Word on the Streets

First Franklin Avenue Public Meeting a Success

Over 40 individuals participated in the first public meeting for the Franklin Avenue Complete Street Project hosted by Transit for Livable Communities (TLC). The discussion was lead by Toole Design Group, the company retained to study and propose a recommendation for improved transit along Franklin Avenue.

At the Monday night meeting, Toole Design presented an overview of Franklin Avenue’s current condition for all road users. In short, the quality of service for everyone traveling along Franklin Avenue is poor. As reported at the meeting, the crash rate on Franklin is over 2.5 times the expected rate. A solution raised by Toole Design and one that gained traction among most meeting participants involves performing a 4 to 3 lane conversion along many sections of Franklin. Designating the middle lane as a left turn lane will likely dramatically reduce the crash rate. The loss of one motor vehicle lane should not have a significant impact on traffic volume and will free up space for bike lanes and motor vehicle parking.

Toole Design emphasized that they must consider constraints, both budgetary and spatial, when evaluating options for a safer Franklin Avenue. Additionally, raising the quality of service to Franklin Avenue will require compromise from motorists, pedestrians and cyclists. As they move toward a final recommendation to TLC, Toole Design will also be guided by public input generated during Tuesday night’s meeting.

Thanks to everyone who attended the meeting and offered their input. TLC expects a final recommendation from Toole Design by mid to late summer when TLC will host another public meeting to disseminate and discuss the study results.

posted by | May 08, 2012

Time for change on Franklin Avenue

Last week, I joined the Minneapolis Bicycle Coalition to collect petitions in support of bike lanes on Franklin Avenue from Minnehaha to Lyndale Avenue.

Having lived in the Whittier neighborhood until just last year, I would sometimes take Franklin during my bike commute to the University of Minnesota. While this wasn’t my route of choice, I made it somewhat tolerable by taking 24th Avenue over 35W and on to 11th Avenue, and then 11th Avenue to Franklin to avoid (in my opinion) the worst parts of Franklin.

Last week’s petition meet-up was at Franklin and Nicollet Avenues, and it had been longer than a year since I had taken Franklin west of Cedar Avenue. That evening, I decided to take Franklin from Cedar west to the meet-up at Nicollet. Unfortunately, I didn’t get far and opted to bail at 11th Avenue. The following situations unnerved me enough to get as far away from Franklin as possible:

Cedar Avenue approaching right turn lane for Franklin Avenue. This is close to where the bike lane on Cedar peters out. Car traffic tends to be very heavy and fast, and zips quickly into the right traffic and turn lanes.

1. Passing through Cedar Avenue and turning right/west onto Franklin: A lot of bicyclists use 20th/Cedar Avenue to get to Franklin. If you’re not familiar with this route, it is a thoroughfare from the UM’s West Bank that has wide bike lanes and initially only moderate levels of automobile traffic. As it approaches Franklin, however, and crosses Minnehaha Avenue there is an awkward intersection (near Taco Bell) where the bike lanes disappear and car traffic picks up. While driving through this intersection to get to Franklin, car drivers typically float from the left lane into the right lane and, in my experience, don’t always notice bicyclists traveling in the right lane. I have had a few close calls in this intersection, which is why I chose to ride in the right shoulder/turn lane last week like many other bicyclists. While sticking to the far right, I encountered cars that zipped very quickly into the right turn lane headed for Franklin, many of them too close for comfort.

Franklin Avenue between Cedar and Hiawatha Avenues. While there aren't a lot of cars in this photo, traffic on this stretch of street is heavy and fast-moving during the weekday rush hour. This coupled with the poor pavement conditions and parked cars does not leave a lot space for bicyclists to comfortably ride.

2. Taking Franklin between Cedar and Hiawatha Avenues: On this two lane stretch of westbound road, car traffic tends to zip through at very high speeds. If you’re bicycling in the right lane, drivers often tailgate or pass while leaving only inches between you and them. If you try to move to the right shoulder, the ride is less than ideal with bumpy, cracked concrete, buses stopped at the Hiawatha light rail station, and parked cars. I tried to stay as close as possible to the right shoulder, but found myself moving too close for comfort into the traffic lane due to the poor conditions of the shoulder.

Taking Franklin between Hiawatha and 11th Avenues: To me, this was the most nerve-racking part of the commute. While crossing under the Hiawatha bridge, Franklin narrows from two lanes to one lane. Cars must merge right, often doing so quickly and at the last minute. At this point, my survival instincts kicked in and I moved as far to the shoulder as possible. But, once again, I could only move so far due to potholes and poor pavement conditions. Within a couple of blocks the right shoulder narrows significantly, and I was within inches of moving or parked cars. So, I kept as close as possible to the right shoulder, endured cars traveling very close to me for a few blocks, got into automobile traffic as close as possible to 11th, and turned left onto 11th. I ultimately went several blocks out of the way to get to our petition meet-up spot, taking the 24th Avenue pedestrian overpass over 35W (which arguably has its own safety issues) and then 24th Avenue on to Nicollet and Franklin.

