Bike Counts Will Help Bike Walk Twin Cities Shape the Future of Biking and Walking in Minneapolis

In September 2008, volunteer counters took to the streets with tally sheets, clipboards, and sharpened pencils to better understand how many people are walking and bicycling in Minneapolis and its neighboring communities.

These counts are part of a continued data collection process to learn more about bicycle and pedestrian behavior in the Minneapolis area. Undertaken collaboratively by Transit for Livable Communities (TLC) and the Department of Public Works at the City of Minneapolis as part of the Bike Walk Twin Cities (BWTC) initiative, the counts also provide a baseline for measuring the impacts of bicycle and pedestrian investments made throughout the BWTC initiative.

In this report, we can see that bicycling and walking increased during 2008. At locations where counts were performed in both 2007 and 2008, walking increased by six percent and bicycling increased by 29 percent. These numbers support the trends illustrated in the American Commuter Survey (ACS) from 2005 to 2007, which also shows increases in walking and bicycling.

By itself, this information is little more than an interesting statistic. Over time, counts and other data collection—combined with strong collaboration with local governments, businesses, organizations, and residents—can help local leaders make better informed decisions about bicycling and walking investments. Through Bike Walk Twin Cities, Transit for Livable Communities will continue to collect data to measure increases and decreases in walking, bicycling, and driving. To enhance the reliability of the data, TLC is beginning a monthly count at selected locations, and is also considering adding automated counters.

The mission of the Bike Walk Twin Cities initiative is simple: increase walking and bicycling, and reduce driving in Minneapolis and its neighboring communities. It is also about ensuring that more people have a voice in the transportation decisions that impact their lives, which is why we work closely with local governments, businesses, organizations and residents, in our decisionmaking processes. Ultimately, the Bike Walk Twin Cities initiative will provide new insights into travel choices and how people interact with the built environment, and we thank all of the people who have helped make this work possible.

We welcome your thoughts and questions. Your input helps us make the Twin Cities an even better place to walk and bike.

To find a copy of the report and maps showing count locations, click here.

Additions to the Bike Walk Twin Cities Website Provide a New Level of Transparency

In the past two months, the Bike Walk Twin Cities website has been slowly expanding. These additions make it easier for all Bike Walk Twin Cities stakeholders to understand and evaluate the work that Bike Walk Twin Cities is doing.

Some of the new features that help us do this on the website include:

• A complete list of Bike Walk Twin Cities’ stakeholders and links to each stakeholder’s website.
• A glossary of technical terms
• A page dedicated to information about Bike Walk Twin Cities’ three rounds of solicitations
• A complete list of all projects approved for funding from Bike Walk Twin Cities, including pages listing projects by type and individual project pages
  
• Individual project pages with “before” photos of many project sites and a Google map showing exactly where the project is located

Over the course of 2009 there will be many more additions to make the website more informative and a lot easier to use.

Remember: this website it meant as a tool for interested parties like you. Please send us your requests for features you would like to see on the Bike Walk Twin Cities website.

City of Minneapolis Drafting Pedestrian Master Plan

The City of Minneapolis is developing a plan to create “a great walking city where people choose to walk for transportation, recreation, and health.” The Pedestrian Master Plan will look 20 years into the future and will layout the importance of walkable streets, ways to improve mobility and access, and provide recommendations for new funding to improve the city’s overall pedestrian atmosphere.

This planning document is being partially funded with a $150,000 grant from the Bike Walk Twin Cities initiative, which was awarded in June, 2007.

The Pedestrian Master Plan is still in its draft stage. A final draft will be available later this year. The City of Minneapolis has identified the goals of the plan as:

• Assess the current pedestrian environment, including where people walk, physical barriers to walking, sidewalk and street conditions, and pedestrian safety.
• Assess the effectiveness of current policies and practices regarding the design, construction, maintenance, and funding of pedestrian facilities and recommend improvements where needed.
• Prioritize physical improvements over the next 20 years, identifying short-term, low-cost improvements that can be implemented immediately, as well as more complex, long-term improvements.
• Develop a design guide to help City staff, neighborhoods, property owners, and others to understand the specifics of how to design walkable streets and places.
• Recommend funding and implementation strategies for making the best use of scarce resources, implementing low-cost improvements, obtaining new funding, and increasing walking through promotion and events.

For more information on the progress of the Minneapolis Pedestrian Master Plan, contact:

Anna Flintoft, Transportation Planner
Minneapolis Dept of Public Works - Transportation Planning and Engineering
309 2nd Avenue South - Room 301, Minneapolis, MN 55401
(612) 673-3885
anna.flintoft@ci.minneapolis.mn.us

City Pages Writes about the Latest BWTC Funding Finalists City Pages Writes about the Latest NTP Funding Finalists

Twin Cities alt weekly City Pages recently ran a story on the latest NTP funding round, entitled Minneapolis Bike Fight! It is a snarky, hilarious overview of the four project finalists in Bike Walk Twin Cities' 2008 round of grant solicitations.

