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Four Quick Things about the Latest Riverview Report
I’d really like to see this street and these public spaces improved for people on foot. The long-running transit saga that is Saint Paul‘s “Riverview Corridor” is finally coming to an actual decision...
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Cars (Alone) Can’t Sustain Interstate 494
I spend a lot of time thinking about the 494 strip. I work out of a coworking space near 494 and 100, and live less than a mile north of the highway in Richfield. As a Richfield planning commissioner,...
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The Great Bicycle Helmet Controversy
A month ago we took a look at the history of bicycle helmets and data on their usage at various locations in Minnesota. But should a bicycle helmet by mandatory, or even worn in the first place?...
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The Original Dan Patch Line: LRT Potential
Please note that this should not be confused with the Dan Patch Corridor, a proposed regional/commuter/intercity rail line between Minneapolis and Northfield, and possibly further south. The original...
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Bloomington’s Four-Lane Death Roads Revisited
One of my first articles for streets.mn was on Bloomington’s Four Lane Death Roads, (four lane undivided roads) written in response to Bill Lindeke’s introductory article on Four-Lane Death Roads....
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Bloomington’s Comprehensive Plan: Forward 2040
Bloomington’s 2040 Plan, titled “Forward 2040” was officially adopted by the city on Aug 5, 2019. Unlike in Minneapolis, it passed with little notice and little controversy. Here are a few points that...
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Old Shakopee and 98th: From Death Road to Multimodal Corridor
The Old ShakopeeRoad/98th Street Corridor is one of the east-west thoroughfares of Bloomington. It’s also an outdated roadway. Several segments are a four-lane death road, the sidewalks are narrow and...
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Notable Tunnels of the Twin Cities Suburbs
As a child of the suburbs, I grew up in a world of fast-moving cars and very little reliable bicycle infrastructure. The trails that did exist in the 80s and 90s mostly wound around lakes or through...
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Hennepin County District 5 Candidate Questionnaire
Hennepin County District 5 With the help of Move Minnesota and the North Star Chapter of the Sierra Club, streets.mn has sent out a transportation and land use questionnaire to candidates running for...
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Bloomington’s Bicycle Infrastructure Revisited, Part One
Back in 2016, I wrote an article about Bloomington’s bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure, with examples of the good and the bad. In addition, I wrote two related articles in 2014 and 2018 about the...
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Bloomington’s Bicycle Infrastructure Revisited, Part Two
This is the second entry in a three-part series on Bloomington’s bicycle infrastructure. In part one, we looked at the background and historical context of Bloomington’s bicycle infrastructure. The...
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Bloomington’s Bicycle Infrastructure Revisited, Part Three
This is part three of a three-part series on Bloomington’s bicycle infrastructure. Part One provided historical context and my personal views on what makes good bicycle infrastructure, while Part Two...
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The 2022 Met Council TAB Grants: a Suburban Perspective
On a biennial cycle, the Metropolitan Council directs federal funding to infrastructure projects throughout the region by way of a competitive process in which local agencies compete for funding from...
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Bloomington’s Four-Lane Roads
The recent post about four-lane undivided roads made me think about how many there are in Bloomington. Although I absolutely love living there in general, I tend to agree with virtually everyone else...
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Obstacles to Accessing Bloomington’s Trails
This weekend, I awoke early to grab some time-lapse sunrise photos on the Minnesota River banks across from the Port Cargill-West Elevator. I hiked the Minnesota River Bottoms Trail to a nice clearing...
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Hwy 100 and I-494 Interchange Ranked 2nd Most Iconic Place in MN
A bird’s eye view of the second most iconic thing in Minnesota. Each day 142,000 people drive through the interchange at I-494 and Highway 100 in Bloomington and Edina on their way to work, shop, or...
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High Rises and the Transect
It’s probably safe to say that high-rises rank at the top of the list of things most residents don’t want to see in their neighborhoods. Fears of traffic, crime, depressed property values, and changing...
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Why Aren’t We Building Affordable Houses Anymore?
Last week in my article on self-driving cars, I noted the phenomenon that affordable (say $200,000 or less) new houses simply aren’t being built anymore and speculated that might lead to people...
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The Crank’s Cartoon Shout-outs
I am hereby naming this column “The Crank.” That’s because I’m cranky, I like bicycles, and a crank is the part of a bicycle that makes it move. With this in mind, I’d like to offer the following...
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The Past and Present of Bloomington’s Oxboro Neighborhood
I’ve lived in the Oxboro area of Bloomington my entire life, 3/4 of a mile from the major commercial area at 98th St. and Lyndale Ave. Although most of my shopping is done at big box stores in other...
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Sunday Summary – December 27, 2015
Streets.mn is caught in the Christmas vortex with only a few new posts this week, but I’ve taken the liberty of adding some links to older, but related content since easy intertextuality is one of the...
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Bloomington’s Oxboro Neighborhood, a Vision for the Future
Previously I wrote about the past and present of my neighborhood, the Oxboro neighborhood of Bloomington. There’s been a few modest improvements for bicycles and pedestrians, including the addition of...
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The Case of Bloomington’s Disappearing Street Lights
A Disappearing Street Light in the Oxboro neighborhood. Street lights are disappearing in Bloomington. Last summer I noticed red spray-paint on a bunch of the poles on Lyndale Ave. Then they started to...
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Sunday Summary – April 10, 2016
Today is audacious and noteworthy engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s birthday (born on this date in 1806). Among other accomplishments, Brunel was Resident Engineer on the Thames Tunnel (called the...
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A New Life for the Old Cedar Avenue Bridge
Today, I want to continue to look at some of the substantial bicycle and pedestrian improvements planned in the Bloomington area. The first part took a look at the plans to complete a major missing...
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Sunday Summary – May 15, 2016
We are in the middle of May, National Bike Month, and this week is Minneapolis Bike Week with lots of events to encourage, entice and reward biking to work, school, and everywhere else. Bike-related...
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A New Life for the Old Cedar Bridge: Restoration Begins
Today reconstruction of the Old Cedar Bridge is well underway. Previously we looked at the history of the bridge and how we got to the final decision that the bridge will be restored. This article...
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Podcast #92 – Beyond Richfield with County Commission Candidate Debbie Goettel
This week’s podcast is a conversation with Debbie Goettel, the mayor of Richfield and a candidate for the Hennepin County Commissioner in the 5th District, which encompasses Richfield, Bloomington, and...
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