urbanMSP

I'd argue that the freeway capacity is only "badly needed" because of the vast amounts of poorly-planned, car-centric sprawl that extends for miles up towards Bethel / St Francis. As a counterexample, Highway 3 in Dakota County fills the same road hierarchy "niche" that Highway 6...

'Future of transportation': Celebration marks the start of $195M rebuild of Hwy. 65 in Blaine I think this quote may be a bit of an exaggeration for what will effectively be a freeway with sidewalks and a bike trail. "This is a big deal," said Rep. Frank Hornstein, DFL-Minneapolis. "...

Catenary wire is strung from the Southwest Station terminus at least as far as the Valley View Road overpass, heading towards the Golden Triangle station. I'm sure there's still systems work and testing to do, but in Eden Prairie the guideway appears to be essentially complete.

Interesting idea - presumably you are suggesting burying Stagecoach road under the RR grade? I think that's the only way all of it could fit under the 169 clearance.

Officials recommend complete rebuild of bridge linking Duluth to Wisconsin

Funny, they only seem to put the price tag ($1.8bn) in the headline when the article is about transit projects.

That's a fair point - I was more arguing from the perspective of quality of service / rationing of scarce resources. The externalities of each clearly point in opposite directions. My point was that in the absence of pricing mechanisms, public goods (be it highway lanes, parking spaces, or transit c...

Fun fact - just south of this site, Dell Road is still a gravel/dirt road as it travels down the river bluff. It makes for a harrowing drive if you accidentally end up on it in the winter.

It is interesting to me how many of these arguments can be directly translated from the "is fare-free transit a good idea?" debate to the "are toll-free highways a good idea?" debate. I imagine that most of our knee-jerk reactions (including myself) would put us on a different si...

The political problem with fare-free seems to be: it incurs additional *direct* operational costs to accommodate increased demand, while all of its offsetting benefits are largely intangible or are recognized in other travel modes (e.g., reduced car traffic, reduced need for expensive car infrastruc...

I'm sure a shallow tunnel under 10th will do the trick!

"This street is too narrow for light rail!" "We want to keep our neighborhood walkable!" Somehow keeping the apparently "too-narrow" street open to unhindered vehicle traffic is more pedestrian-friendly than running like 10-12 LRT trains per hour on a transit mall? Yeah...

I spent a summer in Boulder working at NIST during which I was essentially car-free. Back then (15+ years ago) there was no real great transit option to get to Denver that I was aware of, so glad to see that there is one now. If you're a cyclist, Boulder has some great bike infrastructure in additio...

I'll take the over on 2030 but the under on 2032. No tunnels on this one, and without the Kenilworth tunnel SWLRT would be nearly complete by now.

...reasonably higher prices for the cache of not being a Walmart shopper...

I'm stealing this quote. Pure gold.

Probably no O line either, then. Guess we're stuck with just 24 letters - let's hope we're forced to use Greek

My GPS recently sent me through the Quentin Ave underpass, and I was honestly worried it was malfunctioning because it just felt like such an odd place.

I feel like it's at least reasonable to assume that directors (of any type of institution) benefit in their managerial roles from being able to physically experience the places which they manage. The optics of it are also not negligible. It's distracting from the mission when having to answer / deal...

I was a Southwest Transit rider for a long time, and while the peak-time express busses were truly convenient (they just had busses lined up and sent them off as they filled - probably 90 second headways), anything other than that was a hassle. I don't know the state of their finances, but if the Gr...