Franklin Avenue gets more bike traffic than any other street in Minneapolis without bike lanes. It is a major east-west thoroughfare that connects many businesses and neighborhoods. When Hennepin County added bike lanes to Franklin Avenue east of Minnehaha, it made that area of Franklin safer and more accessible to all users. I hope you’ll join the Minneapolis Bicycle Coalition and me in urging the county to extend bike lanes the entire length of Franklin.

Want to get involved? Contact [email protected].

posted by | May 08, 2012

Time is now to start transforming Park and Portland Avenues

Park Avenue S and Portland Avenue S may be the two most divisive streets in Minneapolis. The one-way pairs certainly provide a fast trip–by car or bike–between downtown and points south. But they are really terrible streets for neighbors, are unattractive for the vast majority of bicyclists, have high cyclist crash rates wherever there are left turns, and the high auto speeds are a safety concern for everyone. With Hennepin County repaving the majority of both of these streets this fall, there is a big opportunity to remake these streets into something that is better for everyone.

So what can be done now and how can we make it happen? There were two recent articles on streets.mn that offer some good options (from Brendon and from Bill). We’re taking those ideas and building on them with what we think is a viable solution that can be done this year.

Key features:

–Remove a traffic lane that isn’t needed. The core of this proposal is transforming one of the car lanes into space that adds to the neighborhood, pedestrian, and bicycling environments. Park and Portland are both currently three lanes in each direction; yet, they carry no more than 13,000 cars a day at any point (and much less at most points). Basically, that means that there is one wasted car lane. It’s not needed to move cars. Have you noticed that there is never any congestion on these roads except periodically where cars are turning? It’s not your imagination! These roads were built before there was an Interstate 35W, and there simply isn’t the traffic demand to warrant 3 lanes each. With a 11 feet of extra space to play with (the width of one of the traffic lanes), there is plenty of space for transformation!

–Move the bike lane to the right side and use the parked cars as a protective buffer. The existing 5-foot left-side bike lanes are not a very comfortable place for most cyclists, and there are common safety problems where drivers turn left. We propose moving the bike lane to the right–where drivers have come to expect cyclists to be. And we propose moving the bike lane between the curb and the parked cars. This is similar to the bike lanes on 1st Avenue North, although this would be much better. There is more space (when we take the lane), so there can be a wide bike lane and an adjacent buffer zone to prevent worries about dooring from the parked cars. Well-designed parking protected bike lanes in other cities have drastically increased biking and improved safety. To greatly reduce the likelihood of drivers parking in the bike lane, we’d strongly recommend using flexible posts to clearly separate the bicycling area. Note that we recognize that intersection treatments will be important to successfully implementing such a design safely–intersections have been done well elsewhere and they certainly can be on Park and Portland.

–Provide planters on the right side of the street to extend pedestrian realm. One of the challenges with providing parking protected bike lanes on Park and Portland is that there is an existing 6.5-foot wide concrete edge on either side of the road that isn’t in great condition and would mean a rough bike ride if there were bike lanes there. While the road is being repaved this year, repavings do not include concrete area, so it will stay rough. We propose getting around that while greatly enhancing the attractiveness of these roads by using the right-side concrete area as a place for planters. A lot could be done with them–they could become community garden space, or just have flowers. They could also be removable if the County prefers to take them out in the winter to ease snow maintenance.

Benefits:

    Greatly improved bicycle environment that would attract more cyclists

    Traffic calming

    More green space and potential community garden space

    Reduced pedestrian crossing distances because of the planters

Next Steps:

We have already started encouraging the County to consider this idea–and to create a community engagement process for this project to envision a new Park and Portland. While this implementation is scaled to fit with a repaving project (in a repaving project the curbs do not change, so the width of the road stays the same), such a change is far beyond what is typically done for road maintenance projects. So, it will take commitment from the County to use this opportunity as the time to make change. People have been talking about the desire to make Park and Portland more neighborhood friendly for decades–what better time to do it than now when the road will already be under construction!

We plan to soon start engaging the City and local neighborhoods more–we’ll keep you posted as things unfold.

Volunteers needed!

To be successful in achieving something like this vision, we will need to do a lot of outreach to neighborhoods and local residents. And we need volunteers to help with that! If you are interested, please email [email protected].

In the long-term, Park and Portland could be transformed like 9th Ave in New York

posted by | May 02, 2012