Our June meeting started with everyone sharing their motivations for volunteering with the group, and a recap of our group’s efforts for Twin Cities Bike to Work Day. Read more about that here.
Jesse provided an update on what he heard from the City of Minneapolis Public Works Department representatives about the plans for protecting bike infrastructure in the the Downtown-Whittier corridor:
- Blaisdell will be protected later this year between Franklin and 29th so that the full distance between Franklin and 40th Street will be protected bike infrastructure. This is the extent that Public Works’ plans to protect LaSalle-Blaisdell.
- Public Works had planned to reconstruct, and protect, 1st Ave S, north of Lake Street in 2020, but the 35W construction took precedence, so reconstruction of 1st Ave S is being pushed back to 2023-2024.
- Public Works is planning to install temporary bollard-protection on 1st Ave S, north of Lake Street in 2021 as an interim solution.
- We should advocate for a protected detour during 2023-2024 when 1st Ave S is reconstructed.
Alyssa and Andrew shared that Park and Portland north of Lake Street are no longer buffered lanes, and that cars, trucks and buses frequently exceed 40 mph on this stretch based on radar speed signs. In an earlier blog post, Our Streets Minneapolis encouraged folks to email their City Council Members about this issue. Alyssa reported that she had already done that, and learned that there is still not a definite date to reinstall the buffers.
Since the meeting, we heard from City of Minneapolis Public Works staff that Park and Portland will be re-striped to their buffered configuration the week of June 24th.
Jim described how he had struggled to understand the Transportation Action Plan user interface at first, but that Kjell’s email about his experience had been helpful.
The group discussed meeting some members of the Northside Greenway Now advocacy group at the CLIC hearing last month. They are super inspiring and do some great outreach. Andrew shared some of what he knew about the ways that they engaged with their community, including: neighborhood slow rolls, attending lots of events, putting on their own events, giving out pizza slices at events, partnering with Cycle Sisters, and a whole lot more. Andrew interviewed a couple of Northside Greenway Now members on the Our Community, Our Business podcast recently. Look for it to be posted soon!
Lastly, we talked about what we want to accomplish this month. We decided that we wanted to do a better job of explaining to other people what “protected bikeways” are. We decided that the best way to do that would be for each of us to take photos of some of the good examples of protected bikeways that exist in Minneapolis, create a poster, and ask people for their support at upcoming Open Streets Minneapolis events.
If you'd like to be involved, we'd love to have you join us! Our next meeting is on Monday, July 1st at the Dunn Brothers at 329 W 15th Street. (Please show up at 5:45 for a quick pre-meeting orientation chat if you’re new.)
If you can’t make the meeting:
- Show your support by signing this digital postcard.
- Share the postcard, and ask your friends to sign it, too!
