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Jan 24, 2025 | 
streets.mn | Joe Harrington
I’ve got highways on my mind this week after MnDOT moved to remove the “at-grade” boulevard options from consideration in the Rethinking I-94 process at a project meeting on Friday, January 17. As Streets.mn already has reported, very little “rethinking” has gone into this process.
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Jan 10, 2025 | 
streets.mn | Joe Harrington
Editor’s note: This article was originally published in the Minnesota Reformer on January 9, 2025, and is reprinted with permission. We encourage Streets.mn readers to attend MnDOT’s Rethinking I-94 Policy Advisory Committee meeting on Friday, January 17, 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Learn more and register here. The Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) announced late last year they were rejecting a proposal to turn I-94 into a boulevard between Minneapolis and St. Paul.
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Jan 9, 2025 | 
minnesotareformer.com | Joe Harrington |Minnesota Reformer
by Joe Harrington, Minnesota Reformer January 9, 2025 The Minnesota Department of Transportation announced late last year they were rejecting a proposal to turn I-94 into a boulevard between Minneapolis and St. Paul. The proposal arose with grassroots support from residents and community groups as part of MnDOT’s Rethinking I-94, which is the first comprehensive review of the freeway since it was built in the 1960s.
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Jan 3, 2025 | 
fastcompany.com | Joe Harrington
Recent years have brought a new wave of excitement in American cities around the concept of highway removal. But examples of highway removals in the U.S. are few and far between. Highway removal, when done well like in Rochester, New York, can revitalize urban areas by reclaiming space for community-centered development, stimulating economic growth and reconnecting neighborhoods previously divided by freeways.
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Dec 26, 2024 | 
streets.mn | Joe Harrington
Streets.mn published over 250 articles and podcasts in 2024, covering a lot of ground both literally and figuratively. Dozens of authors covered stories from neighborhood histories to highway planning to a favorite park or an ode to an electric bike.
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Dec 19, 2024 | 
usa.streetsblog.org | Joe Harrington
Is this a loophole big enough to drive a diesel truck through? Minnesota's 2023 law to reduce greenhouse emissions from the state’s biggest climate pollution sector — transportation has been heralded as a major step toward creating accountability for an agency that has long treated climate and pollution impacts as an afterthought.
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Dec 18, 2024 | 
streets.mn | Joe Harrington
I’ve always wanted to write about food. Growing up in a classic Irish and Italian family in New England, food was always a big part of my family life. My grandmother would cook pasta and meatballs on Sundays, spending nearly all day cooking — a ritual I have come to replicate. My mother, who manages several well-known Maine seafood restaurants, and I often cooked together — I even spent seven or eight years working in one of the restaurants. You get the idea.
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Nov 26, 2024 | 
streets.mn | Joe Harrington
The issue of who benefits and who bears the burden of highway infrastructures goes beyond the physical spaces taken from communities to build these urban roadways. In addition to this history of displacement, urban communities near highways face ongoing impacts to quality of life today.
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Nov 21, 2024 | 
streets.mn | Joe Harrington
Transportation is on the ballot this election day, even if it’s largely been left out of presidential debates, stump speeches, and campaign websites this year. While transportation policy almost never takes a top spot among campaign issues span from human rights to the economy, the next president will have significant influence over transportation and infrastructure decisions, issues that underpin many elements of daily life.
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Nov 14, 2024 | 
streets.mn | Joe Harrington
Editor’s note: “Street Views” appears in Streets.mn twice monthly. Respond to author and board member Joe Harrington directly at . It’s no secret that streets in U.S. cities, Minneapolis included, were primarily built to prioritize cars. At the turn of the last century, streets that had served all modes of transit — pedestrians, bicyclists, streetcar users and a handful of cars — increasingly sacrificed more and more space to the personal vehicle.
