My Minnpost Festival Q&A Session is Now Online

In case you missed it, I gave an hour-long Q&A blab at the recent Minnpost Festival, where I was surprised and flattered to find people who actually wanted to ask questions about my Cityscape column and our Twin Cities. The whole day was great; the Tina Smith interview with Kara Swisher and the discussion with New Yorker television critic Emily Nussbaum were particularly excellent. 

And then there was me, too. Luckily, Minnpost video'd the whole thing, so you can watch it at your leisure. It's preserved for posterity, FWIW...

Opt-out Transit Agencies' High Overhead

High floor buses I can understand. High overhead unnecessary transit agencies are a bridge too far for me. 

A few months ago I wrote about why I think the opt-out bus agencies -- mainly Mississippi Valley Transit (MTVA) and Southwest Transit -- should be disbanded. Or, at the very least, the impending change in funding structure should give leverage to state officials to more closely scrutinize the frustrating, fragmentary arrangement. 

You can read it here, but the gist is thus:

The downsides of an opt-out system center on lack of efficiency, scale and planning conflict. As a whole, multiple overlapping government agencies are an expensive solution for “local” concerns, and the opt-out agencies have a lot of duplicative overhead. For example, instead of one branding or ad campaign, you have five. It’s the same for websites, apps or other other administrative positions that scale effectively, like HR offices or executive leadership. Today, all those costs are currently multiplied five-fold across the region.  

Since writing the piece, I received an interesting email from a Minnpost reader named Nick who had been digging into salary information, something I also tried to do without success. (Agency budgets and information is really hard to find, as the public board meetings don't have thorough minutes available.) 

Anyway, they did a public data request for top transit agency leadership salaries at MVTA versus Metro Transit and came up with the following chart:

This is 2024 public information.

I just want to point out that the (IMO excellent) GM Lesley Kanderas of Metro Transit is overseeing a staff of over 3,200 people that provides 47.5 million rides a year. She made $245,842 in 2024. The respective numbers for the CEO of MVTA are around 35 employees*, 1.6 million rides, and $326,819 dollars a year.

This is not to mention the other folks running the show at MVTA. I think this speaks for itself.

* I can't find an exact number, but it's between 30-40. I think they contract out bus drivers staffing to avoid unionization.

Q&A Discussion at Minnpost Festival Tomorrow

Minnpost Festival is tomorrow in downtown Minneapolis, and I'm going to have a Q&A discussion about cities and the upcoming election -- and anything else people want to talk about. There's a great list of famous guests including Governor Walz, AG Ellison, Senator Smith, and more. 

Then there's me. I'm part of a "breakout session" at 3:15 and will be hosted by our new editor Leah Fabel. Hope to see you there! Bring any questions you have about the future of our Twin Cities.

TCSidewalks Live! Onstage with Minnpost Social August 4th

[Downtown Saint Paul.]

As you probably know, Minnpost called my bluff, and I now write the Cityscape column. That means I'm part of the "big three" at the season's first Minnpost Social, all about "changing downtowns." I'll do my best to be just irreverent and irrelevant enough.

Here's the writeup:

The 2015-16 season of MinnPost Social, sponsored by RBC Wealth Management, will start with a bang on Tuesday, Aug. 4, when MinnPost journalists Peter Callaghan, Marlys Harris and Bill Lindeke lead a public discussion on the sustainability of the downtown development booms underway in Minneapolis and St. Paul.

The event will take place 5:30-7 p.m. at the Day Block Brewing Co. tap room, 1105 Washington Ave., in Minneapolis.

Tickets are free for MinnPost Silver, Gold, and Platinum members (and their guest), and $10 for non-members.

I've never been to one of these before, so I don't know how it will go. But what can go wrong with meeting Marlys for the first time?

See you then!

Examples of Skyline Views vs. Axial Views

Last week, I put up a column on Minnpost about the difference between skyline views and "axial views," which are a concept out of Baroque or City Beautiful style planning. Here's how I described the difference:

Axial views occupy a special place in urban history. During the 19th century, city planners took great pains to transform European cities with long avenues terminating in public squares. Paris’s boulevards are the most urban axes, built where the powerful city planner Baron von Haussmann bulldozed boulevards through the dense confines of working class Paris. These views tied the city together along wide streets that connect landmarks like the Arch de Triomphe.

