A big thanks to everyone who attended the ULI Minnesota Kids in the City Program on March 10th. The panel was excellent and the discussion was great. Below is the intro presentation that was given during the event.
This week, the US Census released 2010 data for Minnesota. I haven’t had much time to dig into the data, but I did check a few things. First, I checked the health (in terms of population) of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, our core cities. We seem to have bucked the trend, being seen in many midwestern core cities, of population decline. Minneapolis is down 40 people since 2000 and Saint Paul lost 2,083 (-0.7%).
Although our core city population growth seems to be flat or declining, Minneapolis and Saint Paul also seem to be experiencing the “downtown renaissance” being seen in other parts of the country.
Using Census tracts that approximate the areas of each downtown (Minneapolis: south of Plymouth Avenue, inside the freeway belt, south of the river; Saint Paul: inside the freeway belt, north of the river) I compared population from 2000 to 2010. The results are shown in the table below. Both downtowns seem to be healthy and growing.
| Downtown | 2000 | 2010 | Percent Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Minneapolis | 17,421 | 23,029 | 32% |
| Saint Paul | 5,609 | 6,604 | 18% |
| Total | 23,030 | 29,633 | 29% |
Bike Walk Twin Cities does an annual count of cycling and walking at a number of locations around the Minneapolis. Their latest report compares 2010 to 2007 counts and finds big increases.
From 2007-2010, bicycling increased by 33% overall, with the highest volume increases (number of cyclists) at such locations as the Franklin Avenue bridge over the Mississippi River, the Midtown Greenway, the Cedar Lake Trail under I-394, and at the Sabo Bridge.
Walking also increased from 2007-2010, by 17%, with the highest volume increases (number of people walking) along Riverside Avenue, Cedar Avenue south of Riverside, and the Hennepin Avenue Bridge over the Mississippi River.
Their data also seems to show a correlation between new infrastructure and walking and cycling increases.
The rates of bicycling and walking are up in the Twin Cities, even in locations without new bicycling and walking infrastructure. However, the data for locations with new facilities, such as the Sabo Bridge (160% increase overall) and the Riverside Ave nue corridor (up 83%) show that dramatic increases follow investments.
This is consistent with trends shown in the latest American Community Survey data. The full report, maps, tables and lots of other good stuff from the counts can be found on the Bike Walk Twin Cities website.
MNDOT says that in order to accommodate the proposed alignment of the Southwest LRT line in the Kenilworth corridor, which currently includes a freight rail line, a $70 million rail interchange would need to be constructed in Saint Louis Park to reroute freight trains. From the Strib:
The new [freight] connection is under study because the Kenilworth corridor is part of the route selected for the proposed southwest light-rail line between Minneapolis and Eden Prairie.
Hennepin County, which owns the Kenilworth corridor, says pinch points along the route — between Cedar Lake and Lake of the Isles — do not leave space for both freight and light rail. The county has planned the light-rail line assuming the freight tracks would be moved.
The County may have planned the line this way, but it didn’t include these costs in the capital cost estimates for the 3A route. This is from the Locally Preferred Alternative Evaluation Documents, Technical Memo #7A – Capital Costs:
Freight Rail Modifications – Modifications to freight rail operations were not separately quantified in the LRT alternative cost estimates. The relocation of TC&W near Louisiana Avenue is not considered a cost of any LRT alternative in this project. Minor shoofly alignments associated with bridge construction are included in the cost of the bridge in this estimate.
I assume this means that none of these costs made it into the Draft EIS which is under review by the Federal Transit Administration.
From the Star Tribune:
Recently crunched city data show the reported cyclist-motorist accident rate dropping as the number of bike commuters grows. For 2008, the most recent year for which complete data were available, the crash rate was one-quarter that of 10 years earlier. Moreover, a trend line shows a steady decrease in the crash rate even as the number of commuting cyclists more than doubled.
