Bicycle Infrastructure

[HuskyGrad]

This is just a random thought I had recently but does anyone else kinda feel like places to park/lock you bike is starting to fall behind our current levels of infrastructure? (Obviously we still could do more in terms of paths and protected lanes, just in comparison).
I had a little first hand experience with this this week when I went back to college in Minneapolis and was kinda disappointed that said school (dunwoody) only has a dinky little rack out front that lets just say I'd probably only lock the cheap commuter I cobbled together with secondhand parts to unless I want to buy and lug around a 10 lbs kryptonite lock.

Certainly, I was talking with my wife this week about how lack of sufficient and quality bike parking is a hurdle to everyday bike use. It seems like downtown is due for a major bike parking structure. In Portland, I lived on a block with a 600+ stall bike garage.

[COLSLAW5]

I think the most needed part is providing another layer of security to the rack like putting it inside a locked fence with obvious surveillance.

[Anondson]

The Lt. Governor Flanagan is objecting to a proposed bike trail in front of her home. Believing the shuttle landing strip named Dakota Ave. has no room for a trail without removing trees.

https://www.hometownsource.com/sun_sail ... c4928.html

Very very disappointed.

[DanPatchToget]

Article is behind a paywall and I can’t find any other article about it, so I have a few questions.

1) What segment of Dakota Avenue would have a trail?

2) Are there already on-street bike lanes on the segment?

3) If yes to two, would the on-street bike lanes be removed or remain?

[Anondson]

The trail is at the planning of Three Rivers, for the long awaited 21 mile north south bike trail to parallel the CP rail line. Three Rivers is asking the city councils to vote on preferred routes through their respective cities by Dec 5 in order to allow the regional park district to apply for federal funding. If the cities miss their votes Three Rivers will miss a two-year window and would need to apply again in the 2026 time period.

I don’t think design work is finalized. But you can see in this link to the e-edition of the front page the routes that were offered to the city. In feedback from city residents, a large amount of feedback came back that few people like Louisiana as a bike trail route due to the already unsafe and busy experience.

https://stlouisparkhopkins-mn.newsmemor ... rk-Hopkins

[Trademark]

The trail is at the planning of Three Rivers, for the long awaited 21 mile north south bike trail to parallel the CP rail line. Three Rivers is asking the city councils to vote on preferred routes through their respective cities by Dec 5 in order to allow the regional park district to apply for federal funding. If the cities miss their votes Three Rivers will miss a two-year window and would need to apply again in the 2026 time period.

I don’t think design work is finalized. But you can see in this link to the e-edition of the front page the routes that were offered to the city. In feedback from city residents, a large amount of feedback came back that few people like Louisiana as a bike trail route due to the already unsafe and busy experience.

https://stlouisparkhopkins-mn.newsmemor ... rk-Hopkins

Louisiana also necessitates worse connections both south and north on the trail

[schwinnletour]

Peggy is but one resident of the 50,000 residents of SLP. Hopefully her testimony is taken as such.

Dakota needs a road diet, steal some space from the existing pavement in the right of way and add a curb to protect the bike trail.

[thespeedmccool]

The Lt. Governor Flanagan is objecting to a proposed bike trail in front of her home. Believing the shuttle landing strip named Dakota Ave. has no room for a trail without removing trees.

https://www.hometownsource.com/sun_sail ... c4928.html

Very very disappointed.

I love trees but I will never understand people who think anything that threatens them is a non-starter.

Like, people understand that trees aren't permanent, right? Like, that they can die regardless of public policies respecting them, and they can be replanted if necessary? I know they take time to grow, but c'mon people.

I just cannot put myself in the headspace of "we need to not build new infrastructure because trees are pretty."

[schwinnletour]

Big NIMBY energy from Peggy here.

I live in SLP and just had an unsafe 5' diameter silver maple cut down a month ago. Unfortunately an adjacent bike lane didn't get built at the same time.

SLP will replace it with two trees of my choosing. Sad to loose the massive mature tree. Really great service on the city's part to allow residents choose the blvd tree species and then pay for them and plant them. They even provide the watering bags.

[nBode]

This isn't even a bike lane vs. trees scenario, though. It's a trees vs. parking scenario. There's an option to save all the trees by removing one parking lane. Streetview tells me that would not be a problem but I'm sure they could do a quick study to confirm street parking counts.

[Korh]

Gonna play a bit of a devils advocate that
1. I assume the construction is gonna be the real tree killer both during and making sure no roots break apart the trail years down the line
2. if trees are big enough they do a good job slowing down drivers since it narrows their field of view as oppose to a wide empty street
3. I actually think Louisiana Ave needs a separated bike trail more and is better suited for one then Dakota (at least north of Minnetonka blvd)

[StandishGuy]

Agreed. I'm at least a bit sympathetic to folks who lose mature trees to add more hard surfaces, particularly on a street like Dakota that probably could be narrowed. It's pretty jarring to start over with tiny trees after having ones that provide shade and a buffer from the street for generations.
IMO planners and engineers often are too keen to cut down trees and deploy hard surfaces rather than seeking more creative solutions. It takes decades for those little twigs to grow enough to provide much shade or buffer.