The Paris example is widely known, and you'll find these boulevards and landmarks all throughout late 19th century art and literature.

[Pissarro's painting of the axial view of L'Opera.]

[The Arche de Triomphe.]

[Haussman's axial boulevards.]

[The classic axial view. Note: all the cars.]

 This is not to say they weren't problematic. Much of the impetus behind Haussmann's creation of these boulevards came from an uprooting of the working class, the replacing of thier homes with new bourgeois housing, and the desire to accomodate more traffic through the unruly city for often military or policing reasons.

[Barricades during the 1871 Paris revolution.]

[Image taken from David Harvey's book.]

Twin Cities' Examples

The axial views in the Twin Cities fall into two categories: accidental and planned. The latter is an easy thing to describe, because examples are so few. As I described in my piece, the Minneapolis Plan for 1917 was basically a Haussmann-style plan (though more directly modeled on more recent and more proximate Burnham Chicago plan):

[The 6th Avenue boulevard for Minneapolis.]

Along the way, the Minneapolis plan (never built) references efforts in Saint Paul to plan the State Capitol Grounds around a "trivium" (or three-road) City Beautiful design that would emphasize the monumentality of the Capitol, the Cathedral, and downtown. While it involved bulldozing a whole bunch of historic Saint Paul buildings, this is one of the Twin Cities few examples of a City Beautiful plan that actually got built.

The original plan looked like this:

Today's capitol mall complex is pretty close. Here is the panoramic view of downtown and the cathedral:

[Three axes coming together.]

A similar planned from Smith Avenue on West 7th street also frames the Capitol building as a terminal focal point. According to a friend of mine, "the architect of the capitol envisioned the building interacting with this street/view. (I think it was called Mohawk then)." Anyway, this is the view from near my house, and it's an excellent lesson in vanishing points and scale:

[Smith Avenue.]

An odd Minneapolis example is the axial view from along Victory Memorial Drive on the Minneapolis/Robbinsdale border. The construction of long terminal views, which were then seen as somehow civilizing, is pretty much the only thing that can explain this weird park/road:

You might argue that the view of downtown Saint Paul from West 7th Street is also a planned axial view, as the street was not always straight as an arrow. Anyway, once you cross the (largely unnecessary) railroad bridge by Saint Clair Avenue, you get a lovely axial view of downtown from the street:

[Farther away on top; closer on the bottom.]

Accidental Axials

Other than that, there are a few accidental axials scattered around as well. I'd place the Selby Avenue view of the Catherdal in this category:

[Selby Avenue. H/t Matty]

Here's the view up Nicollet Avenue that terminates in fine white walls of the Hyatt Hotel:

[Nicollet Avenue.]

As well as the view of City Hall from Park Avenue (whose layout probably predated the construction of City Hall in 1906):

[Park Avenue.]

Here's another accidental City Hall view from the Warehouse District:

[I think this is 2nd Ave S.]

Skylines

Once you get past that, you're left with skyline views. Because the skyline sticks up, you can see it from lots of places througout the city. Here are some of the most interesting skyline views of Minneapolis sent in by readers:

[From Cedar Lake Trail. H/t Michael.]

[From the UMN transitway. H/t Michael.]

[From the railyards. H/t Mike.]

[From Cedar-Riverside. H/t Sian.]

[From the 15th Street bridge. H/t Scott.]

[From Lauderdale. H/t Steven.]

[From the 24th Street Bridge. H/t Cassie.]

[Again with the bridge. H/t Joe.]

A Field Guide to Bus Shelters

[Replacing an ad on a flat-roof CBS shelter on Saint Paul's Minnesota St.]

Last week, I wrote a Cityscape column all about bus stops and bus shelters. In doing so, I learned a lot about actual types of bus shelters and began noticing them as I went around the city.

