urbanMSP

For comparison, the divided layout is pretty close to the Greenway just west of Nicollet Ave, next to the ramp (the Greenway might be somewhere around a foot narrower, hard to tell from Google Maps). That's acceptable for 1 block, but quite another thing for 8.

I wonder as well why the 2' grass strip exists. And I suppose 13' (11' + reaction zone) is probably as low as they'll go, but it'd sure be nice to have those extra 2' for the path.

I was thinking the 13' couldn't really be given to the path anyways, with the power line in the way.

Matt, I forgot about that path. My goodness... they could have easily hooked this up the the Diagonal Trail. Hopefully that can happen soon.

As far as the power line goes, hopefully this just isn't far enough into the process yet to have talked to Xcel. Most of the cost of undergrounding a distribution line is the excavation, so since they're tearing up and reconstructing the whole street anyway, it would be pretty easy to get rid of the overhead line and get a little more space for the path.

The Glenwood Ave reconstruction project (from Aldrich to 7th St) passed layout approval at the full council today. The layout includes a protected (buffer/poles) bike lane with much-needed pedestrian realm improvements - important stuff for the area as SWLRT will bring a lot of foot and bike traffic to the area as redevelopment happens.

Late in the process, there was some push to change the layout to include a raised bikeway. This would have made the curb reaction distance a key part in the curb-curb calculation. County engineers held to the state aid requirement for 11' + 4' reaction zone, which ended up pitting the bikeway against pedestrian realm improvements (rather than an 11' + 2' which could have allowed everything to fit). Council voted 9-4 to approve the county's preferred layout.

One would hope that is the C Line is shifted to Glenwood, as seems to be the preferred outcome, that the bus stops would be islands with the bike lane shifted behind them to avoid bus conflicts.

One would hope that is the C Line is shifted to Glenwood, as seems to be the preferred outcome, that the bus stops would be islands with the bike lane shifted behind them to avoid bus conflicts.

According to the C-Line project, there's not enough room for floating bus stops. So there will be sharrows.

^Do the C Line documents explicitly mention sharrows? I don't see any reason Glenwood (E of Aldrich) would need sharrows instead of "mixing zones" w/o bollards at station intersections.

That was another reason for moving the bike lanes to curb level in my view. I disagree there wasn't room for floating bus stops. Even as a pedestrian advocate, I would gladly take a slightly narrowed pedestrian realm every 1,000 feet or so where the long aBRT bus stops are if it meant 1) the bus I'm boarding stops in the traffic lane and won't be held up by drivers not letting it back into the stream, 2) when I bike on that street I'm up on the curb level and the cycle track bend-out at a bus station leaves a pedestrian waiting area at the corner (plus the bikes are in a more visible location for right-turning traffic conflicts).

As long as we're in here. I just got an email from Marcy-Holmes about protected bike lanes on 10th Ave between University and E. Hennepin. As well as protected lanes on Central from downtown to University.

I hope there's some way those last can be at least curb-protected. The already minimal protection you get from plastic bollards is even less when cars are getting up to 45-50mph like they do on that (all) bridge(s).

Do you suppose they would restripe 10th and remove the center left turn lane (I've always thought it wasn't very utilized), or just install bollards on the current line?

Also, I would hope that they would at least continue the protected lane on Central to 4th & 5th, rather than terminate on University.

As long as we're in here. I just got an email from Marcy-Holmes about protected bike lanes on 10th Ave between University and E. Hennepin. As well as protected lanes on Central from downtown to University.

I'm curious how they'll work that on the portion north of SE 8th St, where 10th becomes a frontage road for 35W. There's very little room at that intersection with Como. This stretch of Hennepin is awful and dangerous too, so hopefully they have something in mind there...

So I stupidly visited Next Door and found a handful of people upset that adding bike lanes to Bloomington between the Parkway and 54th Street would result in lost on-street parking. That's mind-numbingly stupid for this "leafy" part of the city, where parking is plentiful. Heck, if you visit Hot Plate by car during peak brunch time on a weekend, you may have to park as much as a half block away.

Naturally this led to an email to Quincy and now I'm thinking a streets.mn post. Ugh.

The city needs a more specific strategy around on-street parking. The Bicycle Master Plan did a good job of identifying ideal bike routes, with a little extra legwork in identifying what type of facility might work best on each of them. But project-by-project we're finding resistance to losing street-parking (on the few projects that propose that swap), sometimes along the whole corridor and others just at spot commercial nodes.

I've argued in the past that our residential streets are almost always well below parking capacity, and we could cut half of them and not have a problem for decades. I've also argued that our arterials are too precious to waste space on parking (especially un-priced parking) and we could meter/reserve a couple spots on each side of the street on all nearby residential streets to provide business parking, allowing those 16-20' on the arterials to be re-purposed. There are parts of the city where both those things could happen. There are other places (like Uptown) where we'd have to pick one or the other. But we have to have some sort of a strategy moving forward to make these decisions easier (and, my bias showing here, more likely to follow our city's mode share, climate, equity, etc goals and policies that are often ignored when neighbors complain).

All of that is much smarter than is needed here, where there are hardly any cars ever parked on this stretch.

I guess my point was that this situation is "Tier 1" or whatever we'd call it: Remove parking for other prioritized use, don't meter any side-street spaces because demand is already so low it doesn't matter.

www.facebook.com/bloomingtonavenueconcerns
ORLY?

Your link does not work, but yes, I've been going back and forth with that person (seems like one person, not using their name, naturally) all day.

https://www.facebook.com/bloomingtonaveconcerns

(ave not avenue)

Just out of curiosity, for those who live in the area: How has your experience been with the advisory bike lane on 54th Street? I liked the ones on 14th in Eliot Park, but I've never been on 54th.

I notice their letter mentions those lanes on 54th, presumably because that design retains previous parking.