Bryant Avenue bike boulevard opening soon
Community — By Thatcher Imboden on September 24, 2011 8:35 amThe Bryant Avenue Bike Boulevard had its official ribbon cutting on Thursday, September 22nd. Its completion was nearly done but not all of the pavement markings and most of the route’s signs aren’t in place. The 4.5 mile bike route features two formal bike boulevard sections and one bike “advisory” section. The bike boulevards are on quiet neighborhood streets and include safety enhancements to create a street where hopefully everyone from eight to eighty would feel safe to travel.
The route runs from Loring Park from the bridge at Lyndale-94 down Bryant to 58th Street. The sections from Franklin to Lake Street and from 50th to 58th are true bike boulevards and the section in between is an advisory lane. The advisory lane will feature green latex paint that indicate where bikers should travel and large sharrows inset into the road that include a bike symbol and arrows indicating the path of travel. According to Shaun Murphy, a project coordinator with the City of Minneapolis, said the green paint will be reapplied yearly while the sharrows should hold up for a number of years.
Other improvements along the route include a new center median at Franklin Avenue to allow bikers to only cross one lane in each direction and take shelter in the center. At 26th Street and 28th Street, new curb bump outs on the on-coming traffic parking lane side allow for better sight lines for drivers and bikers alike. A new raised crosswalk and curb bump outs at 29th Street is intended to slow traffic that was racing between Lake Street and 28th Street. A new access ramp to Minnehaha Creek trail was installed at Aldrich Avenue to help connect those making that connection. New signs are going up to indicate that the road is a major bike route and for people to use additional caution.
New pavement markings for the Bryant Ave Bike Boulevard at 29th Street.
Thatcher Imboden
How cities work and change, how they are the product of their inhabitants and outside forces, and the resulting livability keep me thinking and dreaming about the future. I work in urban real estate development, am Past President of an Uptown business organization, grew up in Uptown, was on an Uptown neighborhood association Board, and am an Uptown and Lyn-Lake historian.
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8 Comments
Nice sentiment, but this is simply not good enough. We need real grade-separated bike lanes in this city. That means concrete medians, at least 8″ tall and 18″ wide with 3′ posts every 15 feet. It works like a charm in Montreal and Paris, creating much safer conditions, allowing for 2-way bike traffic efficiently, and ensuring pedestrians have ample medians at which to stop for safety. Let’s do this for real.
I saw this for the first time this morning on Lake and Bryant. Hopefully this pulls some bicycle traffic from Hennepin and Lyndale Avenues. Bryant makes all kinds of sense for bike boulevard.
As soon as bicyclists start obeying the rules of the road (e.g. red lights mean STOP and wait for green), I’ll care less about giving my tax money to stuff like when I see some improvements.
That said, I agree with Steve above. If we’re going to have a bike lane, have a bike lane. Not some stripes in the middle of the road.
Andrew, couldn’t the same be said of cars? I generally look at it as there are people who break the rules and do stupid stuff no matter what mode of transport they choose. Think of the pedestrians jaywakling or stepping off the curb without looking, cars running red lights or rolling stop signs or speeding down my street, or bikers running stop signs or stop lights. Everyone has justified some level of breaking the rules, whether it’s going 60 (or 80! in a 55), not stopping for a yellow light, or running a stop sign on a bike.
Bike infrastructure, if properly located and properly executed, can really improve the safety of people in the streets and increase biking. And biking is healthy, economical for the user, puts less wear and tear on our roads, and reduces environmental impacts. It’s not a mode that everyone has the opportunity to use, but nor is a car or transit.
Thatcher, that’s a valid point. But then I got to thinking about it a little more. First of all, it’s not just one or two stupid people. It’s pretty much every single biker on the road. I see it happen almost every single day. Secondly, all cars going 10 miles over the speed limit is significantly different than about 95% of all bikers running the red lights. They do it because they think the rules don’t apply to them because they’re on two wheels. Sure there are stupid people in cars, but the “per capita” (if that term applies) number is significantly less.
Not to mention there are varying degrees of danger levels.
For the record, I commute to work by bike quite often. When I stop at stop lights, it astounds me how all of the other bikers just fly right past me with no regard for a pretty important safety law.
Andrew, I too bike to work and also stop at stop lights because of their safety importance. I also agree that when 95% (which I don’t know if I agree with, but it’s still far too many) of people do something, there is a problem. I generally rationalize the laws I break based on whether I can verify that I’m not taking away someone’s right of way or soon-to-be-had right of way (ie. getting to the intersection first because there’s no intent to stop), that I’ve slowed down enough to really validate the first reason. Stop lights I rarely run, except sometimes the intersections that never ever change unless a car is present. I don’t see a problem with my rationalization other than it is technically breaking the law.
Given that Minneapolis uses the basket-weave method of stop signs on side streets (every other block, generally), it places a burden on bikers because stopping and starting is terribly inefficient and our acceleration comes from physical labor as opposed to pushing a pedal. The basket weave method, in my opinion, is intended to slow down cars that speed through neighborhoods. So bikers are forced to comply with a road network that generally is very focused on moving (or slowing) cars and as such, creates parts of the system that are inviting for bikers to break the rules. And with bikers generally traveling at slower speeds and with few blind spots, it’s a lot easier (and some would argue safer) for bikes to (slowly and carefully) run stop signs.
Having said that, I do agree that there are many bikers doing stupid, dangerous moves daily and it isn’t just a rouge one or two bikers. Depending on where you are (and when), the violators vary widely. At traffic lights near Lake Calhoun, I see far more recreational and speed demons run lights than commuters. But Downtown, it seems like it’s a much wider group. The question to me is why do people run lights, are there things that can be tweaked within the road system to reduce “compelling” situations for folks to run lights, and targeted enforcement focusing on people who make bold, dangerous moves.
I don’t understand why there has to be an “official bike lane” on Bryant ave s.What is the point? Bikes ride down it anyway..The green stripes are the ugliest and silliest defamation of those neighborhoods. There are too many of these bike trails, it’s getting completely out of hand here in Minneapolis. I’m all for bike trails, I just don’t see the need to provide more ammunition to those in our city council and Mayorship to enhance this “utopian” effort any more than it has. My three cents
The problem is most of the “bike lanes” are crap. Would be much better to have a well-placed network of a few separated/protected lanes (like on 1st Ave downtown) than to just paint a green stripe on every road you can. A little bit of green paint does little-to-nothing to make commuters from the burbs respect cyclists.