MetroTransit Bus WiFi First Impressions

With WiFi being tested on select MetroTransit buses, we recently sat down for a conversation with a transit rider on a crowded 6 bus as it traveled south on Hennepin Avenue.

Barb's Bold Spending

Hypothetical logo for Barb 2017.

I've known Barb Johnson was political magic since early last year, when she faced down the new members of the Minneapolis City Council, and cobbled together enough support to re-establish herself as President. But it wasn't until very recently that I realized there's a lot more to learn about Barb.

Leaning Tower's Sidewalk-Obstructing Patio

We've got a patio situation. Leaning Tower of Pizza maintains a front sidewalk patio. Patios are great. I enjoy eating in the outdoors. But this patio is too big for this section of sidewalk. It has seemed lately that this patio is just a little more in the way each day. Now I have proof.

Developers Still Building Parking; Whittier Alliance Still Terrible

image: flickr

Sixty-four units of affordable "workforce" housing are coming to the Whittier neighborhood. This is good for Whittier, and Minneapolis as a whole, which has a need for affordable housing. The project will have plenty of parking, which is disappointing, but not surprising (I once made a bold prediction that we hadn't seen the end of off-street parking in Minneapolis).

Analysis of Minneapolis City Council 2014 Fundraising

There's still 846 days until the 2017 election, but Minneapolis City Council Members are already out there raising money. I have combed through 2014's campaign finance reports to assess how each of them is doing on the financial road to 2017.

Progress on Parking: A Channel 79 EXCLUSIVE

"We're hearing unconfirmed reports that the City Council has banned cars."
image credit: Omar Bárcena

Minneapolis is one City Council vote away from enacting a major, nationally-heralded parking reform authored by Council Member Lisa Bender. I've watched with great interest as the debate has unfolded on Channel 79. To summarize the back-and-forth as uncharitably as possible: utopians on bicycles deployed a slew of crowd-pleasing parking analogies* (1, 2), while some of our city's original inhabitants countered with predictions of the aparkolypse (it's a "boondoggle" of an "epic fail"). 

Constituent Emails

You may remember the agitated gentleman from a few months ago who emailed me a PDF of my own Tweets. Now that I'm an elected public official, I have set up an email filter to clear my inbox of all messages not containing the phrase "you're a hero" (I will still be accepting your vitriol via Tweet, however).