Erik Noonan
@eriknoonan
(he/him they/them) Local Award Winning Bike Nerd Architecture. Accessible Design. Nature. Food. Building a Better System. Professional Bicycle Propagandist @bikemn.bsky.social Co-Chair @streets.mn Views here are my own.
I consider armadillos to count. I do wish they ran the full length with merge spaces though.
Sure, but we're talking about cities with well planned transportation grids ;)
The secret is having been built in the 1700s. And then getting protected/updated through the urban renewal era. The accessibility of the near frontage housing stock leaves something to be desired, but there are modern high rises a block or two away. And because this is rare, it is affluent.
Take every 'urban renewal' era downtown surface lot and turn it into a Rittenhouse style park (and or housing).
Google's primary product's descent into slop will be studied in business schools. The same way that Kodak and Blockbuster are today.
If the Greenway Lakes Commons added zero-setback multifamily residential in their front lot, tell me that wouldn't be some of the best multigenerational housing in the metro. Steps from the lake, groceries, pharmacy, lightrail, brt, greenway, restaurants, book store, etc.
Something is coming that only this man knows about. ❄️ ❄️ ❄️ (yes that is a snow shovel)
There is no good reason to not expand the Minneapolis auto enforcement camera system to being bus based. And Commercial areas and dense multifamily areas need dedicated short term drop off and pickup zones. And those can't just be carveouts from the bike/bus ways.
Turn the golf course into a combination public sex forest and off-leash dog park with water access.
If this nothing-burger is a signal of any kind, it is that we will have to force Governor-Apparent Klobuchar into having meaningful policy stances at every step AND it will necessitate strong DFL control of both House and Senate to do so.
Restaurants are hanging on by a thread. Ingredient costs, rent absurdity, worker shortages from ICE terror. We'd lean in — but the money's locked up in like 12 guys inside their yachts nested inside their larger yachts. It isn't bike lanes, it is all time-high historic greed and inequality.
Freego X2 Pro All-Terrain Dirt eBike In actuality, an illegal motorcycle. 6000watt motor (8x the legal limit for an e-bike) 50mph top speed Looks like trash Retails for about k usd Dangerous to itself and to others. Still less dangerous than literally every automobile.
Someone dumped stacks of tires by a park near my home. There's so much wrong with the social circumstances and mentality that normalizes this behavior, but it is hard not to see it being connected to motonormativity and the idea that this waste is unavoidable. Happy bike month, I guess.
Hawaii is underutilized as an example of how irrelevant perfect weather is for getting people out and active. It's about the infrastructure. It is always about the infrastructure.
Amazing that there is no direct bike connection or even convenient set of sidewalk curb cuts between the West Lake LRT station/Cedar Lake Trail to the Whole Foods. Fresh asphalt and sidewalks done in the last year or so. Clear desire path both currently and in Sat images from years ago.
Please respect everyone enough to not try to gaslight us into believing that this wasn't meant to win you internet-points:
Good news, friend. City of Minneapolis has over 30k dedicated public parking spaces and for profit options exceed that many times over. Within just the downtown, ~20% of off street space is parking. Praise be to car storage.
This is more than 11x the amount that Minneapolis has spent on bike infrastructure in the past decade. Milan GDP: $250B Mpls GDP: $350B For comparison, the 494 expansion from Edina to Richfield will cost $377M. 494/35W interchange: $255 million. We can have nice things. We just choose not to.
Summit Ave as a bikeway is essential infrastructure of American democracy
So, here's my argument for closing the parkways to automobiles.... Cars being in our park space has literally never made those spaces better. This is a photo at Bde Maka Ska in 1912. Is this where you'd want to play catch with your kid? Yes honey, let's put down the picnic blanket here??
Amazing how the roadways can be essentially impassable due to tire rutted snow but the Greenway is bone dry.
We all know that the long term solution is changing roadway designs. But our children will have their own children before that has happened in a way that renders camera solutions meaningless.
Days like this make me so thankful I get to ride on studded tires and don't have to drive. Crazy to think that studded tires were illegal until just over a decade ago in MN.