urbanMSP

I also think it's a shame that there isn't more focus on the city's part on improving bus service as a way to encourage people to also bike, walk, etc. It seems like that could have a major impact in a city with fickle weather like ours. I lived in Copenhagen for years and- while I eventually got used to biking in the rain- knowing that there was a fast, frequent, and reliable metro and s-train service if I needed it made me much more likely to bike on days where the weather might turn. Here I'm more likely to drive if the weather looks rough because I know the bus home will take 2-3x as long as the bike ride there.

There are plans for BRT and ABRT through this area. I think it'll really help. The reductions in trip time are significant. South Minneapolis has been growing and there is demand -- transit improvements are needed.

Here I'm more likely to drive if the weather looks rough because I know the bus home will take 2-3x as long as the bike ride there.

I drive if it's raining or going to rain, although I've chanced it on the bike if it's only an afternoon shower because I can catch the bus too. For me personally, bus/bike are about the same, depending on how badly I've messed up the bus schedule (i.e., whether I'm close enough to see the bus I just missed go by). Both about 35-40 minutes from North Richfield to downtown without riding hard. Driving should be more like 15-20, but going home with the bridge work over the Greenway can get up to 30 too.

Do you 14 it or 133 it?

You're lucky that you commute downtown. I usually have to commute across South or to Midway, both trips where the bus can easily take an hour or more.

The only ABRT actually planned for South Minneapolis is the Chicago Ave line. While that's great, there is nothing planned with any sort of actual near timeline for all of the high growth areas in Uptown, Whittier, along the greenway, etc. That's nuts. If nothing else, the city could start investing in stop bump outs and signal upgrades along with bike/ped stuff.

B Line (Lake) is next after Chicago: https://metrocouncil.org/Council-Meetin ... pdate.aspx

The B Line would be well worth the money given that it'll connect the Green, A, Blue, D, Orange along with potential street cars on Nicollet and the Midtown Greenway.

Do you 14 it or 133 it?

14. I've thought about 133, but there aren't enough of them to really bother. Think I caught one once on the way home, but it wasn't really any faster.

Currently, with the construction, the 133 is sooooo slow around the exit from the freeway. It's really not that bad, but just sitting there stopped for 10 minutes is maddening enough to make me not want to do it.

And I'm not suggesting that bikers aren't using the lanes, but not in numbers obviously greater than what was the case before the protected lanes went in.

This is a real problem facing bike infrastructure projects; namely, that measurable (and even dramatic) increases in bike traffic are basically invisible to most people most of the day. Take a bike lane that gets 200 users an hour at peak, which is very good--not the highest in the Twin Cities, but a solidly large number. That's still just 2-3 per minute. Take into account too that many of those users are going to be traveling in groups or clumps (either for social reasons or because groups formed at lights), and even a well-used lane is going to appear empty most of the time.

I don't know what level of usage would suffice to give passing drivers the perception that the lane is well-used, but I doubt you can achieve it without constructing the kind of network that allows a lot of people to feel safe reaching their homes and destinations, not just when traveling southbound on one particular corridor. But how can you justify that when drivers don't perceive the usage?

etc., etc.

I also get the impression that drivers don't even really assess the impact that bike lanes actually have on their commutes or on travel times, they just see it as a "fairness" issue: "Why are we doing this for such a small number of people?!"

Got a chance to ride down Washington downtown again today and the lights are still screwey. I got a red bike light while straight/right turn traffic got a green then it started flashing yellow. This is like the opposite of best practices, which would make traffic yield to the most vulnerable (bikes and peds). What gives? When they installed the bike lights I thought they were going to use them to try to protect cyclists from people turning right- otherwise get rid of the damn things and put up those turns must yield signs...

Also, whose idea was a block long mixing zone at the entrance to 35W? That was terrifying!

