Minneapolis recently released a draft of a Bicycle Master Plan for the city. It includes a list of projects with a summary of eligibility for funding based on a number of qualifying criteria. As an astute commenter noticed, a surprising number of projects meet all the qualifying criteria except “Operations and Maintenance”. The plan explains the Operations and Maintenance criteria this way:
Are the operations and maintenance responsibilities defined? Proposed projects must identify how a project will be maintained before it can be submitted. Projects must also demonstrate that the project can be maintained in a cost effective manner for the life of the project.
In Chapter 8 of the plan (page 8-5), we get a hint about why so many projects are not meeting the O&M criterion:
The [Minneapolis] Public Works operating budget has been stretched to the point where new outside funding sources must be identified in order to provide adequate maintenance for new bicycle related projects.
If the project doesn’t have outside funds for maintenance (not just capital), the city can’t build it. That makes sense, because we don’t want brand new trails only to see them crumble in a few years. The plan identifies a number of potential permanent funding sources for maintenance, including a maintenance endowment, a sales tax on bikes and equipment, bicycle registration fees, naming rights and advertising, and more.
This is an important issue. Clearly this is one of the major barriers to getting new bicycle projects built in the city. The plan proposes a dedicated funding stream for capital projects, but the answer for maintenance costs seems less certain. What are your ideas for funding ongoing maintenance of bicycle facilities? Would you support a sales tax on bikes and equipment? What about a bicycle registration fee?
This video from Criterion Planners shows a step-by-step process to use LEED ND to assess “smart” locations in a city. This process could be used during a plan update, or to make changes to the zoning code. Knowing the process, and which parcels are eligible, can also help the city increase the number of eligible areas using regulatory tools.
This process is very similar to the method I used to assess LEED ND eligibility and “location efficiency” for the Twin Cities metro region in previous posts.
View Minneapolis Bike Master Plan in a larger map
The new Minneapolis Bike Master Plan has a long list of projects necessary to build out the system. 82, if I count correctly. However, only 6 of these are considered “Tier 1″ in the plan, which I think means that they are high priority and meet criteria necessary to qualify for funding sources. These six are shown in the map above. The Upper River Trails count as one project.
According to Don Pflaum, the project manager for the plan, much of the funding for these improvements will come from outside sources, such as SAFETEA-LU grants. So each project must be evaluated based on a number of criteria, and must meet these criteria before being eligible for consideration by the City. The criteria include the ability of the project to increase mode share, improve safety, and be cost effective, among others. The end of Chapter 7 contains a matrix of all the projects including their ability to meet each criterion.
This ranking doesn’t exactly prioritize projects, except to say what is and isn’t currently eligible for funding. After speaking with Don, I know the city wants more input on cyclists priorities for the system.
So what are your priorities? Should the six projects above be first? What projects do you think would bring the most benefit? You can add your top priorities right on the map. Click on the view larger link, then click on “save to my maps” and then you can draw right on the map. Ideally, you’ll want to check the project list in the plan to make sure your project is in there, but if you have something the plan doesn’t have, go ahead and add that too, just make a note so we all know it is something new. Also maybe add your name and a short description of the project so we know what it is.
Calhoun Biking by flickr user meetminneapolis
Minneapolis has released the Bicycle Master Plan for public comment. Get your comments in via phone, email or through the website until October 1st. There will also be some open houses to collect comments I am told.
While I haven’t had time to read the entire document, the City has laid out some aggressive goals, such as increasing bicycle mode share (to work) to 15% by 2030, and increasing total bike trips by 10% each year. They also aim to add 45 miles of on-street and 5 miles of off-street facilities by 2015.
The maps in the document are the most confusing to me, and I had a good conversation with Don Pflaum, the City’s contact for the plan, about making things more legible. If you’ve got comments, submit them on the website, call or email Don or attend an open house. This plan is the basis for prioritizing bikeway improvements in the city.