Here's a bit of background from the piece:

The Twin Cities’ transit system has about 12,000 bus stops spread throughout the metro area, and somewhere around 800 of them have shelters operated by the agency. Of the stops with shelters, about 14 percent of them of have lights and 10 percent have heat for the winter. In theory, the agency has guidelines about which well-used stops should receive shelters, but in practice there are many stops in the center cities that lack shelters despite high ridership.

As it turns out, once you start spotting different types of bus shelters, it's hard to stop. Here's what I've learned so far.

There are three main types of bus shelters in the Twin Cities:

• 1) Metro Transit shelters (without ads)
• 2) CBS shelters (with ads) 
• 3) Public/Private (aka "custom") shelters

Within those broad categories, there are even more distinctions depending on age, roof type, and size. Here's a rough sampling of a dozen or so.

CBS Shelters - These shelters are actually owned by CBS Outdoor, a large media/advertising company that also runs billboards, and advertising laden benches. Oddly, considering the trend toward privatizzation in other cities aroun the country, Minneapolis recently cancelled their contract with CBS Outdoor, so CBS shelters in Minneapolis are gradually being phased out. However, they are still being built and operated in Saint Paul and some other suburbs (I heard Roseville...).

Note that these shelters typically have ads only one side, usually the side that is the "far side" of whichever direction the police typically come from. (E.g. downstream from the direction of traffic.) Safety and transparency (meant quite literally) is a key consideration in bus shelter design.

[A flat roof CBS shelter, probably the oldest of the type. Wabasha and 6th, DT Saint Paul.]

[Metal variation of CBS shelter, probably much newer. Hennepin and Washington, DT Minneapolis.]

[Curved roof CBS shelter. Nicollet and 16th, Minneapolis.]

Metro Transit Shelters [basic] - These are the most common type of shelter, particularly once you get out of Minneapolis and Saint Paul proper. They are distinctive because of the lack of advertising. You can tell the ages of the shelters by looking at the type of metal and glass used (striped = more recent) and whether the roof is curved perpendicularly (older) or whether the curve is aligned with the shelter (more recent).

Also, increasingly these come in different sizes and configurations, such as fully enclosed and half enclosed.

[Curved roof MT Shelter without striped glass. Wabasha and 5th, DT Saint Paul.]

[MT Shelter with a higher peaked roof. Nicollet and 18th, Minneapolis.]

[Larger version of the above. Note different size roof and glass panes. Nicollet and Franklin, Minneapolis.]

[High peak half-shelter. Nicollet Avenue, Minneapolis.]

[Silver MT "logo" shelter, the newest model out there. Nicollet Avenue, Minneapolis.]

Metro Transit Shelters [deluxe] - In addition to the basic shelter, there are certain special Metro Transit-owned shelters that are becoming more common throughout the Twin Cities. Right now, the best example are the Marq-2 shelters along Marquette and 2nd, however as the proposed aBRT system rolls out, more deluxe Metro Transit shelters will become more common.

[A Marq-2 Shelter with NexTrip sign, quasi-benches. Marquette Avenue, Minneapolis.]

[One of the proposed aBRT "A Line" shelters.]

Public/Private Shelters - These are the really idiosyncratic ones. There are a whole range of privately-built and sometimes publicly maintained "custom shelters" throughout the Twin Cities. Sometimes, if they are designed to be compatible with Metro Transit's components (e.g. glass), they are maintained by Metro Transit. Otherwise they are wholly private.

[The "flower shelter", a custom design in North Minneapolis.]

[The "Taj Mahal" shelter on 6th and Jackson, DT Saint Paul.]

[A large non-bus stop shelter by the bus waiting area. Parking lot next to the library, Minneapolis.]

[Custom shelter. Hennepin Avenue, downtown Minneapolis.]

[Custom shelter. Nicollet Mall, Minneapolis.]

[Custom shelter. Note absence of glass panes. MT probably doesn't do much to this one. Nicollet Mall, Minneapolis.]

Update:

This amusing photo was sent in by a friend, showing a new Metro Transit shelter side-by-side with a custom shelter in Richfield.