urbanMSP

Thank you for the information on fiscal constraints. The guidance explicitly states that new taxes are reasonable to assume for planning purposes "if there is clear evidence of sufficient support (both governmental and public)". Can you explain what clear evidence of support the Met Counci...

past practice does not allow for assuming the passage of a law supporting an additional 1 cent sales tax. What is the sales tax in the metro? 7 or 8 cents or so? Isn't there a bill in the Senate currently proposing to raise the sales tax for transit in the metro from 1/4 to 1 cent? Can you point to...

Sorry Grant, while it's true that there was prairie in Hennepin County once, it's been more than 500 years. In the history of white settlement of Minnesota, Hennepin County has always been in the deciduous zone. For more, reference: http://anthropology.umn.edu/labs/wlnaa/first/part2/chapter3.html a...

North Minneapolis tunneling and station building would be highly disruptive and expensive relative to the airport. Portals and stations would have to be excavated in populated areas. This means expensive impact studies, utility relocation, property acquisition and construction impact mitigation tha...

Only us naive people refuse to believe tunneling under an airport and excavting a single deep station adjacent to a parking ramp are at all comparable to tunneling through north Minneapolis. What is different about tunneling under an airport vs tunneling under a low density residential area? Except...

When was Minneapolis given another reasonable choice? And by reasonable, I mean a choice that didn't involve tearing down dozens of homes. Minneapolis had to pick their preference of alternatives defined by the project team, which were artificially constrained by (a) Mike Opat's requirement that onl...

To clarify my ad hominems: Joe Gladke is working hard to get this project done, but he doesn't give a shit about what the project ends up being, which is why it is being built through five miles of parkland. He is a highway engineer, doesn't care about transit, just wants something impressive for hi...

Sorry, this is pretty tangential to the conversation, but I wanted to point out that the VA campus isn't actually within Minneapolis city limits, which likely has something to do with its terrible urban design. As for the BLRT, it would have benefited from a more engaged project manager and a more e...

Heh, I just got a cut at a barber on Main in Dubuque for $11. His shop features a full-wall green tile and carved wood barber bar from the 30's with some really incredible deco light fixtures. He cuts child-hair for $6 but $10 on Saturdays. The haircut was atrocious, but the barber knew by the first...

http://minneapolisparkhistory.com/2015/01/31/defending-minneapolis-parks/ Thoughts? Will any Park Board land be taken? I thought the bridge footings would be on Hennepin County Regional Railroad Authority right-of-way. The Park Board doesn't own the Kenilworth Lagoon, do they? If not, then the auth...

Thanks. Sorry, the internet has trained me to not read the last few paragraphs of any article. Interesting that they're doing a 4-to-3 on Washington in the North Loop, since it's at the upper limits of what even progressive jurisdictions consider acceptable traffic levels for that treatment (about 2...

Hopefully Washington north of Hennepin be restriped with bike lanes in 2015 that the new cycletrack is somewhat useful for somebody.

In my anti-Met Council rant the other day I forgot to complain about how they assumed the route terminus would be in Medina. It's interesting to see now that the scenario that eliminates the Medina station actually increases ridership (by eliminating other stations, but implies that Medina's contrib...

BRT along Hwy 55 has been informally discussed for years. It's pretty clear that Plymouth is not that interested in it, thus Cole Hiniker's veiled threats about the project needing "political support." It's just too bad that the Met Council is not willing to champion transit projects. It's...

I think the streetcar roundabout is a cool idea that would create an opportunity for a unique public space within the development. However, I think it would be a struggle to make the public space very comfortable or compelling if there were an overpass shadowing it, so I'd suggest jettisoning that e...

Dunno, I hope John Gilmore is around to discredit conservatives for years to come:

http://blogs.citypages.com/blotter/2013 ... uslims.php

Bedrock is assumed to be about 35' deep at this site:

http://minneapolismn.gov/www/groups/pub ... 132426.pdf

The study is on the left sidebar of this page: http://www.dot.state.mn.us/aboutrail/ I haven't read the study either, but it looks like it applies to: • BNSF mainline from the Twin Cities to Fargo/Moorhead via St Cloud, Staples and Detroit Lakes • Canadian Pacific’s mainline from La Crescent to the ...

all the other water, sewer, gas, communication and low voltage electric infrastructure and different impacts of soil types that complicates things underground. (Which is why I giggle to myself anytime someone says build a tunnel under Nicollet downtown, but that's another topic ;) ) Since you prese...

The Sun Sailor story has an updated site plan that depicts less loopity paths in the 16th St park.