motorman

On a ride along the 29th Street Greenway (the long way home), I rode through Saint Louis Park. This is a growing first-ring suburb west of Minneapolis. It is home to the 29th Street Greenway and Cedar Lake trail extensions that connects longer regional rail-trails to those within Minneapolis. This trip, in early July, was troubling to me. The City of Saint Louis Park had replaced the former trail controls and markings (stop signs for trail users and painted crossing) with obnoxious signs that I took to say “how dare you consider riding you bicycle through this area.” In short, these new signs protects the right of crossing motorized vehicle traffic to flow unencumbered from the need to cooperate with crossing non-motorized vehicles that use the commuter way. These actions, that I have discovered, are Saint Louis Park’s response to a crash between a motorist and a bicycle that severely injured the bicyclist. Unfortunately, the city’s actions have further strengthened the position in the public eye that bicycling is a less legitimate form of transportation than the motor vehicle and have placed them in greater danger. These actions of the Saint Louis Park need to be reversed and in its place the City needs to implement a program that places the responsibilities to operate a vehicle (both motorized and non-motorized) to all operators.

Why is this so important?
In my opinion, the single reason is safety. I would expect that Saint Louis Park officials would say they are acting on behalf of public safety, but I will explain how their actions are actually increasing the danger to the non-motorized users of the trail.

We teach driver not to anticipate.
The culture of the United States is long in its preference to the driving public. At a young age we are taught to stay away from cars and trucks when we walk to school or the park. “Look both ways and run like hell” was the unofficial motto for my neighborhood. The reason every mother on patrol voiced this was to keep their tikes from becoming road kill. Rightfully so, but what this has inadvertently created is a mentality that once you climb behind the wheel, it’s “watch out, I’m on the move and it won’t be my fault if you do not get out-of-the-way.” What frustrates me with this way of thinking is that the car is one type of vehicle on a complex transportation system with a number of rights but also responsibilities.

To ensure greater safety for all who travel on the transportation system, our public policy should focus on changing this sense of entitled and unobstructed passage for a motor vehicle. In the long-term, given all the factors that lead to global warming, American obesity, and over consumption of finite resources, encouraging transportation alternatives is imperative to sustainability. Change is difficult especially changes in one’s mode of travel and it will be next to impossible if the other mode is less safe then strapping into to the cockpit of a multiple-ton Hummer.

What has Saint Louis Park done anyway?
By the actions of the city, Saint Louis Park has put the burden of traffic safety on the non-motorized public along a major commuter route. Given the nature of the crossings, these actions will make bicycling along this popular trail more difficult and less safe. The 29th Street Greenway extension connects the Southwest Regional trail to the west with the Minneapolis bicycle trail system to the east. This rail-trail essentially travels parallel to Trunk Highway 7 (about 500 ft or less to the south of the highway). Because of the proximity to the highway and limited arterial routes (Beltline Blvd and Wooddale Ave) crossing this trail, navigating to the other side of the trail is complicated without some assistance. The crossings are four-lanes where a number of vehicles stack up to wait for the semaphore at the nearby highway intersection. With this stacking, especially during the morning and evening rush, it is difficult to see all lanes of traffic and if one can see them it is rare that the all are clear at the same time. The city has removed the painted crossing marking on the pavement, so that cars are not reminded exact location of the trail crossing. To complicate matters the city has kept or added “Trail Xing” signs.

What does the law say?
In Minnesota, bicyclists (like a pedestrian) have a right to use marked crossing if the bicyclist waits for a break in the traffic. When in the marked crossing, crossing traffic must stop and provide safe passage. This puts responsibility on both with expectation of reasonable interaction. What the law also includes is an allowance for “[l]ocal authorities [to] prohibit the operation of bicycles on any sidewalk or crosswalk under their jurisdiction.” Saint Louis Park has posted signs that explain to users “[t]hat this crossing is not a crosswalk State law requires all trail users to stop and yield to vehicles.” With Saint Louis Park’s actions they are within the letter of the law (in my amateur lawyer opinion), but instead of placing responsibility on both modes, it shifted the entire burden to move across the roadway to the non-motorized party.

