Hypno Toad

I was totally blown away yesterday to ride the detour of the SWLRT in St Louis Park, MN. Minnesota is in the middle of a multi-year project to replace extremely old bridges over Hwy 100. There are three bridges:

Minnetonka Blvd - They closed this bridge to all traffic, removed the bridge and just reopened it
Rail & SWLRT bike - They have been working in phases to move the rail line to a new bridge and left the bike section of the bridge alone (it is a very wide bridge from back in the day when many tracks ran over the bridge).
Hwy 7 bridge - They closed the bridge to all traffic, but routed the SWLRT detour over this bridge while replacing the bike bridge.

This section of the SWLRT is a very busy bike corridor used by commuters and recreational bikers. Per my Strava & VV, 41,500 attempts by 4,950 riders, this is top 20 busiest segments in the city. For reference, the busiest segments I've ridden in Mpls have 59,000 attempts and 6,100 riders.

This is the map of the reroute:


Here's is a video of the detour - it's 3:00 long and kinda boring, but honestly blows me away that Minnesota took bikes this seriously.

.be
I am impressed, tip o' the hat to Minnesota!

hooCycles

Very cool. Is the surface on the detour relatively free of construction debris? I'm always careful when I pass construction sites here since often times they leave all kinds of **** on the road i.e. decent-sized rocks, fasteners, etc.

Hypno Toad

There route is in good shape, but also very new.

The extra interesting part, the new bike bridge will be done in May. So this detour is basically for the winter, in Minnesota! Yes, that is commitment and understanding of the MPLS bike community. And since this will be mostly a winter route, riders will be be on studded tires and other knobby tires that will be able to handle the debris from the construction site.

TheLibrarian

You see some of these multimillion dollar bridges over rail trails and wonder. Must be pork for some town council persons brother who has a construction company. And the hundred thousand dollar digital sign outside of the firehouse that advertises the pancake dinner fundraiser. How many pancakes do you think they'd have to sell to pay for the sign?

Hypno Toad

You are posting to the wrong thread with this comment.

First, you are comparing apples and oranges, fire departments and transportation. But we can do the same this with defense spending and school funding, how many bake sales did the Pentagon have to fund the latest aircraft carrier?

The specific bridge in this post, it is a replacement for an existing bridge, a bridge that was built decades ago for rail and re-purposed for bikes. This new bridge is making the highway below wider allowing 6 lanes of traffic - versus the 4 lanes previously. A$60 million project, one bike bridge is peanuts in this budget. This is wise money for all parties involved, better traffic flow for the highway and keeping the busy commuter bike corridor open.

I don't disagree with your point, it's just poorly placed. The Sabo Bridge in Minneapolis is a better place to talk about pork spending on a bike bridge. But that's not the bridge in this post, so if you want to go there, start a new tread and we can talk about it on your thread. Cool? cool!

Footnote -

• Nationally,12 percent of all trips are by bike or on foot, yet only about one percent of the federal transportation budget goes to bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure; this, while nearly 14 percent of road fatalities are bicyclists and pedestrians.

CrankyOne

Curious where you got this.

Hypno Toad

I'll dig deeper when I'm at my laptop, but here's one of three references to these stats
New Normal: Transportation in Minnesota - Twin Cities Daily PlanetTwin Cities Daily Planet

Chris516

Finally. I was living in Duluth a decade ago(Nov.'02-Jan.'07). Their biking infrastructure was not like this video. Necessarily. There is the covered bridge for cyclists' and pedestrians that crosses over I-35 to the concert/sports venue. But that is about it. The roads, sidewalks, and paths. Never looked this good. The mayor's excuse was, the weather. Sure Duluth is on Lake Superior. But honestly, that is a dumb answer from the Mayor. It was Herb Bergson.

indyfabz

See post #5 in this thread and learn something from it, or don't. Your choice as to how you portray yourself.

bikemig 

I rode BAM (Bicycling Across MN). I was impressed with the efforts being made by a great many smaller towns and cities in the state to promote cycling and bike paths.

baron von trail 

My state has built so many paved bike trails which can be accessed from my back door--330 continuous miles with about 300 more if I take a road or two, per last count--that I cannot possible ride them all in one shot. Just riding them all over several days is a challenge. It's an impressive network.
The Nation's Largest Paved Trail Network | Miami Valley Bike Trails

Hypno Toad

Minneapolis has the opposite attitude about winter, they put a priority on clearing the bike routes after snow. This effort pays off, because Minneapolis has the most robust winter bike community in North America.

