urbanMSP

My wife and I had our first apartment in Robbinsdale many years back, and I always felt that Robbinsdale thought of themselves as a small town that just happened to be surrounded by a city, rather than an integral part of that city. Stuff like the noon / evening whistle evokes a farm town more than ...

Robbinsdale thinks too highly of themselves.

Oh geez, the Minnesota gauntlet has been thrown.

..."Bullet Bus" being a play off "Bullet Train" I think would be a good name for the system.

I think this is mostly a joke, but "Bullet Bus" is just setting up the most obvious political attacks imaginable from anti-transit / anti-urban conservatives

My parents told me that, and I tell my kids that, so at this point it might as well be true

I know that governors don't get into the minutiae of LRT design, but it's crazy to me that we've had DFL governors since 2011, and they haven't lifted a finger to support or promote these projects. I'm thinking especially of when there were difficult political decisions to be made on the green line...

As far as "suburban Greenfield sites" go, that spot ain't that bad. Near two existing LRT stops, adjacent to MoA and South Loop... You could do worse.

Without those never-used distant Target parking spaces, where will two random cop cars park next to each other and roll down their windows to chat?!? Seriously though, that plan looks good. All the activity at the mall is on the south end anyway, near the food court / AMC / B&N / Scheels, so rem...

Concept to redevelop the JCPenney section of Eden Prairie Center. https://www.bizjournals.com/twincities/news/2024/08/20/jcpenney-eden-prairie-redevelopment.html Relevant: JCPenney at EP Center closes permanently I'm guessing it's discussed in the bizjournals article, but JCP has confirmed that the...

I dunno, I kind of like the "full-service" 21st St bridge. It calms exiting interstate traffic prior to Broadway, and I'm guessing it buys some goodwill to have it serve all users (not just transit). I'm guessing it's a fair bit cheaper than a flyover as well - and a flyover structure woul...

The real errors in the north metro were made decades ago. Now we're left with choices between bad options to maintain the status quo for the exurbs to the north of BC. My guess is that the vast majority of the traffic on 252 does not originate or terminate in the immediate vicinity of 252, but is ra...

It's also not a vital connection for reaching the airport by car. There's enough redundant highway infrastructure in the area that it hardly makes a travel time difference if that route were completely unavailable for most of the metro. The one area that relies on that crossing to get to the airport...

The main beef that the MAC has is that the proposed new Highway 5 bridge would only have 3 car traffic lanes - 2 northbound to St Paul, 1 southbound toward the airport. “We want people to get to their flight on time,” Rief said. “If they’re going to build a new bridge, it’s going to be in place for ...

We all know that Olympics are really not great deals economically for their host cities, but with the recent shift to using existing facilities instead of building it all from scratch, the Twin Cities really wouldn't be a bad choice for a future US bid, given all the existing stadiums we have here. ...

When VP Waltz is elected, we can have a parade on Nicollette [sic].

Somebody's going to have to start a "List of US Vice Presidents From Minnesota" wikipedia page pretty soon.

There's not much traffic here. Folks take the Parkway and turn East onto Lowry, but they don't usually keep heading North. There are a few ambulances currently. Honestly, it's calm. If you're on the trail often you don't need to stop for a car. I agree that there's not much traffic here - but based...

Article says that the Park Board president gave a verbal blessing to this design when presented last year. The timing and pearl-clutching of all this feels totally manufactured.

I love how it's framed as "200 trains a day!", with no context of how many thousands of private automobiles *already cross this same trail* today.

If we absolutely have to grade-separate this, can we please build a trail bridge and not a 9-figure LRT tunnel???

It helps that it is probably competitive with driving to Hopkins or the EP Center from those apartments because the roads make no sense. The trails too, for that matter. It's like the Olympic rings or something? I think I heard that once, that's why they're called Red Circle, Yellow Circle, etc. IDK

Opus Station is going to be a star along the suburban portion of the line, I strongly believe. Hopefully it will be a model for how to develop other stations with major TOD potential (like Van White, Shady Oak, etc.)