Local guy wins Nobel Prize

The Longfellow/Nokomis Messenger interviewed me and published this article in their December 2007 issue (see page 6). There is a meaningless but real thrill in having your picture published on the same page as that of a guy who won the Nobel Prize.

Beautiful!

 

The crossing turned out better than I could have imagined. The curb ramp is ten feet wide! And there is a nice wide landing at the bottom of the hill. All that's left to do is write some thank-you letters!

Under construction

A little blurry, but you get the idea. The ramp is wide on both sides of the street. Looking good! Compare to the photo in my first post.

NYC is building physically-separated bicycle lanes

See www.streetsblog.org for a great article on new physically-separated bike lanes in New York City, which was featured in the NY Times on Sunday (9/23/07). The city's presentation on the plan is full of stats, drawings, and photos, and explains that they're doing this to fulfill the idea of having a "complete street": one that serves the needs of all users. Way to go, NYC!

Trivial funding issue threatens to derail project

(Click to enlarge this image)
For a while, it looked as if this project would sail through. Now we're down to crunch time and suddenly we are facing the prospect of the project failing due to lack of funds.

My understanding after our July on-site meeting was that it was basically a done deal. Unfortunately I missed hearing the muffled "if we can get the money allocated" after many heads nodded in agreement about what needed to be done. It would be ridiculous for the intersection to be rebuilt as it was. But the construction is getting closer and closer to completed, and today I learned that the crews will be rebuilding the intersection exactly as it was before within the next couple of weeks if funding is not delivered.

It looks like we'll need some political muscle to get this thing done. Don Pflaum, the city bicycle coordinator, has been trying to scrape up a few thousand dollars to cover the cost of construction for our addition to the project, but is being refused by everyone: Park & Rec (it's their property), the Sidewalks Dept (it's their sidewalk), Hennepin County (it's their construction crew), and Minneapolis Public Works (they are managing the project on the city's end).

At Don Pflaum's request I have been refraining from lobbying elected officials for support, but now the time has come. Today I spoke with Sandy Colvin Roy at the LCC meeting and she was very supportive. Maybe she can pull it off.

We have a plan.

Persistence pays off. On a beautiful Thursday morning in July I met with representatives from the city, county, and park board along with a member of the Longfellow Environment & Transportation Committee who happened to be passing by, at the intersection of West River Pkwy & Lake Street. We stood together and watched how the public hacks their way across the street using a variety of creative routes. It was clear to all present that the crossing needs improvement. Happily, it only took half an hour of discussion to agree upon a two-phased plan:

Phase 1: When East Lake Street is completed in fall of 2007, Hennepin County will rebuild the intersection so that the existing pair of curbcuts are relocated a bit southwards to allow for a more direct line of travel for anyone crossing between the trail on West River Pkwy and the sidewalk going up to Lake Street. County crews will also remove the end of the sidewalk that hooks to the north at the bottom of the hill, where the soon-to-be-obsolete curbcut is currently located. The county engineer said he would add some of those gripper dots that you see at some intersections to the curbcut at the bottom of the hill. I have no idea how helpful those dots are, but I guess they could help a person get traction. The whole package sounds great to me!

This improvement will help anyone who is using the sidewalk on the north corner of this intersection. However, many bicyclists (including myself) get on and off the trail at the middle or southern end of the intersection to access the street rather than the sidewalk. I would like to simply see another curbcut added here, at a point that be easily found by looking where the grass has been worn away by bicycles jumping the curb from the bicycle trail to the street. My very first post has a photo taken from that exact spot.

However, the Park Board frowns on having curbcuts that exit to the street; their curbcuts all seem to be street crossings rather than trail access points. We need to work on that. Which brings us to Phase 2.

Phase 2: Since we couldn't decide on how to handle the second proposed street-access curbcut, we'll defer the discussion until the date when plans get ramped up for repaving the bicycle trail on West River Parkway. Heaven knows the trail needs work; I rarely take it because I find it uncomfortably-verging-on-dangerously bumpy (I have a scar from a bad spill I took while avoiding some of the worst bumps). As I recall it is slated to be repaved in 2010. That sounds like a long ways off, but it gives us plenty of time to think about how we can make the trail work better for our community.

I will continue to follow up with the various staff I've been working with and make sure this is staying on track. I will try to get a copy of the engineering plan for us to see before construction begins, in case any minor adjustments are needed.

This is very exciting! The low-hanging fruit is about to be plucked. It only took about 30 phone calls, 6 months, 1 meeting, and a blog.

Physically-separated bike lanes in Amsterdam

It wasn't until I saw the video below that I could wrap my mind around what I saw in Amsterdam: physically-separated bike lanes. Pedestrians walked next to the buildings, bikes (and in this case, bike parking) were given the next lane over, and parked cars provided the final buffer from motorized traffic. What looks like a traffic jam in the first photo is actually a line of parked cars. The bike lane is the reddish pavement next to the cars, which you can see more clearly in the second photo.

All I knew then is that bicycles rode confidently in their own lanes, and that you needed to be careful to walk on the pedestrian part of the sidewalk or risk getting struck by a bicycle! The number of bicycles blew my mind. On this (typical) street, hundreds of parked bicycles occupied the sturdy racks, and bicycles flowed in a steady stream day and night.