Hypno Toad

Here is the source data, it's from 2010, so it's old data.

2010 Conditions and Performance - Policy | Federal Highway Administration

edit - I did more searching, but found nothing more recent. I'm sure it's out there, but I don't know where to find it.

gregf83 

Very nice set of paths. Looks like a nice ride between Dayton and Cincinnati. Do they maintain those in the winter?

CrankyOne

Thanks. I think 12% for the U.S. is more fantastical hopeful thinking than reality. A few places like NYC, WDC, Portland, Minneapolis, and Boston achieve that but the country as a whole is closer to about 3%.

Hypno Toad

This is combining biking and walking to get to 12%, bike share alone is 1% to 1.5% in the US.

CrankyOne

Bicycle mode share in the U.S. is about 0.7% (optimistically). Walking is about 2.5%.

Hypno Toad

Commuting mode share, or total trips mode share? I understand there are many ways to slice the numbers.

FanaticMN

Minneapolis figures are 3.5% and 6.7% (2010 data).

https://www.ci.minneapolis.mn.us/www/...s1p-089224.pdf

CliffordK

Quite the detour. i didn't see a lot of riders and pedestrians, but there were a few. Enough that shutting the path down would have been problematic.

We had some road construction this summer on a main arterial (auto) heading out of town. The roads were officially closed, but they kind of expected bikes and pedestrians to pick their way through the construction area and around the construction equipment. And, it was just OK. I suppose I could have bypassed it like the cars, but it would have been a big hassle, several extra miles, and perhaps riding on the freeway (legal). I actually liked the reduced traffic on the rest of the road for several miles past the construction.

As far as bike bridges, I think Eugene has 5 dedicated bike (MUP) bridges across the Willamette river, and 1 across the McKenzie river. Most of them were built because the city required a conduit for utilities to cross the river, and the additional cost to make a bike bridge was minimal.

Hypno Toad

This video of riding the detour during mid-afternoon on a work day, at commuting hours and weekends, it's much busier. It is a top 20 busiest route in the Twin Cities, based on Strava statistics (not the greatest measurement, but the best I have easy access to). Many cities/states wouldn't think twice about closing a bike route, and I'm pleased that Minnesota recognized this as a key bike route.

There was another bridge replacement last summer (road crossing a rail-trail), the county just said "trail closed" and marked no detours. So, like you say people picked their way through the construction site, or made their own detours around the site. This bridge work is on a significantly less used trail than the detour in my video.

Hypno Toad

Update: I rode the detour last night and realized part of the reason the state kept the old Hwy 7 bridge to for the bike detour - the new Hwy 7 bridge is being built on a shifted location (just North of the current bridge). Therefore, they are building the new Hwy 7 bridge while leaving the old bridge in place. This allows the old Hwy 7 bridge to function as the bike detour and the construction crew can use the it to get from one side of the project to the other quickly. Once the new bike bridge is open in May, they can demolish the old Hwy 7 bridge and finish the new Hwy 7 bridge.

Here are project details, if anybody is interested: Hwy 100 Project - MnDOT

Hypno Toad

An update to my local story: the new bridge opened early! I created a Strava segment on the detour and the data is interesting (to me at least). Based on Strava data, November through mid-April there were:

1,256 riders through this detour (25% of the total riders on the normal route)
4,142 attempts (10% of the total attempts on the normal route)

Considering that this was a through the middle of winter and only a 5-month period, these are strong number IMHO.

Reference, the detour segment: https://www.strava.com/segments/10791412