Tag Archives: minneapolis

Nice Ride data is public. Who wants to map it?

Posted on by
2

Nice Ride has released all their 2011 data.  And by all, I mean ALL.  One file in the bunch has every “rental” for the entire year with origin and destination stations, trip duration, and time.  Another has every subscriber and his/her rental counts.  The greatest number of rentals by one person in 2011? 1,028 by a male born in 1946 (?!)

Anyway, I’d like to make a map like this, but I don’t quite have the mapping/programming chops.  Its something like combining a spider diagram combined with Network Analyst’s best route analysis but doing it thousands of times.

Anyone else doing anything with this data?

Mapping the Twin Cities bike counts

Posted on by
7


View Larger Map

Much has already been written about the 2011 bike counts: the great news that counts continue to climb, how we might use them to prioritize infrastructure improvements, and even what grains of salt we should consume along with the data.  But I haven’t seen anyone map them yet.

So here’s my contribution.  Circle size represents 2011 count totals.  These are also the true counts, not extrapolated to annual numbers (I don’t think those numbers have even been released yet).

Cross-posted at streets.mn

Super energy efficiency for existing homes

Posted on by
Reply

 The Star Tribune has a story about the MinnePHit House in South Minneapolis.

Sometime in the next few weeks, Paul Brazelton will move his family into a 1935 Tudor in south Minneapolis that has no furnace. He’s just finished a massive renovation of the family home and even though winter’s bearing down, he removed the boiler and plans to use that basement space for his daughters’ home-school classroom.

He also took out the fireplace.

If this sounds like the most uninviting house (and classroom) in Minneapolis, there’s something else to know: Brazelton, a software engineer and passionate environmentalist, has nearly finished a retrofit of his house to the stringent engineering standards of the Passivhaus model, a German system of homebuilding that uses insulation and highly efficient doors and windows to save energy.

The finished 2,000-square-foot home could be warmed even in the dead of winter with a pair of small space heaters, Brazelton said, though the family plans to piggyback on their hot water heater and use an in-floor heating system in the basement.

The project is the renovation of an existing home to meet EnerPHit standard for energy performance. EnerPHit is a subset of the Passive House standard (hence the PH), which is an energy performance standard that requires very high levels of energy efficiency.  The Passive House Institute has a summary:

A Passive House is a very well-insulated, virtually air-tight building that is primarily heated by passive solar gain and by internal gains from people, electrical equipment, etc. Energy losses are minimized. Any remaining heat demand is provided by an extremely small source. Avoidance of heat gain through shading and window orientation also helps to limit any cooling load, which is similarly minimized. An energy recovery ventilator provides a constant, balanced fresh air supply. The result is an impressive system that not only saves up to 90% of space heating costs, but also provides a uniquely terrific indoor air quality.

Passive House is a performance standard, meaning it doesn’t specify design features like LEED, but has performance characteristics that the building must meet after construction is complete.  Namely an airtight building shell at  ≤ 0.6 ACH @ 50 pascal pressure measured by a blower door test and a total heating & cooling demand of <4.7 kBtu/sq ft/yr.  Total energy use needs to be ≤ 38.1 kBtu/ft2/yr.

In layman’s terms, this means Passive House designs are 11 times more airtight than a conventionally designed and built modern home.  As for energy use, a typical single family detached home uses 76 kBtu/sq ft/yr.  My own house was built in the 1920′s and currently has no wall insulation.  In 2010, we used 89 kBtu/sq ft/yr in total, and I think we’re fairly frugal with our electricity.  That means when the Brazelton family finishes their home, it will use less than half the total energy of my house and be 15% larger.

The Passive House standard doesn’t require or depend on renewable energy to achieve this high energy performance.  It’s focused on minimizing, to the greatest extent possible, the loss of heat and capitalizing on natural heat sources like sunlight and even body heat.  The MinnePHit house will be renewable-ready, but it won’t have renewables to start with.  Paul, the owner, puts it eloquently:

 …we decided to use our limited resources in building a house with the highest level of efficiency and durability.  If maintained correctly, solar panels can last decades.  On the other hand, insulation can last centuries.  Looking again at the long term, the best investment is using less energy, not alternate energy.

Last but not least, this home is energy efficient because it is location efficient, located in South Minneapolis with nearby access to jobs, recreation and services.  The Brazelton’s definitely don’t have to use an automobile for every trip, and they likely won’t be traveling far to their destination.  The other local example of Passive House design can’t make that claim.

Finding space for bike infrastructure

Posted on by
9

1st Ave buffered lane - parking is allowed on weekends

Finding space for new bike infrastructure is always tough.  Usually existing streets aren’t getting any wider, and parking and drive lanes often take precedence in the minds of residents and policy makers.  Solutions that allow cars and bike to share space are becoming more common, like the wonderful Bryant Avenue bike boulevard.  So when you find a street with extra space, it’s kind of a miracle.