Why are Saint Louis Park’s actions so wrong anyway?
By shifting the burden to safely cross to the bicyclist or other trail users, Saint Louis Park has reinforced the notion that bicycling is not a legitimate form of transportation, rather a recreational activity where users can wait for the more important motorized traffic. This reinforcement increases the risk to the bicyclists that is already out matched to the larger, faster motoring public that was not trained to expect mid-block crossings. With no expectation of seeing crossing traffic at the trail head and the lack of protection of the painted crossing and confusion of the other posted signs, the bicyclist must take additional risk to make it through the crossing.

So, in summary, the city of Saint Louis Park has created a mid-block trail crossing where it explicitly instructs the trail users to yield to all traffic and informs them that traffic will not stop. In the other direction the city has notified the motorized public in writing to disregard the “Trail Xing” sign that would typically be placed at the locale of a sanctioned crossing. The driver can be puzzled by the actions of the trail users when it slows to obey what it believe to be a trail crosswalk(since most likely didn’t receive the written direction to disobey) while the trail user is confused on whether to proceed on not.

Some might say that there are not enough bicyclists to matter and that they will always lose in the crash with a car. While I agree that the latter is true the first is not. As those who typically read this site know, Minneapolis has the largest bicycle mode share in the country for cities of our size. One of the reasons is the ease of travel along our rail-trail system. The use of these systems continue to grow so the number of bicycles crossing will continue to increase, which increases the volume of risky bicycle crossings. This increases the chance that another tragic crash will occur.

Saint Louis Park does have a game plan
I applaud the city efforts to install medians, reducing lane widths, and the exploration of separated grade crossings. But, these changes (especially grade separations) will take a number of years to implement. Short-term attention is needed to increase safety. More importantly, these physical improvements do not relieve the need for better education on how all modes should interact on our transportation system. The city needs to act quickly to make these crossings more predictable and safer.

What should Saint Louis Park do?
The City of Saint Louis Park should resist continuing down the easy well-worn path. It should capitalize on this opportunity to lead the region down a new path to improved mode integration and cooperation. Behavioral change requires time for sure, but with appropriate leadership it could begin, as Saint Louis Park’s action will remind all users of the transportation system that there are others with similar rights and responsibilities. Which can lead to a safer system for all users.

To lead this effort Saint Louis Park should:
(1) Reverse its decision to prohibit non-motorized crossings on its streets.
(2) Restore the trail-crossing markings on the pavement.
(3) Replace current signs with ones that call out responsibilities for both motorized and non-motorized traffic in all directions.
(4) Reissue your special alert statement so that it reflects the new procedure. Fifth, conduct public notice events where volunteers, police, and/or community service officers deploy to these crossings to bring increased awareness to everyone’s rights and responsibilities.

Contact me if you need me to elaborate further on the four points or if you need assistance organizing volunteers, I am available to help.

Find your way through new territory
motorwife and I just returned from traveling, a bonafide out-of-town vacation, complete with airline tickets and hotel reservations. The big package and at the right time for it has been more than four years since we have been on this type of trip and given all that is going on it will be the last for quite some time, so that trip had to count.

We packed-up what seemed like 20 suitcases, backpacks, and duffels in order to attack NorCal’s cities, valleys, and shores. It was quite a site, most observers probably thought we were moving west – to try my luck in California as Mason Jennings might say. Our travels through the streets of San Francisco, along coast highways, into wine county, campgrounds, and back again became an exercise in orienteering. A true test of a region’s ease of movement has the visitors experience as the denominator. Our experience traversing the cityscape and countryside reminded me about the importance of way finding through any system for both locals and foreigners.

Being airlifted into a new territory without a local guide puts the skills of traveling to the test. No previous experience, a slight disorientation that is common with air travel, and the need to act immediately scurrying with a few hundred of your unknown plane mates, the ease to which one can move in the correct direction becomes very evident.

