urbanMSP

I will personally beg MNDOT to allow Highway 5 to go down to two lanes so Riverview can have dedicated ROW across the river.

Sincere question: why do we bother doing this TOD planning if it doesn't get folded into comprehensive plans? To imagine what could've been? I sure hope the broader region (via Met Council or otherwise) didn't sponsor this station-area plan just for Bloomington to ignore it. I think cities (or count...

Speaking of Ramsey County transitway projects, the Gold Line is 100% engineered and ready to begin construction next spring in anticipation of a 2025 opening. Some notes from the latest CMC meeting: The FTA is currently doing risk assessment for the project, expected to be completed this month. The...

They haven't yet decided on how much of the route will be mixed-traffic vs. dedicated ROW and double-track vs. single-track I'll have to take the opposing stance and say that this makes me feel pessimistic. Unless West Seventh becomes a county/city road in the next couple of years, there's a decent...

Speaking of Ramsey County transitway projects, the Gold Line is 100% engineered and ready to begin construction next spring in anticipation of a 2025 opening. Some notes from the latest CMC meeting: The FTA is currently doing risk assessment for the project, expected to be completed this month. The ...

This is not a "streetcar to Bloomington", this is light rail that will have short segments of mixed-traffic operation in St. Paul. Where exactly those segments will be and how long they will be, I don't know, and I wish the planners were more clear on that. I was also the impression that ...

How do you know Metro Transit and the Met Council are against it? Seems to me they support it, or are at least neutral. Sorry if I was unclear. I do not know that, but I wish they would come out against it. That said, I'm confident that the Met Council probably has more reservations with Riverview ...

The Met Council/Metro Transit should make it clear they don't support this and refuse to be involved so Ramsey County will send this back to the drawing board. No reason at all we're talking about $1 billion+ for single-track, mixed-traffic operation. If it it's this or nothing, I'd almost rather ha...

It's an expensive project (some might say too expensive) but we're getting a real nice product for our money. Great photos!

The 542 bus will be getting midday service starting in December.

Is this part of the Orange Line service changes? Or has Metro Transit announced this separately?

The generation of stadiums phased out over the past couple decades were literally from a different era, for the most part. Very old stadiums tended to be bare bones and modest. A new generation of cookie-cutter, no-frills, multi-use stadiums followed. When revenues in pro sports exploded during the...

Have you been to other cities. I can't think of any that comes close to the spread of parks all around Minneapolis. I'm not saying that we can never add more parks. But we have greater needs. I can't really speak to this specific parcel (gun to my head, I think it would make sense to make the weste...

We honestly have too too much parkland in the city.

I'm gonna stop you right there.

Whatever deal is struck, there needs to be an agreement that a new stadium will be somewhere in Minneapolis or St. Paul (or maaaaybe the Bloomington South Loop.) A suburban stadium should be a no go. I'm pretty pro-public-stadium-financing, but that doesn't mean the Wolves should get a blank check t...

I get the logic of not using council meetings or office resources to draw up a post-election plan (it would be wrong to divert city resources to planning for something they're not yet legally allowed to do.) That said, there's no reason that the councilmembers couldn't advance a "vision" o...

I'd probably just chalk it up to uncertainty. Most of the projects approved in 2020 had probably been in the pipeline for a year or so already. Developers likely shelved more than a few projects last year thanks to the pandemic. They'll come back. The Twin Cities still have great vitals. If rising c...

I'll start by saying that I don't think there is yet a thread to discuss Saint Paul's 17 district councils or other hyperlocal governments. They don't get as much attention as their Minneapolis counterparts, but they come up occasionally and are highly involved with things like road reconstructions,...

I mean, would it be the worst thing in the world for this to just end at North Memorial? It would be a massive waste of money and time to elevate along 81, especially when appetite for LRT is pretty low (see growing discontent with how Southwest has played out.) At this point, let's not burn politic...

Under Minnesota law, cities become "Class A" once they cross 100,000 people. It's a designation they retain unless they drop below 80,000.

I would definitely go for the 2 general traffic lanes + 1 MNPass lane approach, and leave it there. There is good reason to believe that a six-lane highway reduces traffic versus a four-lane highway, but that anything above six lanes is just inducing extra demand.