Bicycle Infrastructure

[Korh]

Does anyone have any video's of the old trails around the metro? I found some old video's of the Cedar Lake Regional Trail before construction for SWLRT started 5-6 years ago and got an unintended wave of nostalgia and I swear there used to be another gravel travel besides the Luce Line, Minnetonka, and River bluffs because I have a core memory of riding in a buggy on one the felt like towards the city.

[Anondson]

Working remote means I rarely visit downtown. I take in a Shakespeare play at the Guthrie once a year. Since last year I noticed 2nd St has had a two-way curb separated bike lane added.

I kinda wish it was on the north side instead of the south. But it’s a really nice upgrade from paint and tickle stick lanes.

Are more downtown streets getting the curb separating lanes soon?

[Silophant]

11th Ave S is getting resurfaced from West River Parkway to 8th St this year. I'd like to imagine that that would include completing the protection south of Washington, but I haven't seen any confirmation of that, and I don't really trust the current Public Works leadership.

9th and 10th Streets are also supposed to be getting protected bike lanes of some sort in 2026 or so, last I heard.

[Wezle]

Park and Portland are also getting repaved this summer between Washington Ave and E 17th St. Going to go from 3 lanes -> 2 narrowed lanes with added buffer space between traffic and bike lanes. Not sure if that'll be curb protected or just paint bike lanes though.

[Anondson]

This past week the segment between Blake Road to Excelsior Blvd was finally paved for the Cedar Lake Trail. Effectively biking between Chowen Avenue (Whole Foods) to Hopkins’ Depot is bikeable.

The fencing is incomplete posts, which I’m sure will be strung up in the coming week or two. But the detour-free bike route between Hopkins to Uptown is nearly re-opened in full.

[Korh]

Unfortunately the crossing at the intersection at excelsior and the 169 North ramps literally just closed so they can remove the slip right turn lanes.
Still wish there was a tunnel but imo crossing excelsior at that point has never been that awful despite the number of lanes. What makes a crossing awful has more to do with things like is there any notable obstacle that prevents me from seeing on coming traffic for a few 100ft if not 1000, are the crossing buttons in an awkward position where I have to turn my bike 90 degrees or more to activate it, an I given any space waiting for the light to change or is my from wheel literally on the street. etc.

[COLSLAW5]

The rest of the path to the minnesota river bluffs trail is also paved just waiting on the fencing.

the one that frustrates me is the luce line bridge to van white. The bridge is fully complete except the connection to the van white bridge but they say it wont open till next year for some reason.

[Anondson]

Thought about placing this in the St. Louis Park general topics, but the SLP city council voted 6-1 in favor of the Dakota Ave route for the regional trail.

https://www.hometownsource.com/sun_sail ... c7ef8.html

Construction is years off pending funding sources.

I’m so glad for this as it will link the High School, Peter Hobart elementary school, and Wooddale station, and crossing the new bike/ped bridge over the freight rail. Better than the option of Louisiana Ave, IMO.

[Tcmetro]

The SWLRT trail from the Midtown Greenway to Hopkins has officially reopened.
https://www.startribune.com/bike-trails ... /601069988

[DanPatchToget]

https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/ee ... 50bbc5541a

The rail-trail that goes between the downtowns of Carver and Chaska will be extended east on the former railroad right-of-way to just west of Audubon Road, making it quite a bit more straightforward to reach the Minnesota River Bluffs LRT Trail, though I wish it kept going on the railroad bed across Audubon Road and over Flying Cloud Drive. Hopefully that will be a future project.

[COLSLAW5]

https://lims.minneapolismn.gov/Download ... Layout.pdf

Noticed there was some pretty big curbs going in on park and portland at 34th st and finally found the layout. good to see small improvements like this especially around schools

[Wezle]

I don't know if this has been posted before, but here's a really great comprehensive list of all of the Twin Cities bike projects maintained pretty regularly by Jordan Leick. Don't know if you can find all of the city, parks board, county, and state projects all in one place anywhere else.

It's also a nice illustration of how much effort is going into good biking infrastructure in the core cities of Minneapolis and St Paul compared to the suburbs as a whole.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... id=0#gid=0

[DanPatchToget]

I forget if it was this thread or a different thread where someone mentioned Post Road being rebuilt with bike lanes, but now I can't find it. I saw this posted on the Biking Minnesota group on Facebook today:

"Today I rode the new on-street bike lane on Post Road. It is 2-way. I was riding west next to the eastbound car traffic. A taxi was stopped in the lane so I had to move into the oncoming traffic lane to continue. Also, two other cars were driving in the bike land right at us before moving out when they finally saw us. It was a very frightening experience. This bike lane should be protected by jersey barriers, or at the very least, bollards!"