Bike Walk Twin Cities Assembles Technical Support Team for Funded Projects

The Bike Walk Twin Cities initiative is making available a dream team of technical support: Dan Burden, John LaPlante, Michael Moule, Michael Wallwork, and Michael Ronkin, and a local firm, Community Design Group. This team will work here and at a distance to help communities address complicated design challenges. “The collaborative energy will be enormous,” said Steve Clark, BWTC Program Manager. “Communities will be able to tap into expertise in all areas of pedestrian and bicycle design.” The Bike Walk Twin Cities initiative will set up two spring events with members of the team; this will include field visits and consulting opportunities for all project managers. Watch for announcements in February about these plans.

Minneapolis City Councilmember Robert Lilligren Takes Minneapolis Voices to Washington, D.C.

The Bike Walk Twin Cities partner organizations (Federal Highway Administration, Volpe National Transportation Systems Center at U.S. DOT, Rails to Trails Conservancy, Centers for Disease Control) and all partner communities (Columbia, MO; Marin Co, CA; Minneapoils, MN; Sheboygan Co, WI;) conducted a full-day workshop at the annual meeting of the Transportation Research Board. The event featured a roster of bike/ped luminaries from across the country and around the world as speakers and participants. Among the presenters: Robert Lilligren, Minneapolis City Councilmember and Co-chair of the BWTC Bike/Walk Advisory Committee. Barb Thoman and Tony Hull from Bike Walk Twin Cities also presented and moderated sessions.

Other Planning Projects Nearing Completion

Bike Walk Twin Cities funded several other planning studies (listed below) in addition to the Minneapolis Pedestrian Master Plan that are nearing completion. Results from these studies will be help set priorities for future Bike Walk Twin Cities infrastructure funding.

Central Ave NE Plan (Minneapolis)

Central Corrider Bicycle & Pedestrian Plan (St. Paul)

Douglas Drive Corridor & Connection to Luce Line (Golden Valley)

Hennepin Ave Plan (Minneapolis)

Metro Transit Bike/Ped Improvements Study (grant area outside of Minneapolis)

Richfield Arterials Study (Richfield)

Xenia Ave/Park Place Blvd Corridor (St. Louis Park, Golden Valley)

Watch for announcements on the Bike Walk Twin Cities website and in this publication as results of these studies are available.

Bike Walk Twin Cities Funding: The Process Continues

In November 2008, the Bike Walk Twin Cities initiative issued a call for projects that would inspire exclamation points...like "wow!" "aha!" or "YES!" Transit for Livable Communities (TLC), as the administrators of Bike Walk Twin Cities, expected project applicants to showcase their best ideas for helping more people walk and bike...and the projects needed to be on track to open by the summer of 2010.

TLC received 16 initial proposals. The TLC board, weighing recommendations of the Bike Walk Advisory Committee, invited four projects to submit full proposals:

• Hennepin County Bike Commuter Facility.This project would build an innovative bike commuter facility in the Hennepin County Government Center, incorporating secure bike storage, showers, and lockers. It would also provide additional outdoor bike lockers, bike maintenance stations, and a commuter information kiosk. Proposers say the project would be the first of its kind in a government building and could serve as a standard for future buildings.
  
• City of Minneapolis Bike Share Program. With this project, the City of Minneapolis would have 1,000 bikes at 75 self-service kiosks located around downtown, Uptown, and the University of Minnesota campus. Members paying about $50 a year would be able to use the 3-speed bikes for up to a half-hour at a time at no charge and drop them off wherever there's a kiosk; non-members could buy a one-day pass for about $5 by processing a credit card in one of the solar-powered stations.
• Sibley Bike Depot Bike Donation Program.The Sibley Bike Depot would recycle and repair donated bicycles, distributing them to organizations in St. Paul and Minneapolis, and ultimately to recipients who would rely on the bikes as a primary mode of transportation. that serve people who can't or don't want to drive. Each bike recipient would also receive accessories (helmet, lock, lights and rack) and free specialized training on bike maintenance.
  
• University of Minnesota Bike Center/RFID Commuter Validation System. The heart of this project would be the University Bike Center, which would be constructed in a dormant transit waiting area of the University's Oak Street Parking Ramp. Planned services would include repair, retail, secure bike storage, restrooms/changing rooms, clothing lockers, electronic trip-planning kiosk, and a programming space. The RFID (radio-frequency identification) system would help identify and validate bike trips to better deliver new federal bike commuter benefits.

One or more of these projects could receive notice of funding in spring 2009. In addition, there are two other capital funding processes underway:

• Revised plans on selected projects remaining from the first and second Bike Walk Twin Cities project solicitations in 2007 and 2008
• Projects that were highly recommended from planning studies funded by Bike Walk Twin Cities in 2007

These spring awards will conclude a three-year funding process for infrastructure improvements. Watch for many project openings in 2009 and even more in 2010.