urbanMSP

Just wondering, any updates on when the rest of the nine mile creek trail is supposed to open? Have't heard anything in a while now.

Last I heard was that they had to wait for the ground to thaw to move some utilities before finishing it off.

The official grand opening is in early June, I believe.

Unofficial news:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/109641115750464/

Official updates (scroll down):
https://www.threeriversparks.org/page/n ... il-project

Someone from the city will be at the DMNA Land Use meeting next Tuesday to present a project to upgrade the 11th Ave bike lanes between West River Parkway and 6th St from bollard protected to curb protected. Hopefully it's a May-June timeline, not an October-November timeline.

These will be appreciated and probably further increase the bike traffic within the corridor. (My wife may commute through here when it warms up and I feel better about her riding this route with the barriers.) I'm not sure if it was the plows or cars that knocked over all the bollards. There are a number of them tucked into the crannies of the Capella Tower. I picture some cars hitting the concrete barriers and getting upset.

Anecdotally, it would appear that many of the bollards along Blaisdell that fell over the winter were the result of snow removal. Specifically, it looks like the city tried to clean out the snowbank that formed between the car and bike lanes. Easier said than done.

I’ve always wondered why the city bothered clearing out that buffer area between bollards. Seems like a great natural added level of protection.

Presumably it was causing drainage problems (since the buffer strip isn't at the high point of the road crown) and added the potential for icing across the bike lanes.

The bollards are spaced to permit access by emergency vehicles, so perhaps it's also to maintain that access.

Living on Blaisdell, I'm pretty sure the removal primarily benefited taxis and delivery trucks. I also enjoyed the added protection, never saw drainage problems, and shoveled a path through the berm for my own use and the use of my guests.

I'm pretty sure the removal primarily benefited taxis and delivery trucks.

I know that this comment was made in snark, but the layout makes it very difficult for residents on Blaisdell to get the services that other people take for granted, unless the service providers are abusing the bike lane. As Uber, Amazon, etc. become more prevalent, this is going to become a bigger and bigger issue.

I'm pretty sure the removal primarily benefited taxis and delivery trucks.

I know that this comment was made in snark, but the layout makes it very difficult for residents on Blaisdell to get the services that other people take for granted, unless the service providers are abusing the bike lane. As Uber, Amazon, etc. become more prevalent, this is going to become a bigger and bigger issue.

Half and Half. I live there and get rides and have things delivered. Much of the time, there is room for them to park on the far side, but they don't use it. Other times, there is no room and parking in the bike lane is more functional than blocking the only car lane. The Blaisdell bike lane (south of 28th) has a nice buffer so that even when a car is parked there, a bike can get around that car without normally needing to enter the car lane. I am fine with that and I say this as a frequent biker.

What is NOT cool is cars stopping in the bike lane north of 28th. You can't get around without swerving in front of moving cars. The bike lane isn't even wide enough to get the parked car out of the moving car lane. This is just a major traffic hazard. It happens more often than you might think.

I spent a year and a half living on a busy one-way street in a dense neighborhood of Munich. It was a city with about 4-5 times the bikers of Minneapolis and facilities that were a bit better, but attainable in a few years compared to say, Amsterdam. My experience there can probably foreshadow the future as we get more dense with fewer and fewer parking spots and more bike facilities. Delivery trucks, short term parkers will simply use the bike lanes to do their jobs. There were times during the day in the bike lane essentially became the unloading zone for services, like talking a truck or car for nearly every other parking spot equivalent. It was annoying, but it seemed to be tolerated because of a general lack of space. In the end people generally tolerated it as a side effect of density. Just kind of a general comment based on the discussion above, but I think most of us would take that scenario over reverting back to the car-centric days of the 70s/80s/90s here in MSP.

If it ever gets to that point we might consider closing a couple bike-heavy streets to through-traffic. I think a reasonable compromise would be a bike boulevard where deliveries are allowed to enter (at like 10mph) and park, but where bikers don't worry about passing those trucks because nobody is zooming through on their way downtown.

You'd have to convince the residents not to drive/park in front of their houses, so it might have to be either a street with a lot of carless folks, or a street with an alley on the other side that can accommodate the residents.

Couldn't deliveries be conducted in alleys?

Couldn't deliveries be conducted in alleys?

Yeah, I’m thinking any European city like Munich would be much denser than Mpls or StP and that, with a few exceptions, we could mostly deal intelligently with deliveries such that they shouldn’t block the bike lane. But I could be wrong.

Had a bit of a discussion while biking with my dad this morning about whether or not it would be worth it to pave some of the limestone trails such as as the Lake Minnetonka LRT, the MN River Bluffs LRT, the western half of the luce line, etc.
On one hand it would attract a lot more bikers/walkers to the trails, yet on the other things get kinda of sparse the further west you go and part of the charm of the those trails is that you don't get a lot of people on them compared to some of the paved trails heading towards the city center.

Minneapolis will build a floating bus stop at Oak & Delaware to replace the current shared bikeway/bus stop. The stop serves SW Transit and U of M Corculator buses. http://minneapolismn.gov/bicycles/proje ... ed-bikeway

10th Ave Bridge is finally back on the official radar - down to one lane in each direction with a curb-seperated two-way bikeway to match the rest of the UMN protected bikeway project.

The tweet link looks broken...