A Minneapolis housing boom explainer

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Minneapolis is hot! The Metropolitan Council recently noted that we popped back up above 400,000 residents after adding almost 9,000 people between 2012 and 2013. The area along the Midtown Greenway has been completely transformed in the past decade–eleven separate projects, ten of which are residential, have been built along its Uptown stretch since 2004. There are residential towers sprouting in Downtown Minneapolis, Loring Park, and the University of Minnesota area. Continue Reading

Wireless commons: Interference is a myth, but the FCC hasn’t caught on yet

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We often think of all our wireless communications as traveling separate on paths: television, radio, Wi-Fi, cell phone calls, etc. In fact, these signals are all part of the same continuous electromagnetic spectrum. Different parts of the spectrum have different properties, to be sure – you can see visible light, but not radio waves. But these differences are more a question of degree than a fundamental difference in makeup. Continue Reading

Green Line signal priority Q&A

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As the Green Line opened on June 14th, most of us were just excited to finally have a new service plying the busy Central Corridor area, but many were keeping an eye on their clocks and watches, checking its speed against the schedules that had been posted a couple of weeks earlier. On opening weekend, many trains were taking more than an hour to make it from end to end. The signal priority system that’s necessary for trains to operate smoothly just wasn’t working right. But hey, it was opening weekend, when 107,000 people turned out for free rides over two days—things were bound to be worse than normal. Continue Reading

Lake Street: BIKE friendly?

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It’s rare that I bike more than a few blocks on Lake St. without having some variation on “Get the fuck out of the fucking road!” shouted at me from a passing car. Given the overall vibe on Lake, this isn’t remotely surprising. Continue Reading

Hiawatha Avenue crosswalk improvements

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The Hiawatha Avenue crosswalk improvements at 38th, 42nd and 46th Streets are largely complete. For a reported cost of $850,000, curb bumpouts have been created in most places to reduce crossing distance, pork chop islands have been enlarged and center refuge islands widened, curb cuts are now ADA compliant, the crosswalk along the south side of 46th Street has been restored, and new crosswalk activation buttons (“beg buttons”) are in the process of being installed. As well, new trees have been planted along both sides and in the median of Hiawatha. Continue Reading

Minneapolis Pride

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The Twin Cities Pride parade marches down Hennepin Avenue in Minneapolis tomorrow. To mark the occasion, MnDOT usually switches the lighting on the underside of the I-35W bridge to a rainbow pattern. The first time it did this was in 2011. This is a short timelapse film I made showing the bridge from a vantage point overlooking Mill Ruins Park. Continue Reading

Rules for school tools, privacy in danger

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The surprise announcement by the District administrators to have every St Paul student be given an Ipad (mini-laptop) took many people (even the school board) and public by surprise. The coverage by the two daily newspapers recently has received front page attention. The St Paul School District decided to completely shift gears from what they told voters last year when we voted for a school tax referendum. As soon as I read the articles the questions started to flow. Would there be a parent anywhere who would support the school district’s actions to abrogate their families and children’s privacy rights? Does the Ipad initiative violate students/family privacy and liberty rights? Does the School district have the right to install devices in the Ipads that allow monitoring and surveillance of where students go and what they do? What are the choices that parents and students have? Continue Reading

A crash lesson in crash causes

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A friend of mine recently had a bike-riding experience worthy of story-telling, and agreed to share it here. Della Kurzer-Zlotnick, the author, will be moving to Oberlin for college this fall. Continue Reading