urbanMSP

New drone video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsMQouYWFls

https://kstp.com/kstp-news/top-news/lat ... -millions/

$17 million to make the MN&S/Dan Patch Line quiet-zone compliant in Edina and St. Louis Park. Whether that will actually happen is still very much up in the air.

Since the amount of spaces will be the same, do they anticipate the demand won't ever return to the pre-pandemic days when it was common for the park & ride lot to get so full that commuters would use the church parking lot across the street?

Looking at that Met Council presentation, specifically one of the reasons CPKC doesn't want a trail on the bridge:
"Safety: bridge is too narrow to provide sufficient separation between rail operations/trail users"

Meanwhile in Japan:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBDRi5ZgXPc

For a less extreme ...

Would be interesting to see how the view is from the IDS Center these days. It's been 20+ years since I've been up there, and while it would probably be the cheapest and easiest way to get an observation deck in downtown, my concern is with all the buildings near its height nearby are people going ...

Bringing this thread back from the dead after visiting Sydney's Tower Eye and Auckland's Sky Tower, and while I was there thinking about how nice it would be to have an observation tower somewhere in the Twin Cities to get a good view of the region.

In a better world an observation tower could ...

Another example of why I wish the U.S. rail network was nationalized.

For those of you who have traveled to different countries, how do you answer when someone asks where you're from? My response is sometimes Minnesota, United States, but I've tried to go more with Minneapolis, United States since I think there's a slightly better chance people have heard of ...

Kind of interesting (for me anyway) that despite all the changes in that area, the shape of that little building and the curve in the parking lot shows where once upon a time there was a spur track to the creosote plant (now Louisiana Oaks Park).

Maybe after some time and new development in the ...

Just northeast of there on Stagecoach Road they built a couple roundabouts, and that road looks like it has a significant amount of truck traffic. A warehouse was completed there recently, and looking at aerial photos there's about a hundred truck trailers in the parking lot surrounding the warehouse.

There's a T-intersection on my drive to work in Shakopee that has very little traffic control in terms of signage and seems like a bad accident waiting to happen, so I replaced it with a roundabout:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/43gdm7zEaLjeim9p6

As it is now only traffic coming from the east has to ...

Would be interesting to experiment with adding turnstiles at Lake Street/Midtown Station. That one specifically because it's already grade-separated, but also I wonder how many people would trespass on the bridge just to try to skip paying the fare. I guarantee it wouldn't be zero people, and ...

Edina suspends plan for $20 million tunnel under France Avenue:
https://www.startribune.com/edina-franc ... /601662485

Now they're looking at working with Hennepin County to improve at-grade crossings and make France Avenue more friendly to pedestrians and cyclists.

Would be nice if they could at least grade-separate the Blue Line Extension along Bottineau Boulevard, and maybe also the major intersections on Broadway in Brooklyn Center. Wouldn't even have to be one long viaduct or tunnel, just some short trenches/bridges to get under/over the intersections ...

I'm not necessarily saying that BRT would be better than LRT for this route, but I wonder how much of the decision to go with LRT weighs on the design of Target Field Station being built for an extension and the Met Council wanting that through-routing by any means necessary. It makes sense to have ...

Would love to see the ridership stats from today, especially for the routes that serve the State Capitol Building, if Metro Transit kept track of that. The 54 was almost already packed leaving the MoA a little after 11, and the Green Line was at crush loads when I left around 3:30.

https://www.twincities.com/2026/03/21/m ... -one-year/

Article about the Gold Line turning one year old. Can anyone who has a subscription give a brief summary?

I saw on a local railroad Facebook group that 2 locomotives and 8 coaches are on the move this evening heading to Texas, where they're being leased by Trinity Railway Express of Dallas/Fort Worth for the World Cup. It had me wondering if TRE would end up buying and keeping them, but TRE has ordered ...

After some of the experiences I've had with the opt-outs, I have more trust in Metro Transit to take over all the suburban services. Hopefully it would mean better connections across the former boundaries of the opt-outs. No doubt some suburban service would be cut, which is never great to see, but ...

Posted on SouthWest Transit's Facebook page:
"A new bill being introduced on Monday, March 9th threatens to eliminate SouthWest Transit. This means that all the services you rely on are at risk. We understand how essential SouthWest Transit is in meeting your daily needs, and we want to ensure that ...