urbanMSP

Obviously a road's design speed is more important than its posted speed. That said, I do think there are regional difference in driving speed that likely make a difference in crash outcomes. I always think about my experience driving in Georgia where the average speed of highway traffic seemed to be...

Some updates on this:

These sixteen buildings are nearing completion.

I've attached some photos in a tweet here.

Here is a hype video for the project.

Not sure what we're arguing about here? Any N/S route is going to have to pass through downtown. Wanting a grid network with N/S connecting buses and wanting downtown service are compatible goals because we have Twin Cities that are both functionally laid out like hourglasses. Re: the #4 bus and fut...

New project proposed for 3561 Minnehaha Ave. 32 units, 0 car parking spaces, 36 long-term bike parking spots. Packet . This one will be built to passive house insulation standards, all electric utilities, rooftop solar array. Footprint Development strikes again. Thankfully unlike last time , they ha...

I mean, knock on wood, but this project doesn't seem to include any tunnels through wetlands, floating bridges over lakes (East Link in Seattle), or P3 delivery structures (Purple Line in Maryland). Building LRT on plain old surface streets, plus three bridge structures (by my count) is something yo...

Also in "Downtown is Back" news, the Five Guys has unlocked their street-facing entrance.

They've locked the street-facing door again, downtown is no longer back.

Their soon-to-be former offices are in the McKesson Building, which seems like an extremely strong bet for a residential conversion.

Also in "Downtown is Back" news, the Five Guys has unlocked their street-facing entrance.

The idea of getting buses off of Nicollet has been around forever. Nicollet isn't a great fit for buses, because of the speed limits buses on the mall run arguably worse than mixed traffic, especially at off-peak hours. But it's also a major corridor with tons of destinations and a bunch of good bus...

A lot of LRT projects are dictated first by the availability of right-of-way, and then the route is sutured together to form an adequate ridership case post hoc. I don't know how well used the bus predecessors of the Blue Line were, but the reason the Twin Cities built its first LRT line down Hiawat...

Metro Transit ridership has increased for the first four months of thus year, hitting 137,331 daily riders in April. That's 52.2% of April 2019 ridership, which marks a new high in % of pre-COVID ridership. The D Line broke 10k weekday riders in April, which sets a new high (although just because it...

Man, that's not a convincing piece. I'm begging people to become more naturally skeptical of pieces that eschew any kind of analysis in favor of a lot of political in-group signaling and ad hominem attacks. Sometimes I wonder what people think economics is, because the way they write about the field...

If somehow I had been appointed to the city council as a 25 year-old, I would not have been a good city councilmember for reasons largely related to being 25 and lacking a good deal of life experience. Now that said, it can cut both ways. I think as you get older, you come to appreciate the extent t...

Blue Line set another post-COVID ridership high in March, after unexpectedly setting the previous high the month before in February. According to Metro Transit's monthly report for March 2023, the Blue Line logged 18,913 weekday riders. That's nearly 60% of the last pre-COVID month comparison (March...

I'm curious what's better... - "Streetcar" LRVs in mixed traffic, lack of signal priority, and other hobbling factors BUT with dual-track ROW - Traditional LRT-spec with minimized grade crossings, TSP or railroad signals, 3+ LRV trains, and strategic grade separation BUT with significant ...

Minneapolis should make it an explicit goal to hit 500k in population by 2040. And St. Paul can do a lot better than the projection; 350k should be the floor. Back in the day, city population used to be a point of civic pride and competition (and no small amount of fraud) between cities. No reason w...

I made a mental health decision to stop caring about this project years ago because I had said my piece and it was clear how this effort would ultimately end up. Still, plenty of people have good reason to be frustrated about the years that were wasted on an obviously infeasible plan. However, peop...

I made a mental health decision to stop caring about this project years ago because I had said my piece and it was clear how this effort would ultimately end up. Still, plenty of people have good reason to be frustrated about the years that were wasted on an obviously infeasible plan. However, peopl...

There was a Blue Line Extension meeting yesterday at the Capri Theater. As you can see in the materials posted the last page (accessible here ) have basically refined two alternatives for the North/South segment north of Target Field and Broadway and four alternatives for the East/West segment east ...

So much for a small format grocery store in the Duffey 2.0 project, the 20k SF retail space in the new building will be a drinks and minigolf place . Do we have a term for these types of businesses? Similar to Pinstripes and all the axe throwing places. Maybe "adult arcade"? They're fun an...