A friend of mine recalls living on Hennepin Avenue south of Uptown and the bulldozers coming to cut down and plow all the boulevard trees in the late 1960s to widen the roadway. It was traumatic, and turned out to be the wrong thing to do. It took 50 years for the City to finally come back and create 4' wide boulevards with trees. unfortunately, that's too narrow for most trees to grow and they mostly remain little sticks 5+ years after planting. So, the "NIMBY" accusation seems a bit much.

[Korh]

I wonder if Flanagan lives north or south of Minnetonka blvd because there is a bit of night and day difference for dakota ave.
South to Wooddale and it's wide enough to put in the lane with the complaints about tree's is as overblown as the people who tried to derail the lone lake mtb trails by using endangered bee's as a reason
North its just a residential street with no markings/centerline and iirc no posted speed limit (so 20mph assuming slp does the same "if no sign" thing Minneapolis does). Louisiana gets a bit narrower north of Minnetonka blvd but it's still a good deal wider

[DanPatchToget]

In downtown Chaska a trail is being built under Chestnut Street on the former Union Pacific railroad right-of-way, so I guess it's pretty clear they have no interest in any kind of rail coming to their downtown. I'll keep myself from going into a full blown rant and just say it's shortsighted and disappointing, but not surprising since American suburbs (especially outer ring ones like Chaska) are still in the same old mindset that cars are always the answer and throw in a few buses so they can pretend they have good public transit.

When I visited their downtown it looked like the trail going under Chestnut will just end at Walnut Street. East of Walnut they dug out some of the old railroad bed for a drainage and erosion control project (or something like that), so I'm not sure what Chaska is thinking. Since rail is off the table then at the very least it would be nice for the Minnesota River Bluffs LRT Trail to go all the way to their downtown on the former railroad instead of having to take a convoluted and indirect route. With the trail tunnel it would be a fast, safe, and direct way to connect with the other rail-trail that goes to Carver's downtown.

[Mdcastle]

Has there been any proposal to have any kind of rail their downtown in the past 30 years?

Considering the debacle the Green and Blue Line extensions and Northstar have been, after Riverview is done are we going to have any more of some kind of rail anywhere in the metro in the next 30 years?

Is a 30 year old pedestrian underpass going to make or break any kind of rail coming to Chaska in the future? If they have to rebuild it then so be it, but until then Chaska benefits from having 30 years of fully protected bicycle infrastucture.

Or maybe we shouldn't reuse any former rail infrastucture for the basis of bicycles and pedestrians. After all in 30 years we might regret building the Root River Trail when we're trying to institute new Fountain to Money Creek rail service.

[DanPatchToget]

Has there been any proposal to have any kind of rail their downtown in the past 30 years?

Considering the debacle the Green and Blue Line extensions and Northstar have been, after Riverview is done are we going to have any more of some kind of rail anywhere in the metro in the next 30 years?

Is a 30 year old pedestrian underpass going to make or break any kind of rail coming to Chaska in the future? If they have to rebuild it then so be it, but until then Chaska benefits from having 30 years of fully protected bicycle infrastucture.

Or maybe we shouldn't reuse any former rail infrastucture for the basis of bicycles and pedestrians. After all in 30 years we might regret building the Root River Trail when we're trying to institute new Fountain to Money Creek rail service.

There hasn't been an official proposal for passenger rail in Chaska that I know of, but Chaska has done a poor job of keeping the right-of-way intact east of their downtown whether it be for future trail and/or rail use.

I'm not opposed to building trails on former railroad beds, but I am opposed to making significant changes to it (e.g. a trail tunnel and development abutting the right-of-way) that would make restarting rail service more costly and difficult that it has to be, specifically on corridors with high potential for rail service, which through Chaska I believe there is, while your example in rural southeastern Minnesota there definitely isn't.

[mattaudio]

Has there been any proposal to have any kind of rail their downtown in the past 30 years?

Probably just me in the fantasy thread: viewtopic.php?p=153485

[Korh]

https://youtu.be/C16SDtppKBg?si=mEriQyq5khusvf8W
Watching this video I kinda wonder how well swapping the parking and bike lanes would work in the cites (can't recall any that do so). Also does anyone know if any group/organization actually records the amount of riders on a given route or trail? Id be curious which are the most popular and by how much.

[Silophant]

The 1st Ave N bike lanes were parking protected for fiveish years (~2010-2015). It was an abject failure, there was pretty much always someone parked in them. I've always wondered if compliance would have been better in a part of the city where it was the same group of local residents and/or workers parking every day, vs the entertainment district where a significant percentage of the people parking had never seen that parking configuration before. Probably not.

As for ped/bike counts, Minneapolis and St. Paul both used to do them, though the most recent data is pretty old at this point. Not sure if they stopped entirely with the pandemic or if they've just stopped publishing them.

[EOst]

St. Paul stopped doing them entirely, is my understanding. They had been conducted by volunteers with the Bicycle Coalition.