Is there a search engine for the bicycle superhighway?
Bikeways are no different than this airport passage, a highway system, or hiking trails, in the need for easy to read and accurate directional signage. To improve mode share, way finding is the most important physical component after the infrastructure is complete. Successfully moving from a recreational trail that one uses on a warm and sunny summer afternoon to a transportation system that is navigational from on side of the town to the other depends on the effectiveness of signage and the maps that tie it all together.

In the Minneapolis area we are a bit behind the curve on an easy way finding system. It is not that the system is nonexistent, rather it is not uniform and it is inconsistent. I have been on routes that are signed with a simple “regional trail ” to “Cedar Lake Trail – Highway 100 1.1 miles that way – Downtown 1.3 miles the other way.”

The Twin Cities metropolitan region has a political structure that will make a comprehensive bicycle way finding system difficult but not impossible. We have grown from a seven county to a thirteen county metropolitian area with over 100 local governmental units. This fragmentation makes cooperation complex and adds time to decision making. However, if the region is to continue to be a national leader in bicycle mode share, this is the next hurdle that if lowered should increase bike use.

Getting there from here
Regardless of the fractured nature of the area’s governance, a comprehensive bicycle way finding system is possible with some unity from the bicycle community. First, we must come together to name or number regional routes. I am in favor of numbers considering some routes follow multiple existing named streets through different jurisdiction. Think a county road network where a particular county road will travel through multiple municipalities where the street names change from town to town.

Second, this system needs easy to understand and consistent road markers that not only depict the route and direction but also include context markers and distances. The context makers, such as the distance to an activity center or adjoining routes from the signpost, help connect the bicyclist to areas that he or she can shop, work, or connect to other bikeways. This furthers solidifying the bikeways as true transportation system.

Finally, these routes need to become part of an easy to use map. There are many examples of existing bike maps. Here in Hennepin County bikeways are on the reverse of the official county road map. Portland, Ore. color codes it street on its official map to show levels of bicycle friendly streets, such as green is good and red is not so good for bicycle traffic. Other such as Boulder, CO have an interactive Internet map the accompany its printed from for those who plan ahead. In Milwaukee, you can simply type your location and your destination and through Goggle maps it provides a bicycle friendly route to follow.

How to pay the toll
What is promising for the Twin Cities region’s way finding is that we do not have to create the system from scratch. We can pick and choose from the best practices from other regions. Even better, there is a new funding source so that with this important work of bringing together the region’s bicycle community we can implement it appropriately. For this effort fits perfectly within the intent of the Non-motorized pilot program. It appears that the window of opportunity is wide open for this to move forward.

Minneapolis like many other regions around the county is now benefiting from extensive bikeways networks. As these networks mature, we see a growing need to navigate the system seamlessly. Even though we are a bit behind the curve in signage development and the regional cooperation, we are poised to rectify the situation. Through the benefits of learning and adapting from other regional signage systems and a $25 million federal grant to improve the bicycle mode share in its final approval stages, we will have an opportunity to design and implement a way finding system equal to its corresponding bicycle infrastructure.

As I explored in the first three parts of this series, we are pretty fortunate in the City of Lakes. We have miles of bicycle facilities that have translated into the largest bicycle commuter population in the county. In Part 2, I explained that the origins of an independent park board and good timing in the history of planning built the foundation of the system through the preservation of land for parks as the city formed around it. And in the third part I left the sanctuary of the City’s bike trails to explore our on-street bikeways system and connection to our neighbors. The system is stong, possibly one-of-a-kind, but has some gaps that need to be filled before it can be a world class system.

This was not a difficult area of the county to implement this system, however. Minneapolis is lousy with lakes, streams, and ol’ man river. Geographically, these lakes chain together through a series of canals and stream at the southwest corner of the city. Close to the City’s southern border the Minnehaha Creek brings this water east, past another two lakes then over a spectacular falls before it enters into the Mississippi River.

Moving up river, the bike route follows both banks into the City’s center (on the left descending bank – for you Army Corps readers) and the University of Minnesota’s Minneapolis East Bank Campus (on the right descending bank). From the northern reaches of downtown the bike trails end, then one-quarter mile further upstream, access to the river disappears into industrial uses that own the river’s edge.

