urbanMSP

Hold onto your wallets, Minneapolis taxpayers. The 634,000-square-foot Forum buildings, previously known as International Centre and Oracle Centre, sold last week for $6.5 million, according to a real estate filing with the Minnesota Department of Revenue published Monday afternoon. The price is abo...

aBRT is needlessly technical and confusing. Why is the 'a' lowercase? Why is there an 'a' at all? Does that make it different than BRT? They should just call it Super Bus or something. "aBRT" written with lowercase 'a' may actually be a unique creation of this forum and not a real thing. ...

The prevalence of bad & unnecessary acronyms/initialisms in transit planning isn't discussed enough. This can be said about government in general, but it seems especially bad in transit because we often ask the public to use these terms rather than keeping them contained to technical documents. ...

The Met Council clarify how many parking spaces are really needed at the Robbinsdale P&R and how that will impact traffic

How about zero? Putting a P&R in downtown Robbinsdale is a stupid idea, and not building one will reduce impacts on traffic because zero cars will be driving to it.

I recall hearing that money was being allocated for the next three lines. Given the recent news about expanding the uses for the Nicollet funds beyond streetcars and the end of work on the Riverview project, my opinion is that Nicollet and W 7th St are likely to be two of the three new lines. Hopef...

With news of the Wells Fargo Plaza property going into foreclosure, I'd been thinking that 24-story tower would make a decent candidate for residential conversion. The floorplates aren't huge - they are larger than ideal but not totally out of the imagination for residential. Also the property comes...

It's obviously bad (and an enormous scandal no one will ever get to the bottom of) that we've blown hundreds of millions of dollars and a decade futzing around half-planning bad projects so that various county commissioners would have content for their email newsletters, but with the momentum on th...

It’s worth nothing that there’s no indication anyone is actually looking into the South Loop for a new NBA arena. It’s almost impossible to imagine that happening without Bloomington offering what would surely be a massive (and massively unpopular) subsidy. Agreed, I was just laying out some reason...

FWIW I don’t think an arena in Bloomington next to MOA is a total pie in the sky fantasy either. While the team ownership likely prefers this Farmers Market site, keep in mind that Bloomington missed out on the World Expo planned for this vacant land next to MOA and still would like to see it develo...

Can we maybe take a few weeks to mourn/celebrate the death of the streetcar project and discuss the near-term prospects for aBRT before immediately indulging in make believe transit projects?

Spending a few hundred million on a new bus line in this corridor made even less sense than spending $2bn on a Riverview streetcar that would be slower than the existing 54. Good grief we could have had aBRT running from MOA to downtown St. Paul in 2016 and extended to Maplewood Mall by probably 201...

Looking forward and given that MnDOT's reconstruction of Hwy 5 / West 7th is coming up in 2027-2028, my best guess is that Metro Transit will pivot to building aBRT on West 7th to coincide with that major roadwork. I can't really guess what it will be called though...maybe the Purple Line, assuming ...

So how much money did they spend on planning to not build a train? Hopefully not more than the local match would have been for the original B Line. Whoops! I'd go a step further and wager that Ramsey County spent more money on planning Riverview from 2014-2024 than the entire original B Line would ...

^Exchanges like this are why I chipped in money to keep this place running

To back this conversation up a bit, how many blocks of Nicollet Mall are really being considered for "pedestrianization"? I understand that the City's survey about transit options considers the full length of the mall. But is that the best plan? Wouldn't it be better to incrementally pedes...

The city has a webpage up for the Nicollet Mall pedestrianization project. There's also a survey From the survey: Option 1: Marquette and 2nd Avenue one-way pair *Moves most Nicollet Mall transit service (routes 10, 17, and 18 and future BRT) to Marquette Avenue (southbound) and 2nd Avenue (northbo...

Not really an embarrassing one, but still fits this topic: In most store apps/websites, I enter Richfield zip code 55423 rather than my actual Minneapolis zip code 55406. I live on the extreme southern end of 55406 and do all of my non-grocery shopping in Richfield/Edina/Bloomington (plus Eagan Cost...

This Strib article includes a lot of good updates. Ryan Cos is seeking $21M from the city to kickstart some of the stalled parts of the project. https://www.startribune.com/developer-seeks-21-million-from-st-paul-for-stalled-apartments-and-retail-at-highland-bridge/601126909 Most of the public fundi...

Reading that MinnPost article, along with earlier comments from staff & electeds in Robbinsdale and Crystal, it really sucks that those communities are still so dominated by car-first mindsets. Crystal city officials want Hennepin County to rebuild West Broadway between Douglas Drive and the cit...

The 23-612 will become route 38.

I ****ing love getting my way, even (especially?) when takes a decade of harping about it.