When I ride to work, I frequently use the 1st Ave S/Blaisdell one-way pair for going north-south.  Both of these streets recently received bike lane improvements, including a bit of protected bike lane on 1st Avenue, south of 33rd Street.  When I asked the project coordinator why 1st Avenue got the protected lane instead of Blaisdell, which has higher traffic volumes, his answer was “space”.  Here are some of my observations (as a cyclist and autoist) from using these streets:

  • It seems like overkill to keep Blaisdell a two-lane one-way street when both 35W and the Park/Portland one-way pair are so close.  Especially south of Lake Street.  Traffic engineers, weigh in here.  Is there any appropriate traffic volume that warrants this type of street design in an urban setting?
  • Speeding is frequently an issue on these streets, especially Blaisdell.  I do it myself, and the liberal use of “this is your speed” radar signs reinforces this.
  • Much of the bike lane on Blaisdell is filled with potholes, manhole covers, street detritus and sometimes parked cars.  In other words, it’s not very nice.
  • Riding next to traffic that is traveling 35-40 mph is uncomfortable.  I certainly wouldn’t take my daughter in a trailer or on her own bike on these streets.
  • In almost all places where it has been measured, auto traffic volumes on 1st and Blaisdell south of I-94 have dropped since 2006, in some places as much as 30%.
I think there is extra space on this pair of streets which could be used to make cyclists a lot more comfortable without impacting auto traffic significantly.  I’ll go out on a limb and say these might even have potential to increase property values by getting rid of the mini-freeway that is Blaisdell.  Here are some options I think might work, in preferential order.
  1. Turn 1st Ave into a two-way protected bikeway from 40th to 16th Street or maybe even Grant.  This could be with a raised curb, or just some paint and plastic bollards.  There would still be space for one auto lane in most places I think.  Turn LaSalle/Blaisdell into a two-way with one travel lane in each direction starting at Grant, with parking on both sides.
  2. Move the bike lane on Blaisdell behind a row of parked cars and adequate buffer space.  I say adequate to distinguish this from the 1st Avenue North design.  See these examples from Chicago.  Reduce car travel lanes to one south of 31st Street.
  3. Turn both 1st and Blaisdell back to two-ways where possible with one travel lane in each direction and parallel parking.  Give them the bicycle boulevard treatment a la Bryant.  Set speed limit at 25.
What do you think?  Doable?  What am I missing traffic people?

A mileage tax for bikes

Posted on by
7

Cruisin'

Funding for cycling infrastructure in Minneapolis is under fire.  I don’t want to get into the politics, except maybe one note¹: if this position were called “traffic coordinator”, would this even be an issue?  Ok, I’m done.  So funding for traffic that happens to occur in the form of bicycles is under fire.  How about we get creative?

It’s always bugged me that cyclists couldn’t really point to a specific source of funds for their projects.  If you read Chapter 8 of the Minneapolis bike plan, you see sources for capital projects include a laundry list of federal money, one-time programs, and state sources, none of which are really specific to cycling.  Where is the connection between local demand and funding levels, you might ask?  Well, funding levels appear to be determined mostly by how good your community is at lobbying for state and federal dollars.  Most cyclists pay income taxes, property taxes and gas taxes, so these revenues should supposedly go in some way towards bike projects, but the transportationists would say this isn’t an efficient way to allocate resources.

I’m a proponent of mileage fees for auto transportation, as most of the wonks and urbanists seem to be, so why not apply this concept to bikes?

My proposal is simple: cyclists who wish to participate download an app for their smartphone that tracks the miles they ride in a certain jurisdiction.  At the end of the month or year, the app displays total mileage and a suggested contribution amount based on a per-mile rate.  Users pay the amount they wish.

The app itself could work something like the fitness apps that are out there, like Map My Ride.  Open the app, push start when you’re leaving and stop when you’re done.  Total mileage is tracked.  The app could be specialized to just track within a certain city or county, and maybe even determine the jurisdiction of the street/trail on which you rode.

The plan depends on voluntary participants, which is a challenge.  The federal government has a website where you can donate money to pay down the debt, but it’s not wildly successful.  However, my approach will allow people to connect directly with what their paying for (bike lanes or trails), and not imagine its going to some lazy bureaucrat’s pension fund.

How much money would this raise?  There are roughly 8,000 Minneapolis residents riding their bike to work (which is close to a 4% mode share for workers over 16).  Let’s assume their round-trip commute is 8 miles and there are 230 workdays per year.  If you set the mileage rate at 10 cents, the bike fund gets $1,472,000 per year.  Of course, that assumes full adoption (unlikely) and that all the miles ridden are in Minneapolis (also unlikely).  What if 500 people track their mileage?  That’s 6% of regular commuters.  I’m not sure if that’s realistic, but that equals $92,000 per year in voluntary fees, more than enough for a bike coordinator.  That 8-mile commute would cost each biker 80 cents per day.  That’s cheaper than driving or taking the bus.

