The Minneapolis Bicycle Advisory Committee had their monthly meeting this past Wednesday Oct. 25. Chris Linde from Ward 3 gave an update from the Engineering subcommittee about the 2018 Protected Bikeways, mostly these upgrades move away from bollard protected bikeways to curb protected bikeways.
The bike lane updates expected are to upgrade the Plymouth Ave N and 8th St NE protected bike lanes from bollards to to curb protected and to extend these farther west, to upgrade part of Blaisdell Ave S protected bike lane from bollards to the city’s first planter-protected bike lane, to upgrade the 11th Ave S protected bike lane in downtown from bollards to curb protected, and to upgrade the 12th St buffered bike lane from 2nd Ave and 3rd Ave to off-street protected, this eventually being incorporated into the eventual Grant Street bikeway to connect to Loring Park, moving from a one way lane to a two way lane. The BAC passed a motion to support these bike lane updates.
Rendering of what the 11th Ave curb protected bike lanes will look like:
Summary of the rest of the BAC meeting:
The meeting began with a presentation from Steve Elmer from the MET council about changes to the draft Transportation Policy Plan Update. Currently the Transportation Policy Plan looks at trends in pedestrian and bicycle transportation along with new developments in planning and infrastructure. The three main goals for the plan is to look at destinations, economy, and environment in regards to bicycle transportation and network.
The additions to the plan currently include information on pedestrian safety and bike and pedestrian safety in regards to traffic speeds. The process of drafting the Transportation Policy Update includes evaluating the Regional Bicycle Transportation Network, local bikeways, and the regional transit system in whole.
A previous version of the Regional Bicycle Transportation Network pictured above.
This includes looking at the regional barriers to bicycle transportation, major rivers being one of the larger ones. The plan currently incorporates all existing and planned bikeway crossings and prioritize future crossings. The regional bicycle barriers study is still ongoing and will provide a map of prioritized regional barrier segments.
The goal of the Transportation Policy Plan Update is to create a backbone arterial network for bikes and to invest in critical bike transportation links.
The committee also looked at the current Regional Bicycle Transportation Network and what it will look like in 2018. There were two additions proposed to be added to the network as primary routes, these being the proposed Northside and Southside greenway routes.
Hillary Lovelace from Ward 2 then gave an update from the 5E submittee. Lovelace discussed the Access Minneapolis Bicycle Master Plan Assessment and the evaluation and update process.
Secondly Lovelace discussed evaluation and education discussed by the 5E committee. Jenny Bordon from the Minneapolis school department discussed the Minneapolis school department doubling its fleet of bikes and universal education for Minneapolis students on biking. The other education pieces being Behind the Big Wheel, bike training for city workers, BAC members, etc, bike education for adults, and motorist education about bicycle safety.
The committee also discussed the Bike Friendly Community gold award and why Minneapolis did not receive the platinum award. The committee agreed that the recognition from the award was not the goal but rather how the city could improve bike infrastructure to be at the top level. Finally Lovelace and the committee discussed BAC involvement for evaluation of bikeway installation.
Finally the committee looked at the accessibility survey which is still ongoing and looked at the race and gender of the members of the BAC committee along with committee members thoughts on daytime meetings and what that makes for accessibility for members.
The committee meets once a month at city hall and has subcommittees, that of the 5E and engineering subcommittees, that meet separately once a month as well.