This gap in the system is what occupies a lot of time for advocates in the northern half of town. For reference, the Mississippi basically divides the northern half evenly into two parts, commonly referred to as the Northside and Northeast (or Nordeast as a homage to the large Eastern European that settle the area). The connections to the river in this area has been dominated by industrial users since Europeans began to descend on the area and found that the Falls of Saint Anthony could power massive small mills for the lush northern Minnesota forests harvests. Throughout the decades, the exact users have changed from the former timer floats to aggregate, scrap metal, rail, and other related industrial users.

The gaps in the northern half of the Minneapolis will be the most difficult to develop into bike trails, yet these will be the most important. These gaps are the highest fruit hanging on the tree. The land is developed and unavailable unlike the beginnings of most of the existing system. This land will be very expensive to purchase and the finding alternative locations for the existing land uses will be difficult. Plus, the industry that currently owns the property has a market and a purpose (for example recycling scarp metal) so we will need to find an appropriate new locations or a solution that allows co-habitation.

But, these hurdles are not insurmountable. Minneapolis grew from its roots on the river, and it can return. The connections from the existing system in to the west, south and parts in the east need to complete the vision of the true Grand Rounds. There are two areas of focus – the river and the “missing link” in Northeast. In addition to the difficulties of the river connections is the “missing link” that would connect to the terminus of Stimson Parkway (about half-way between the northeast corner of the city and the connection to the river). If attention moves to this in the system, like with the southern half, more-and-more will become bike commuters since the barriers to entry continue to reside.

I am not a fool in this request; I find much enjoyment in the current system and do realize that it is light-years ahead of many metropolitan systems. Though, I believe we in Minneapolis have high standards for quality of life, so I will continue to improve the intercity system. Maybe someday, we will a have bicycle mode share comparable to world leaders in Asia and Europe. Minneapolis is number one now, but at only 2.65 percent, we need to continue to work. See you out on the trails, bikeways and roadways!

Bike month is here again and that means National Bike-to-Work week is upon us. From May 15th to May 19th, join the millions of Americans who are beating the fuel cost crunch, improving their health, and adding to a cleaner environment, by riding their bicycle to work. To celebrate this activity and how municipalities are lowering the bar for communters I explore Minneapolis’ on-street facilities, rail-trails and connections to the neighboring communities in this part of the series.

Here in Minneapolis, bicycling to work is a trend that grows everyday. The public investments to the bicycle facilities are a big part of why. As I described in the first two parts of this series, the city is packed with dedicated bicycle paths, lanes and rail-trails. It is these investments that are paying off in the form of the number of residents who are shedding their cars.

Minneapolis has a number of on-road bicycle-only lanes that radiate from a downtown system. Minneapolis has an inventive approach to most of its lanes that travel down one-way streets; they follow the left side of the road (for those in the British Empire this is wrong side of roadway). To make it even more unique, streets in the primary business district have three lanes for general traffic and one lane for transit that travels in the opposite direction. Along these transit lanes are the city’s contra flow bike lanes.

Minneapolis has decided to move the bike lanes to unconventional sides of the roadway to add safety. The left lane bikeways are to avoid those pesky car doors. I will never understand why when reaching for your backpack, bag or purse in the passenger seat you have to balance yourself by pushing the driver’s door fully open. For the contra flow lanes, it places the bicyclist facing the bulk of traffic with only “professional” drivers (maybe more on that later) moving in the bicycle’s direction.

The other spokes in the system are the rail trails. Within the city we have the Midtown Greenway, Kenilworth, LRT and Cedar Lake Trails. These bituminous trails connect to the far reaches of the suburban and ex-urban Twin Cities on crushed limestone rail beads. In addition to the connections the inter-city trails that lead to cities such as Hutchinson, Chaska, Victoria, and Hopkins, there are rail trails out of Saint Paul. Our twin is far down the list in bike commuting, however it is making progress. Saint Paul is beginning to put together a system starting from facilities on Summit and Como Avenues, Wheelock Parkway, and their first rail trail named after the late Congress Member Bruce Vento.

