In the beginning the Mississippi, Minnesota, and St. Croix Rivers all made the lumber industry possible in Minnesota, turning communities like Stillwater, St. Anthony, and Minneapolis into important centers of commerce and trade. The rivers were also important in transporting iron, granite, sandstone, and marble from Minnesota to the rest of the world, and for bringing military supplies and luxury items from the rest of the world to Minnesota. Trains later replaced boats as the preferred means of transporting raw materials, and commuter trains became Twin Cities residents’ favorite means of personal transportation. The Great Northern Depot in St. Paul, built in 1914, connected passengers to nearby resort destinations like Minnehaha Park and White Bear Lake as well as to the East and West Coasts.
Electric streetcars made their debut in the Twin Cities in 1889, and by the 1920s Minneapolis and St. Paul were home to one of the largest streetcar systems in the world. More than 1,000 cars on 500 miles of track took commuters to work and back home again each day, and the system was so extensive that it was possible to take a streetcar from downtown Minneapolis all the way to Stillwater or Excelsior. As interstate highways were developed, the streetcar system was abandoned in the 1950s. (The only remaining stretch of rail is now a tourist attraction, with short rides in original streetcars, near Lake Calhoun in Minneapolis.) In 1954 street buses replaced the electric streetcars, and the electric tracks that crisscrossed the metro area were paved over to facilitate automobile use. The Twin Cities have recently begun to restore streetcar service in the modern-day guise of light-rail trains; Minneapolis launched a light-rail line from downtown Minneapolis to the airport and on to the Mall of America in 2004, and Metro Transit is now in the planning stages of a light-rail line between downtown Minneapolis and downtown St. Paul along University Avenue.
Today, in addition to light rail, the Twin Cities are home to one large international airport and six smaller ones and a bus line that runs 24 hours a day in the busy downtown areas. Truth be told, the Twin Cities are relatively hard to live in without a car: Those accustomed to the extensive subway systems and frequent bus service in cities like New York, Boston, and Chicago will find that, though individual neighborhoods in the Twin Cities are wonderful for walking, it’s not very convenient to travel among them by public transit.
In part because of this fact, biking is another story: The Twin Cities are home to a large and avid population of bicyclists who are undeterred by all but the harshest winter weather. Bike lanes are increasingly to be found on streets across town, and the acclaimed Midtown Greenway allows bikers to cross Minneapolis without hitting a stoplight or dodging a car.