[pannierpacker2]

I forget if it was this thread or a different thread where someone mentioned Post Road being rebuilt with bike lanes, but now I can't find it. I saw this posted on the Biking Minnesota group on Facebook today:

"Today I rode the new on-street bike lane on Post Road. It is 2-way. I was riding west next to the eastbound car traffic. A taxi was stopped in the lane so I had to move into the oncoming traffic lane to continue. Also, two other cars were driving in the bike land right at us before moving out when they finally saw us. It was a very frightening experience. This bike lane should be protected by jersey barriers, or at the very least, bollards!"

Still sounds better than the experience of biking on Glumack Drive:
https://web.archive.org/web/20070701124 ... gspot.com/

[COLSLAW5]

Minneapolis is planning the redesign of 9th and 10th streets in downtown. Survey is open. Nice to see some protected bike lanes but they have a long way to go.

Also i really think that every street should have a 2 way bike lane no matter if the street is one way or not

https://zanassoc.mysocialpinpoint.com/9 ... and-survey

[twincitizen]

I really wish we were looking at making 9th Street two-way for cars. It's a great candidate to be a normal two-way street since it doesn't get routed on/off a freeway on either end of downtown. 10th would be tougher since it serves as an extended on-ramp to 35W south (@4th Ave) in the PM peak, but would still be worth converting to two-way east of 5th Avenue.

[MNdible]

Re-hashing an old argument, but calmed one ways make sense downtown because they make left turns safer/easier. It's a little bit more complicated for the Avenues, because the pattern gets broken up so much, but for the Streets it's a pretty legible and rational way of handling the traffic grid.

[twincitizen]

It's not very rational, but I do like the idea of a two-way 9th Street in part because it would complete a "square" of two-way streets encircling most of downtown that could be driven or biked either clockwise or counterclockwise: Hennepin>Washington>Chicago>9th.

[Wezle]

Upcoming presentation to this next weeks BAC/PAC meetings is a first look at a possible layout of the Grand Rounds Missing Link. Looks to be an seriously expansive project that includes all parts of the missing link other than the railroad yard crossing. I personally am most excited about the potential 4 way roundabout to replace the current 5 way Franklin/East River Road intersection as well as the addition of multiple new small parks and park space along the route.

Presentation: https://lims.minneapolismn.gov/download ... tation.pdf

Map: https://dflandscape.maps.arcgis.com/app ... 879d17b08f

[twincitizen]

In 15 years of being into planning stuff, that is easily one of the coolest interactive maps I have ever laid my eyes on.

Comments on Segment 4, from south to north:

A roundabout at Franklin/27th/ERR is how the intersection should have been rebuilt ~15 years ago, but people were too unfamiliar with roundabouts at the time so it got shot down and taxpayers had to spend a small fortune on new traffic signals there. This probably won't happen, but they could actually go a step further on that intersection and delete ERR between the roundabout and Thornton St. That would allow extending the median on Franklin a bit further east and reduce turning conflicts near the roundabout even more than is planned.

Moving to the north, if the greenway extension ever happens it would be cool to see a small cap over 94 between 27th Ave and the greenway extension, making Luxton Park even larger.

I love that the trail would pass right by the Prospect Park Green Line Station, Malcom Yards & Surly, that's amazing. That little 5-block stretch of trail between 27th/University & Surly should be built ASAP, as that would get a lot of use even without further connections.

Segment 3:
At Bridal Veil Pkwy, I'm interested in the Alt 2 that would build a vehicular parkway/bridge over the RR in addition to the bikeway. I see no reason not to do it, unless it's absurdly more expensive than a bike/ped-only bridge, which the plan indicates would accommodate emergency vehicles. That said, based on the surrounding land use being 100% industrial, the most likely user of a vehicle connection in that area would be trucks, but they're banned from parkways, so it's not entirely clear who the user of that vehicle bridge would be other than to potentially bring more people to the new park / put eyes on this really isolated park, etc. If any of the surrounding area were planned to transition away from industrial it would make perfect sense to add the vehicle parkway/bridge here, but as it's planned to remain all industrial it's unclear who the car bridge would be for and why we would built a bridge for <1000 cars/day.