It would be interesting to see these crash rates for other cities, since we know mode share for bicycles is increasing in many parts of the metro. I’m not sure if they parse them out as specifically as Minneapolis does.
The Strib also quotes Peter Jacobsen from the journal Injury Prevention, but leaves out a critical sentence (emphasis mine):
A motorist is less likely to collide with a person walking and bicycling if more people walk or bicycle. Policies that increase the numbers of people walking and bicycling appear to be an effective route to improving the safety of people walking and bicycling.
About a month ago, the Governors Highway Safety Association released a report that actually said “A focus on liveable communities…may increase walking and pedestrian vehicle conflicts”, although the discussion in the report actually seems to point more towards distracted pedestrians or pedestrians being forced to walk were poor or no facilities existed.
The Minneapolis Station Area Strategic Planning Document for the Southwest Transitway is a pretty good piece of analysis. It lays out the existing conditions at each of the five station locations, including barriers to pedestrian access and other details of urban form important to transit-oriented development. It provides what seem to be realistic recommendations for opening-day improvements, as well as hypothetical build-out scenarios for transit-oriented development around the stations.
While I disagree with some of the specific design elements (low-density, over-parked development at Royalston, bike trail intersecting with pedestrian realm at Van White), I realize those details are all likely far from finalized, and overall I think the document is a great jumping-off point to decide where public investment is needed, how regulation might need to change, and what questions still need answering. It provides details where there used to be few, and that moves the line one step closer to successful implementation.
What the plan illustrates that frustrates me so much, is how inappropriate the routing decision for the Southwest LRT line through Minneapolis really is.
This is a guest post by a Minneapolis resident and planner who has recently begun using the new 46th Street “online” transit station to commute to and from work. The opinions expressed here are solely his or her own, and do not reflect those of his or her employer.
Freeway-level boarding area
Monday morning I tried out the new I-35W and 46th Street Station, on opening day of the bus stop in the median of the freeway beneath the 46th Street bridge. The station was constructed at the same time as the major Crosstown Commons project, and is expected to serve future bus rapid transit (BRT) routes on 35W and Highway 77. For now, it’s the only one of its kind in the Twin Cities transit system. Passengers walk down stairs or take an elevator in one of two towers from the bridge deck down to freeway level, where buses traveling on the freeway’s new high-occupancy toll (HOT) lanes can quickly pull over without completely exiting the freeway.
This week, Metro Transit opened a new bus station at 46th Street and 35W in Minneapolis. The design of the station, including boarding at freeway-level, is a first of its kind for Minnesota. Local buses drop off passengers on 46th street, who then take an elevator or stairs down to the freeway level for boarding.
The idea is to increase the speed of buses: they no longer have to pick up passengers on freeway on- and off-ramps, but instead use special lanes in the center of 35W to enter the station area. The station is part of a larger plan to improve Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) service between southern suburbs and Minneapolis.
However, one or two local routes in Minneapolis may have actually had their travel time increased during certain times of day since passengers now need to transfer at 35-W rather than local streets. I’m getting most of this information anecdotally, but the Metro Transit overview of the changes seems to indicate the same (see Route 146).
Later this week, I hope to post a first-hand account of the using the new station from a regular bus rider in south Minneapolis.
The Minneapolis Bike Master Plan identifies many critical projects that lack maintenance funding, and the plan says these projects can’t go forward without it. Many potential maintenance funding sources are listed in the plan, such as bicycle registration, a special taxing district, a sales tax on bike products in the city, an endowment, advertising, and a number of others. Some of these ideas may work and be palatable (like sponsorship), but many suffer from problems with enforcement or unintended consequences (bicycle registration, sales tax).
My humble proposal? Increase parking meter rates and direct the additional revenue to bicycle capital and maintenance costs. On-street parking and bicycle facilities often compete for space, and if the city is serious about encouraging more people to use bikes (and other non-auto modes) as transportation (as the Council goals, Greenprint and draft bike plan all state), increasing on-street parking rates would help.
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?