Got a chance to ride down Washington downtown again today and the lights are still screwey. I got a red bike light while straight/right turn traffic got a green then it started flashing yellow. This is like the opposite of best practices, which would make traffic yield to the most vulnerable (bikes and peds). What gives? When they installed the bike lights I thought they were going to use them to try to protect cyclists from people turning right- otherwise get rid of the damn things and put up those turns must yield signs...

Also, whose idea was a block long mixing zone at the entrance to 35W? That was terrifying!

I ride it every day and while it's better than before, it really isn't that great. Cars frequently block it at Eastside restaurant and at the parking garage exits, drivers will turn right in front of you and try to beat you when turning left, which is really scary and dangerous. Also they screwed up the alignments of a couple the green crossings, and while obviously that isn't a huge deal, it shows a general lack of attention to detail.

The 8th Avenue Artery project in Hopkins looks almost complete. Since returning to Minnesota at the end on October I’ve gone over to check on progress each weekend.

This morning I spotted the barricades to the northbound car lane was cleared and drivable.

The cycle track that fills the gap (finally creating a link between the Lake Minnetonka Regional Trail and the Minnesota River Bluffs and Cedar Lake Regional trails) was opened but some finishing work was happening.

I like this a lot. I’m disappointed that the Mainstreet reconstruction that was done the year before wasn’t this good.

If you bike out to Hopkins on the regional trails, check out 8th Avenue’s new cycle track!

Great. So now you can bike from Richfield through Edina to Hopkins on the Nine Mile Creek Trail, then take the Lake Minnetonka Regional Trail out to Excelsior.

I noticed that these are called "LRT Trails", e.g., "Lake Minnetonka LRT Regional Trail." Were these acquired as potential transit right-of-ways or something? Or is that a total coincidence?

I noticed that these are called "LRT Trails", e.g., "Lake Minnetonka LRT Regional Trail." Were these acquired as potential transit right-of-ways or something? Or is that a total coincidence?

Hennepin County purposefully did that when buying the rail ROW to make sure people remembered that it was purchased for the long term benefit of possibly becoming rail corridors. Not that that would stop those living along it from suing or bitching.

Yep, and these corridors were purchased by the Hennepin County Regional Rail Authority.

I'm really impressed with what Hopkins and Richfield are doing. Livable, walkable suburbs with urban nodes.

But drivers that do look and keep mental track of people riding bicycles in lanes, considering the space efficiency of bikes, won’t consider bike lanes equivalent to car lane use until double the people in a bike lane than the car lanes. But I’m cynical.

Here’s a short video showing how one small bike lane has a much higher human throughput than 3 car lanes. Drivers need this shown to them for them to really understand why bike infrastructure is important, and how it actually helps them (fewer cars on the road).

https://twitter.com/urbanthoughts11/sta ... 4650070016

I recently witnessed a car drive on the Bridge 9 portion of the Dinkytown Greenway late at night (it was a flashy car and drove back and forth across the bridge a few times and then left). Automobile access is easy from the access-driveway off of East River Road on the U campus, and I've heard that its not uncommon for unfamiliar drivers to drive down that hill to the bikeway and do a u-turn when realize they are lost.
Question 1: Have you seen private vehicles on this portion of the bikeway? There are not signs or anything besides paint striping to tell drivers not to drive there.
Additionally, there is legal automobiles access for U of M vehicles on the Dinkytown Greenway, but it is intended to be one-way westbound only for these vehicles, and at slow speeds (signs say 10 MPH).
Question 2: Have you seen vehicles driving east-bound on the Dinkytown Greenway?
My purpose in asking is to try to gauge how frequent these things are, because for some reason it pisses me off and I want validation Plus it does seem ridiculous that the U or City doesn't have signage

I've seen marked University vehicles heading eastbound on the Greenway to access the loading docks down in the trench. I didn't realize it was supposed to be one-way in the other direction. I've never seen a vehicle on Bridge 9, but I'm also not over there all that much.

It would be very doable to put in retractable bollards like the Cedar Lake Trail has near Target Field, if the City and or University could be convinced it's a problem.