Interesting look at the Minneapolis / St. Paul area from an urban planning and transit standpoint. It mostly focuses on Minneapolis and talks about the good and bad about how the city runs
Interesting look at the Minneapolis / St. Paul area from an urban planning and transit standpoint. It mostly focuses on Minneapolis and talks about the good and bad about how the city runs
The whole downtown was long overdue for a refresh in the 1970s. The skyway system was a step in the right direction (see the criticism from the video!), but fundamentally downtown remained a place where rich people take a chauffeured limousine (otherwise known as a bus!) to their 9-5 job. Almost nobody lived there, and so there was no life (other than lunch time on the skyway). Because almost nobody lives downtown it is dead early.
The lightrail made a big mistake terminating downtown. Each should have become a subway under downtown, with a central station someplace (nicolet mall!) so that people could use it instead of having to transfer to a bus. The slow speed and low headways also are not helping.
There a lot of improvements but you are right that the current system does not work. The pandemic made it obvious to anyone that it was just for office works. Trying to take a bus anywhere that isn’t a commute to work really doesn’t work with buses not coming fast enough and take way to long.