The City of Minneapolis is applying for TIGER II grant funding from the US DOT for an alternatives analysis for Central Avenue and Nicollet Avenue, two routes the city prefers for a new streetcar system. How they can prefer streetcar as the mode without an alternatives analysis is puzzling to me since the previously completed streetcar study did not consider any other transit modes. The Metropolitan Council also recommends arterial BRT, not streetcar, for the Nicollet and Central Avenue corridors in the 2030 Transportation Policy Plan. As explained by a guest here at Net Density before, arterial BRT can offer significant travel time savings and increased ridership at a much lower cost than either LRT or streetcar.
According to the FTA, an alternatives analysis is supposed to answer some key questions: What are the problems in a corridor? What are their underlying causes? What are viable options for addressing these problems? What are their costs? What are their benefits? If all of these questions are fairly explored and answered and streetcar turns out to be the best option, so be it.
Anna Flintoft, a transportation planner with the City of Minneapolis who is quoted in the Minnesota Daily article linked to above, told me in an email that the city does plan to evaluate multiple modes, including streetcar and “enhanced bus”. This is a good sign, but the City Council seems to have already made up their mind about the mode without having seen any alternatives.
Areas in the Metro Eligible for LEED ND
As part of a series, I’ve been exploring what locations in the Twin Cities metro are eligible for LEED ND based on the land use characteristics. These locations could be considered “location efficient”, a concept which has gained importance recently due to changes in federal policy that direct the expenditure of federal money. The benefits of location efficiency include “connecting conveniently and affordably to jobs, schools, shops and other amenities through a range of transportation options”, according to HUD Secretary Donovan.
I would argue that we can also use LEED ND as a guide for growing our region more sustainably. The requirements of the rating system can show us where it would be appropriate to target future growth, what areas should be preserved until sufficient infrastructure is available, and what areas are totally off-limits. HUD, DOT and EPA are promoting a similar line of thinking with their recent partnership on Sustainable Communities and corresponding grant opportunity. read more…
Traditional Neighborhood Design - Minneapolis 1892
In an ongoing series, I’ve been trying to define areas of the Twin Cities metro that are “location efficient” using the USGBC’s LEED ND rating system. The previous posts focused on those requirements of LEED ND that cannot be met through the design of the project itself: features of the built and natural environment that determine a minimum eligibility for LEED ND based on location. This resulted in a map of areas in the region that met this basic level of “location efficiency”.
However, there are a few other requirements of LEED ND that can technically be met through the project design, but may not be able to be met in reality based on the existing built environment, or the current planning or zoning rules in a particular location. For example, LEED ND requires a minimum density for both residential and non-residential uses. Technically the density of the project is controllable by the project designer, however, if a city has land use regulations in place that only permit densities lower than what is required by LEED ND, plan and zoning amendments or variances would need to be granted before the project could go forward, all of which are not certain. Many communities are averse to the levels of density required by LEED ND, and therefore elected officials would be unlikely to grant such changes to land use regulations. read more…
Net Density has a new look!
After more than two years, I’m experimenting with a new, cleaner look for the blog (mostly thanks to The Theme Foundry). Over the next few days and weeks you might see some tweaks and changes here and there. Let me know if you find anything that doesn’t work or looks funny.
Thanks for reading, hope you enjoy the changes.
After HUD announced that they would begin scoring grant projects on “location efficiency” using LEED ND as a guide, I got curious as to what that might mean for the Twin Cities region. In Part 1 of the series, I began looking at what requirements LEED ND has for “location efficiency” and came up with a map that identifies areas of the region that are basically off-limits due to special environmental or land use characteristics. This was based on prerequisites 2 – 5 in the Smart Location and Linkage topic area of LEED ND. This post will focus on the last prerequisite in Smart Location and Linkage: Smart Location.
This exercise isn’t supposed to be just about HUD, but about what planning in our region might look like if location efficiency, smart growth and infill development were prioritized over greenfield development.
