urbanMSP

It sure seems like SWLRT has induced a huge amount of urban-style development in what was essentially low-value industrial areas: between Hwy 7 and Excelsior Blvd. in SLP & Hopkins, as the line goes west, and between Hwy 169 & Shady Oak/Hwy 212 as it goes south. These areas were aging and ge...

Scott Neal posted this last night: an actual development proposal as opposed to those theoretical ones near Fred Richards Park. https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20171220/2d3a03fc6465eb885ec2228e8b46c82d.jpg And, yes, a safer crossing over Hwy 100 is one of many Edina needs for pedestrians & cycl...

It’s all retail on the first floor; all mixed use (except one segment of existing North parking garage). That video is (unintentionally) scary on several levels. It feels like you’re in a bus or SUV and are about to run over that poor woman and her child. Market Street feels very wide and the sidewa...

That was fun to watch, thanks for the link. Yeah, it looks like that particular vehicle isn’t much faster than walking.

I was referring less to 77th St specifically as the whole area -- especially west of 100. Metro Blvd, Picture Dr, 78th St. Tons of fairly high-intensity uses, wide streets, and basically non-existent sidewalks. There's also a relatively recently constructed portion of 77th where it becomes Johnson ...

http://www.startribune.com/mndot-tests-driverless-shuttle-bus/463742663/ I'm tempted to check this out even if I have to deal with Super Bowl crowds. The Edina Transportation Commission is studying where to loop a senior citizen “circulator” bus. A fixed-path loop is a perfect application for this ...

Another wrinkle to that issue is that, while neither human drivers or self-driving cars are completely safe, our road system is full of engineered mitigations of specific ways that human drivers are unsafe (curb reaction space, rumble strips, bike lane buffers, etc). However, self-driving vehicles,...

It seems the reason rail lines to small cities work in Europe & Asia is because of density. Not population; density. Rail works to small cities because you don’t need a car to get around, and thus car ownership is much lower. If you have cars, highways, & suburbs, then trains make less sense...

Interesting article about some Canadians fixing an intersection with chalk and leaves. https://jalopnik.com/some-brilliant-toronto-residents-fixed-this-intersectio-1820931621 Some guy in the neighborhood is trying to a private park in his front lawn. Except almost no suburbanite would want a public...

I hope the cities of Edina and Bloomington get around to upgrading/adding sidewalks along Computer Ave. or the service road to connect to Nine Mike Creek trail. … I really wish Edina could lead the charge by upgrading the streets to support the higher-intensity development that's already here. It s...

But drivers that do look and keep mental track of people riding bicycles in lanes, considering the space efficiency of bikes, won’t consider bike lanes equivalent to car lane use until double the people in a bike lane than the car lanes. But I’m cynical. Here’s a short video showing how one small b...

Great. So now you can bike from Richfield through Edina to Hopkins on the Nine Mile Creek Trail, then take the Lake Minnetonka Regional Trail out to Excelsior.

there is absolutely a struggle taking place in Edina right now between younger residents who live there because it has a lot of urban amenities/transportation/feel/density (compared with other suburbs) while being quite a well run city for the most part and those older residents who moved there bec...

Perhaps the Super Bowl events just prove that Nicollet Mall is better as a pedestrian-only mall, and buses should be permanently re-routed off of it.

We add safety features to cars all the time. It doesn’t mean that humans can’t drive until all the cars have these safety features. They’re a bonus, not a requirement for all current vehicles. So, sure, add safety features to self-driving cars. It doesn’t mean they’re not ready for testing in real s...

Damn Millennials. They ruin everything.

[ Edit ] I’m kidding!

These things have algorithms configured via deep learning driven by millions of simulation cycles. They are not being intentionally programmed to react to specific situations. It’s probably some of both, no? Tesla has accumulated over a billion miles of data from their cars, and over 300 million mi...

I don't think expecting an autonomous vehicle to be able to do something as simple as backing up is asking all that much. Just because the human driver was at fault does not absolve the autonomous vehicle (or rather, its engineers/programmers) of the responsibility of protecting its occupants. Edit...

Often, something historically significant is pretty, beautiful, or scenic.

But not always.

True, but it's puzzling (and concerning) that the bus was not able to take any evasive action to avoid being hit. Do we wait until autonomous vehicles can not only drive perfectly among other autonomous vehicles, but can also perfectly avoid sleepy, drunk, sloppy, or even terroristic drivers? We wi...