Another proposal from Straight Outta Suburbia that’s been making the blogosphere rounds lately is to tax sales of bicycles, accessories and repair to pay for infrastructure.  While I think a voluntarily mileage tax would be more politically feasible and have fewer unintended consequences, I think both ideas deserve some consideration.  Make sure to check out the comments section at Straight Outta Suburbia as it has some good discussion of the issue, including the excellent phrase “pigovian tax”.

What do you think about a mileage or accessory tax for bikes?  Would you voluntarily pay it?  Finally, do you know any smartphone app developers who want to help me build it for very low pay?

 

¹ Ok, maybe not just one.  Did you know that there are many locations in Minneapolis that see thousands of bike trips per day?  And that there are locations where one out of every eight travelers is on a bike?  It’s true!  Sounds like the kind of traffic that might need some coordination.

Transportation efficiency, safety and fluff programs

Posted on by
Reply

snc12753

Ken Greenberg and Trent Lethco discuss the potential benefits for drivers of providing more bike (and transit) capacity on local systems.  Given the minor controversy that has erupted over the decision by Minneapolis Department of Public Works to hire a Bicycle and Pedestrian Coordinator, I thought this article was especially timely.

One of the key transportation issues we’ve only begun to tackle is system efficiency versus system capacity. When we think about moving the highest number of people in the smallest available footprint, creating more space for walking, cycling and transit makes perfect sense. By focusing on making our existing systems more efficient, we can allow more people to travel on the roads, highways and transportation systems we’ve already built.

Every additional trip we take on foot, on a bicycle or by public transit frees up significant space for drivers, since the “footprints” of these other modes are so much smaller. The cyclist beside you is not the car in front of you; the bicycle locked to a ring at curbside means one less parking space is taken. Driver, cyclist and pedestrian are complementary rather than mutually exclusive categories. Most of us are all of these at different times. What’s crucial is the proportion of time we use each mode, and creating communities where the car is needed for only certain types of trips. For other trips, we can make more efficient choices.

Recognizing this reality, cities around the world are finding innovative ways to share their rights of way. Cities such as Amsterdam, Copenhagen, London, Paris, New York, Montreal and Vancouver are rapidly making the shift to safe and efficient multimodal networks. More than a hundred cities now have bicycle-sharing programs such as Bixi. If we decide we want our system to be more efficient, we must also ensure it has the attributes that make the more efficient choices the attractive ones – and that comes through land use, system design, pricing and skillful urban design.

Greenberg and Lethco’s article is all about efficiency, but the bike coordinator position is also about public safety.  Ward 2 Council member Cam Gordon provides an eloquent rebuttal to the Strib article:

I am concerned that the article presents a false choice between this coordinator position and public safety.  In fact, the bike/walk coordinator position is a public safety position.  According to the records from our Public Works department, there were 46 bike/ped fatalities in Minneapolis between 2000 and 2009, and 5,509 bicyclists and pedestrians (that we know of) have been hit in that same timeframe.

These are big numbers, and it’s easy to lose sight of the human suffering behind each one.  So I ask you to remember Audrey Hull, the young woman who was hit and killed in Ward 2 earlier this year, and the pain that unnecessary tragedy caused to her family and friends.

Safer, better designed infrastructure can save lives.  That’s not an assertion, it’s a fact, borne out by the studies that have looked into road treatments like bike lanes.  By helping us build more and better bike and pedestrian infrastructure, this coordinator will help prevent deaths like Audrey’s.

Using LEED ND to strengthen existing neighborhoods

Posted on by
2

pride at loring park

I’ve written a lot about LEED ND, the rating system built to define sustainable neighborhoods, including how to use it as a framework for sustainable regional planning.  Typically, the rating system is applied to new development or redevelopment: when new streets, buildings and infrastructure systems are being built.  Rarely has it been applied to an existing neighborhood, where development or redevelopment is occurring at a slow pace and changes to major infrastructure systems are unlikely or occurring incrementally.  That application was simply not the original purpose of LEED ND.  I’ve always viewed LEED ND as providing an alternative to a model of traditional suburban development that has low connectivity, low density and poor location efficiency.  In its current form, it is best suited as a guide to help us plan and build new development more sustainably.

That doesn’t mean that there aren’t many valuable lessons for existing neighborhoods within the LEED ND system.  While we know that the greenest development is almost always the one that is already built, existing neighborhoods can often lack connectivity, walkability, density or other design features, which if retrofitted over time, could make them more livable and sustainable.

