urbanMSP

It seems that the Rethinking I94 effort only envisions freeway caps in a limited area of St. Paul. IMO Minneapolis officials should advocate for caps in Prospect Park, between Cedar Riverside and Seward, between Ventura Village/ Phillips and Elliot Park, and between Loring Park and Stevens Square/ L...

The recent Star Tribune article about the "infrastructure bill" reported that MoveMN is advocating for buildout of multiple ABRT lines within a decade. Imagine a 30% ridership increase for the 10 most popular bus routes and what an improvement that would make to the network.. and the metro...

Oof! It's so depressing. According to the article, Banana Republic in IDS closed earlier this year and the Juut Salon in Gavidae will close soon. I do think the Star Tribune has produced an disproportionate number of articles about downtown Minneapolis. What's the future of the 494 office strip, whi...

Looks like there's an effort at the Legislature to "mothball" Northstar Commuter Rail... https://www.startribune.com/talks-surface-again-about-shuttering-minnesota-s-northstar-rail-line/600039131/ I have mixed feelings because I strongly support passenger rail, but the ridership was poor (...

In my comments above, I meant Dallas rather than Houston. Here's an article about their $1.7 billion subway tunnel for DART LRT: https://www.dallasnews.com/news/transportation/2021/03/24/dart-cleared-to-seek-federal-dollars-for-17-billion-downtown-dallas-subway/ By the way I Googled a few stats to c...

No I clearly remember that an elevated line was seriously considered through downtown for the Hiawatha Blue Line. True that skyways were a concern, but many people including the downtown business community had experience with the "L" loop in downtown Chicago that is noisy and creates an u...

Other U.S. cities like Houston, Austin and Portland are in the midst of planning for construction of subway tunnels for their LRT lines through their downtowns to improve speed and capacity. Has the Met Council, Hennepin County or Minneapolis ever seriously studied the idea of constructing a tunnel ...

It's been a few years since I've been to Rochester, so I'm curious to know whether all the new structures make it feel more urban. It's always seemed like an odd place with some density, but lacking personality. Is it the absence of a major University that makes Rochester seem a bit bland compared t...

Thought it might be interesting to look at population growth for the cities along the corridor over the last decade based on Met Council 2020 estimates. It appears all the cities along the route are growing, and I imagine at least some of the growth can be attributed to denser, TOD-style projects al...

Does anyone here have experience with the St. Louis to Chicago higher speed rail route? I believe it was funded during the Obama years and was supposed to be 110 mph similar to what was supposed to run through Wisconsin to St. Paul. Agreed. Air travel has become pretty miserable (pre-pandemic) the w...

So, I just read through all 33 pages of this thread that started way back in 2012. It appears that the Midtown Greenway rail concept hasn't been added to the MSP region's queue of projects, right? It is mentioned the Minneapolis Transportation Action Plan as a big transit priority for the City, howe...

Mike or Others, Do you know how much time savings for the trip between St. Paul and Chicago will result from these track upgrades? Obviously, anything that can be done to speed up travel times makes the train that much more competitive with air travel. Currently, flying to Chicago is just so much fa...

Oof! Hennepin County has already spent more than $200 million planning this route.

I hope they go with the routes up Washington Ave better serving the already dense and growing neighborhood. The I94 and Lyndale alignments have such low population densities south of Broadway.

It will be great that many of major Minneapolis corridors will be served by ABRT by 2030 including Penn Ave N., Chicago Ave S., Lake St., Hennepin Ave, University/ 4th, and Central. However, it is so frustrating that so many other corridors that travel through dense, walkable places and have big pop...

It's also maddening that hundreds of millions will be spent on suburban BRT routes along low-density, car-oriented development. It's now going to cost more than a half billion dollars to construct the Gold Line because the FTA is requiring more parking spaces, for exaple. The E, F, G & H ABRT ro...

Well, I can't imagine ever using the Green Line extension due to the lack of destinations along the route except for a possible ride to the 21st Street Station at Cedar Lake and W. Lake Station near the Chain of Lakes to access beaches/ park amenities. I live off the Blue line near E. 38th St. and u...

I very much lean towards constructing a tunnel under W. Broadway because it will speed up service and leave room to redesign the corridor. The street needs to become far less car dominated with traffic calming, wider sidewalks, and tree-line boulevards/ streetscape in order to improve access to the ...

Here's a link to the Metropolitan Council's 2019 estimates for municipalities in the 7- county metro area. https://metrocouncil.org/Data-and-Maps/ ... px#content

Minneapolis: 435,885
St. Paul: 315,925

How would someone determine current populations of Minneapolis wards using Census data?

I believe the Minneapolis Farmer's Market should be relocated to the Post Office, perhaps even moving the red metal market shelters to the loading dock area facing the river. The San Francisco Ferry Building could be a model with permanent indoor stalls within the former post office structure and mo...