urbanMSP

Should Minnehaha parkway divert thru-drivers off the route?

http://www.startribune.com/plan-to-boos ... 510929632/

This will meet serious pushback by people used to driving it to cross the city fast.

Echoing Matt’s comment on the Strib site, I don’t like the resignation to the Parkway being a commuter route east of Portland. I live right at the Parkway/Portland mess, and I want to see it calmed severely instead of allowed to stay a speedway. Figure out how to do meandering split one-ways from 35W to Cedar. Make it hard to go EB from 50th. Make it annoying to go WB from Cedar. Get creative. Come on.

Looking at all the diagrams, where is it forcing people off? The Y split near Portland can change to favor continuing west onto 50th, no problem, if that's what the traffic demands. The ramps up to Lyndale hitting right turn only medians, fine, should have been there already. Is that really all? I couldn't see any other "traffic calming" measures.

I rarely stray into that corner of Minneapolis, and I'm loathe to provide cover for cars, but is there another good route through that area that isn't the parkway?

It looks like Minnehaha Parkway and Lake Nokomis Parkway are the only streets that provide crosstown connectivity anywhere between 43rd and Hwy 62. Presumably we don't want either parkway to be car sewers, but that's a long stretch without access.

Make it annoying to go WB from Cedar. Get creative. Come on.

Even though I frequently use Minnehaha Parkway to drive my car, I'm a strong supporter of the plan to divert traffic away from using the parkway as a city-wide highway. In fact, I'm disappointed the Parkway is still planned as a commuter connector east of Portland Ave in the segment near which I live.

When the Grand Rounds were being planned a century ago and the automobile had not yet completely dominated American transportation and land use, the idea of " practice of driving Minnehaha Parkway for pleasure" may have been novel and appropriate. But in 2019, the parkway that cuts through our neighborhoods is a car sewer for commuters to drive fast and aggressive across the heart of our city through one of its crown jewels of public parkland.

The current proposal needs to go further, such as eliminating through-traffic between Portland and Cedar. Despite that, I'm still a strong supporter of the draft released a few weeks ago. While it still allows people to access every bit of the current parkway by car, it will hopefully reduce the amount of people using the parkway as an alternative to Hwy 62 or other crosstown routes.

The idea of reducing the toxic influence of cars on our land use - including our parks - is not new or novel. The recent Harriet master plan will eliminate auto traffic from the lower parkway. The City removed automobile traffic from Nicollet downtown in the 60s. There have recently been plans to close the downtown segment of both sides of River Parkway to cars during weekends and peak periods (another great idea). After spending more than a half century making our cities easy to drive through which, in the process, destroyed much of what makes our cities worth going to, it's great that we're finally right-sizing the role of the automobile in the land use and mobility picture of a thriving city. Cars aren't going away, but they will be guests among spaces for people rather than people being guests among spaces for cars.