Neighborhoods and cities concerned about maintaining and improving livability, sustainability and financial viability are using LEED ND in just this way.  The Loring Park neighborhood in Minneapolis is in the process of creating a neighborhood master plan to shape their community for the next twenty years.  The neighborhood partnered with the University of Minnesota’s Center for Urban and Regional Affairs to assess the neighborhood’s sustainability using the LEED ND system.  Loring Park would also like to become officially certified as a LEED ND “project”, either under the current system or under a pilot existing neighborhoods program an alternative path for neighborhood and small areas plans that USGBC is developing.  A volunteer group, including yours truly, is working to help the neighborhood meet this goal.

The purpose of pursuing certification is to make this already green neighborhood even greener.  If Loring Park falls short in certain parts of the rating system, these shortcomings can be turned directly into goals for the master plan.  The Loring Park Draft Concept Plan includes a goal related to sustainable buildings and infrastructure and includes these goals for the use of LEED ND:

Further utilize the LEED-ND rating framework to:

  • periodically gauge neighborhood wide performance and progress toward sustainability goals
  • set in place (or augment) design guidelines or to set parameters for private project review and approval, or to gauge the merits of specific capital improvement projects
  • structure performance criteria for various incentives
  • preparation for government grants or other support from agencies that are familiar with LEED-ND rating system or that directly utilize LEED- ND standards as performance criteria

Our volunteer group, organized by the USGBC Minnesota Chapter and Loring Park residents, has just begun the certification process for the neighborhood.  This process will be a great opportunity to document the challenges of applying LEED ND to an existing neighborhood and review the rating system’s usefulness for a community planning process.  Stay tuned.

 

First Open Streets in Minneapolis

Posted on by
Reply

Yesterday, June 6th, was the first Open Streets event in Minneapolis.  It was organized by the Minneapolis Bike Coalition, with lots of hard work.  From everyone I’ve talked to and all the tweets I’ve read, it seemed to be a rollicking success.  But how can people not like cruising up and down Lyndale and saying hi to their neighbors and friends?

Below are a few photos the wife and I snapped.  Check out the Open Streets page for more.

Open Streets are coming to Minneapolis!

Posted on by
Reply
ciclovia Bogota

Scenes from open streets (ciclovia) in Bogota

Thanks to the great work of the Minneapolis Bike Coalition and support from Blue Cross and Blue Shield, Open Streets are coming to Minneapolis this summer!  On June 12th, Lyndale Avenue will be closed from 22nd Street to 42nd street from 10 am to 2 pm.  From the Open Streets Mpls website:

Starting in 2011, Minneapolis residents will have the opportunity to explore and enjoy their neighborhood streets by biking, walking, and skating without the presence of motorized traffic.

An Open Streets event (based on the Ciclovía from Bogotá, Colombia) will bring together families and neighbors to mingle, recreate, and shop in their communities in a safe, car-free environment.

Open Streets are not races.  Participants can begin/stop/restart/change direction at any time.

Open Streets are free!

In addition to biking, walking and skating, there are programmed recreational activities along the streets including yoga, dance lessons, aerobics, and games.  There are also musical performances and classes on bike safety and repair.

Open Streets promote:

  • Sustainable transportation choices, including walking, bicycling and transit.
  • Public health, bringing healthy physical activity to communities in need.
  • Local business, drawing foot traffic past the front doors.
  • Public space, helping residents see our streets as places where we can all come together and take pride in our city.

 

Take the skyway

Posted on by
1

Leif Pettersen chronicles his experiment with long-term skyway-only living in VitaMN.  He didn’t venture outside any skyway-connected space for two weeks this last winter.

I did work downtown for a period (and will soon return), but it was in the warehouse district, which isn’t well connected to the skyway.  Reading this gave me a new appreciation for just how completely downtown Minneapolis is oriented towards the skyway.  It almost made me change my opinion on whether they are good or bad for downtown.

You can see a doctor, dentist, optometrist or hairstylist. You can get your body pulverized by a masseuse, chiropractor, personal trainer or yogi. You can apply for a passport, renew your driver’s license, pay back taxes, get married, get divorced and sue your ex-spouse. You can hire a Realtor, shop for a condo, engage a mortgage broker, secure a bank loan and furnish your new home. You can take your in-laws to a very nice dinner, then a live theater show, movie or sporting event, and leave them at a respectable hotel. You can buy groceries, fill prescriptions, get a tetanus shot, do your dry cleaning, go to church and outfit an exceptional wine-tasting party. You can take university classes and go swimming, art-spotting or bar-hopping. You can send a package, receive a package, gift-wrap a package and get your package waxed. All this and much more — without ever stepping a toe outdoors.