Biking to work is a very relaxing and fun mode to work. However, for many getting on the bike for the first time can seem daunting. But once you establish a routine, it can be to work earlier than fighting traffic and finding parking, even when it rains. Some important points to remember is ride a comfortable bike, to ride at your speed, and to take the route with which you are most comfortable. Do not worry about gear, wear comfortable clothes (remember when you were a kid; whatever you wore was your bike clothes). Most importantly, wear a helmet. I am sorry to say this, however, if you lid is more than five years old (regardless of how often you used it) it is time to upgrade. Motorman says, “An $85 helmet expense every three years is better than relearning how to write my ABCs.”

Enjoy Bike-to-Work Week!

Minneapolis’ park system has it roots in the City Beautiful and Garden City movements of the late 1800s. At that time and in retaliation to the industrial revolution, city planning emerged as a profession to address how to separate land uses and to create a more natural and desirable urban environment. It was at this time when men such as Frederick Olmsted and Daniel Burnham were designing cities of the future that would grow from green tree-lined boulevards with parks and greenways sheltering new single-family neighborhoods from undesirable industrial uses.

In the 1880s, Minneapolis’ newly formed and independent Board of Park Commissioner (now Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board) hired Olmsted-protégé Horace W.S. Cleveland to design a system of interconnected parks and greenways for areas of passive recreation. Cleveland’s Grand Rounds system is the jewel of the city connecting its rich natural resources of lake, rivers and creeks with its parks and parkways. This National Scenic Byway has almost 44 miles of paved off-street bicycle and pedestrian paths. As bicycling moved from a form of transportation (1880s) to a recreational pass-time (1950s) back to a form of transportation (late 1970s), Minneapolis was well positioned to expand into an extensive bicycle system building off the foresight of the City’s fathers and mothers.

The Minneapolis Grand Rounds is rich with both passive and active recreation opportunities. From the city’s Northside, the system begins at the confluence of Mississippi River and Shingle Creek. Moving west the system travels along one of only a few lengths that are not adjacent to water, Victory Memorial Drive. This four-mile reach of symmetrically lined trees that form the northwest corner of the Rounds, is a living memorial to the lives lost in World War I from Hennepin County. Each trees is alongside a marker of a soldier lost in that bloody conflict. The Drive, as locals refer to it, features a 50-foot flagpole at the turn, with memorials to others lost is more recent conflicts. Abraham Lincoln keeps watch on the flag from a small grove nearby. The Park Board resurfaced the Drive’s trails last year for a very smooth ride.

From the southern border of Victory Drive, the Grand Rounds seamlessly flow into Theodore Wirth Park. If Minneapolis was not blessed with its many lakes, creeks, and rivers the real estate surrounding this magnificent park would be the highest priced and most desirable in the City. With our high standards and lush amenities, great reasonably priced neighborhoods circle this 500-acre park. Wirth Park is the namesake of the most influential and longest serving of Minneapolis’ Park Superintendents. This park is 60 percent the size of New York’s Central Park. Riding on the recently resurfaced paths will take you past the Bassett’s Creek, a Swiss Chalet, two golf courses, a lake, a couple ponds, a quaking bog, a flower garden, and across the 45th parallel. Theodore Wirth Park is home to the City’s only sanctioned off-road bikeways for interested trail users.

Riding along Victory Memorial Drive and through Theodore Wirth Park is simply a quarter of the system. The Minneapolis Park system is more that 6,000 acres of land and water with over 150 individual parks.
At the south end of Wirth Park, a pass over an interstate bridge brings riders into the Chain of Lake, the system’s crown jewel (we are the City of Lakes for a reason). Moving into this area also bring riders to the intersection of the elaborate rail-trail system that complements the Grand Rounds. In the third and fourth parts of this series, I will explore this nationally recognized trail system, hit the lakes, the Minnehaha Creek and some simple steps to begin to ride.

Until then, take advantage of National Bike Month and ride. For those who have not, this is your year to bike to work or school. That day is May 19th, email motorman if you need some travel pointers or advice on routes (regardless of your hometown). It is a great vehicle to bring you forward and keep you healthy.

Happy riding!