urbanMSP

Man, that tweet gives me all kinds of creepy, mixed feelings. On the one hand, calling the line "suburban" may be a political ploy to make the project more appealing to <whomever>. On the other hand, it's very insensitive, almost to the point of being outright racist. Opat is completely di...

I'd wager it's enough if they are trading a house (i.e., equity) and only upgrading a few hundred thousand over their old place. PAs make 120k+ often, as do some specialized types of nurses (anesthetists). With a 120k salary, a generous 170k down payment and minimal living expenses someone could af...

Just think of the number of doctors, NPs, PAs, CRNAs and other professions at HCMC and the U of M hospital. That is large number of people, many that may prefer to live close to work. I can guarantee you that NPs and PAs make nowhere near enough to afford these. Maybe a couple both working as NPs a...

Good.

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What you're describing is basically the PRT fantasy but much more complicated. Huge distributed computing systems are difficult to build. I don't have the proof in front of me but I would not be surprised if such an optimization problem is NP complete or worse (computer-speak for, "I can't solv...

That's hilarious.

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Target, UPS or FedEx?

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This is definitely an easier lift than the gas tax! One does not happen without the other. Suburban and rural legislators won't vote for transit money without road money in return. My fear is that the inevitable gas tax reduction will result in a decrease in or elimination of the transit piece, lea...

Remember that the existing half-cent transportation sales tax doesn't go away, and in Hennepin and Ramsey counties at least, there's no indication that anyone (except Jeff Johnson) is looking to shift it from transit to highways. Right, but the total would still be much less than a lot of places. S...

Here's a crazy idea.... Why don't we just apply the regular state sales tax to gasoline, in addition to the "user fee" that is the gas tax? It's been talked about in some corners but is seen as politically infeasible. Personally I would love to see some gas tax money go to a real highway ...

His budget also calls for a 1/8th cent addition to the metro transit tax and (maybe most significantly) a shifting of Metro Mobility off Metro Transit's books. That's where the transit money is in this proposal, and it's significant. I don't know how Metro Mobility factors in, but 1/8 cent for tran...

It's weird to me that people do this. Every once in awhile someone from works mentions taking 35W into downtown during rush hour from South Minneapolis and I just wonder why. Pick a street that's not already clogged with through-commuters. I don't get why this is so surprising. I drive from Minneap...

I call BS on fiber optics. There is absolutely no reason the system needs the bandwidth fiber supplies. If they're taking the opportunity to lay fiber for other services, that's one thing, but aBRT is *not* driving the laying of fiber. Whoever said that is either terribly misinformed or has some age...

KSTP, the Fox News of Minnesota. Actual local Fox 9 News is pretty decent, it turns out.

EDIT: I didn't read down to the byline at first. Jay Kolls. Why am I not surprised...

If they're willing to look at doubling the length of the E Line, I've gotta imagine they'll look at it for the B Line too. Hopefully going directly from Marshall to Selby, not swinging up to University like the 21 does. How important is the connection to the Green Line at University? Sent from my P...

I almost believe that, except Lamb served under multiple very different administrations and was very effective under all of them. Why *now*?

Given what we know, I can't think of a good reason to dismiss someone who is apparently highly respected by the workforce and who has room the agency pretty effectively

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The whole thing is disgraceful. Why do we care if homeless people ride transit anyway? Don't they have things hard enough without being pushed out of yet more public places?

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I don't really care about the sign much one way or the other, but I do very much care about developers pressuring the city to special-case its rules because developers feels they can do so. Rule 1 of negotiation is to always be willing to walk away. The city should very much be willing to walk away ...

The problem with the North Face and Urban Outfitters buildings is that they are essentially mini big-boxes -- a single story that take up the volume of two stories. That's got to be difficult to repurpose. I wouldn't be shocked to see redevelopment of some of these parcels to include significant hou...