urbanMSP

Yes, it is odd, given how many thousands of words have been spilled on this topic in the press, that no one has really scratched the surface on what's going on there.

This was always an extremely marginal, politically-motivated project, before any of the other stuff happened, and the poor performance of the Orange Line is not a great sign.

My "days since I've seen someone doing hard drugs on a train" counter is now at "don't recall specifically," which is nice.

Flipping the card back to zero

My "days since I've seen someone doing hard drugs on a train" counter is now at "don't recall specifically," which is nice. The "days since I've seen someone doing hard drugs at a train station" counter is at two, though. I did see a UMPD cop physically push a guy off t...

EP's biggest culinary destination - Asia Mall - is actually pretty close to the Town Center station, at least as the crow flies.

I will unironically go to Asia Mall before 2035, when the train opens. It's actually pretty far away!

If they're going use TIF, they should at least try to get an Olive Garden or something over there--when the train opens in 2032 I will definitely take it out to the mall once for fun and it looks like Applebee's is currently the best suburban chain option they've got.

I would be interested to read some more behind the scenes reporting about why it didn’t work out. Reading between the lines a bit (and there’s something extra annoying about the word salad quotes from electeds on this one) it seems like the opposition was largely coming from the metro suburbs, which...

It's so wild to have followed this project for two decades and periodically have new political, professional, or computer characters emerge and assure me that, clearly, there's nothing to see here--all is well. It's a huge self-own on my part. Am I still going to be doing this in 2030? Very humbling.

old timey cameras

That’s what I thought but figured that couldn’t be right.

What are inside the red circles with the lines through them?

I don't use it very often without a smartphone, but every two or three months with a group we might take a bus somewhere, and then get a car home at 1:30 AM instead of waiting for a bus. If they were to pull out (which seems extremely unlikely--you'd have to think the state will preempt it) probably...

If they're trying to inch up market a bit, hopefully someone will think to buy a vacuum for the movie theater.

I don't even think it's as thought out as politicians wanting to go to a ribbon cutting or spread out money to other side of the metro. It feels like it's more about the expectation that a government of a certain size has an office full of people whose job it is to talk about transit planning stuff....

Ramsey County needs to get some love, so probably.

If I had to pick between this combined with the incoming huge flop of the Gold Line, and a $2.5 billion transit museum in downtown St. Paul, I'd maybe go with the museum. You could put a little train in the food court and ride it around .

So do any of you guys think this is actually going to happen?

I regret never going to the Pizza Hut sports bar...

Sure, but how is the opposite of that going?

Man could you imagine a more cohesive super region. more equal transportation network, more spread out response to low income housing. Maybe even being able to equitably spread out school funding across the entire region. Obviously bigger isn't always better for bureaucracies but it could be cool I...

My actual best case scenario idea is that every unit of government in the metro area should be rolled into the Met Council, which would then be elected and coherent and understandable to normal people. A little too wacko to suggest, though.

Not that I'm the market for it, but I was surprised to see "oh, there's an Oxendale's down here?" out the train window on Saturday.