demolition since July 30th. The building is set to start coming down on August 13th.

Metro Transit is running a poll to help find a name to be used for this rapid bus/arterial BRT concept.

http://www.snapsurveys.com/swh/surveylo ... 4392177967

Your choices are:

• Connect
• Max
• Move
• Rapid
• Select
• Swift

Here's a thread for the Bruce Vento Trail bridge over the railroad tracks and Warner Road east of downtown Saint Paul. I'm not entirely sold on the utility of the bridge since it connects two unpopulated areas, but it'd make for a nice railfanning platform. The architect is Rosales + Partners, who s...

The building will be kind of S-shaped with courtyards in the gaps. Units in the building would probably be too deep otherwise, unable to get sufficient natural light. The rendering is looking down Dock Street, basically only an alley for accessing parking today.

I'm not quite sure if they're behind the times or jumping the gun, but KARE had a story on the CCLRT & Hiawatha rails getting tied together: http://www.kare11.com/news/article/985158/391/Minnesota-makes-transit-history-this-week They're late because the tie-in has been going on for a couple mont...

I forget where the discussion has come up before, but yes, I think it'd be a really good idea to only reopen Nicollet as a bike/ped/transit mall. Let the car traffic continue to flow around rather than through, and that should actually enhance the land value quite a bit. With a dense enough wall of ...

That whole area got bulldozed a long time ago before the Sears went in, of course. The store was built by 1966 (even before I-94 was completed to the south), as seen in the aerials in this blog post of mine: http://hizeph400.blogspot.com/2011/12/rondo-and-i-94-vs-central-corridor-lrt.html Today, par...

Yeah, the fares are now evened out between Northstar and express bus services -- Northstar now costs $3.00 for commuters from Anoka, Coon Rapids, and Fridley (as well as station-to-station riders), which is the same as a rush-hour express bus fare. Anoka marks the furthest extent of express bus serv...

Hrm... That reminds me too much of Government Plaza a few blocks to the west -- that big water feature in the middle (which gets shut off for half the year) is basically a permanent crowd-suppression device, preventing a critical mass of people from getting together. If someone wants a pond or somet...

Not necessarily "average Joe", but not far off -- it simply refers to someone who doesn't have professional knowledge/experience in an area.

I had gone to Southdale about a month ago to see a movie and noticed they had some boards up with renderings of their planned new transit station. Didn't look like much -- just some fancier shelters, as far as I could tell. Killing off park-and-ride lots at shopping malls seems to be a theme -- Rose...

10 to 12 acres? Isn't that like 3 downtown-sized blocks? Depends on how it's all organized, I guess, but that seems pretty huge.

Other than a lot of bitching and moaning by business/property owners, I don't see much obstacle to building or rebuilding something in that West Side Flats area. There's a lot of room with all of those parking lots and low-slung buildings -- Even if you couldn't weave something between buildings, it...

Thanks for the info. I knew that the whole area used to be streambeds, but I've never really known the details.