Bike Walk Twin Cities Workshop Spurs Creative Solutions to Tough Road Design Problems

Last month, local planners, engineers, consultants, policy makers, and community advocates assembled to roll up their sleeves on complete streets for the “Designing Streets from the Outside In: Complete Streets and Beyond” workshop.

The workshop is part of an ongoing effort, spearheaded by the Bike Walk Twin Cities initiative, to promote cross-disciplinary and cross-jurisdictional approaches that will ensure that streets are safe and healthy for all users.

National design experts, who specialize in creating more walkable, bikeable, and livable communities,joined forces with local engineers and planners to collaboratively address some of the more challenging road design issues facing Twin Cities communities.

Several of the design experts led presentations focused on strategies to ensure that roads serve all users, including pedestrians and cyclists. The presentations covered everything from why bike lanes may not be needed on residential streets to award-winning examples of 4-2 lane conversions using roundabouts. Participants broke into teams, designing a complete downtown street with 80 feet of public right of way. The complete set of videos from the presentations is available here.

Learning continued on the streets with walkabouts of several ed Twin Cities’ locations posing real design challenges can children cross this street safely on their way to school? What barriers do bicyclists face in this corridor? How can we make this site accessible to all people? Would a road diet work here? The group (including city, county and state transportation engineers and planners) exchanged suggestions for design improvements, with the national technical assistance team providing additional guidance.

As Mary Jackson of Mn/DOT remarked the next day in an email packed full of photos she had taken, “It was a good day…so great to get together to learn about new concepts, approaches, and treatments. We will have to come together in a few years (a few months?) to get the "after" shots!!”

You can see picutres from the workshop and the site visits at the Bike Walk Twin Cities Flickr page. The next day, staff and officials from Minneapolis, St. Paul, Edina, Brooklyn Center, Golden Valley, Hennepin County, and Mn/DOT hosted site visits. The team, along with Steve Clark and Tony Hull (Transit for Livable Communities), met with engineers, planners, and policy makers to study specific Bike Walk Twin Cities project locations with design challenges. The on-site brainstorming resulted in a number of potential solutions and recommendations for moving forward.

Bike Walk Ambassadors and Safe Routes to School: Partner Bike/Walk Education Event at Seward Montessori

The Bike Walk Ambassadors wrapped up their first year in March. During the program’s first year, they participated in or organized 143 activities, meetings, events, or presentations and spent over 5,400 hours in direct education, safety training, and presentations. Almost 30 percent of their efforts focused on outreach to communities of color and immigrant communities.

A recent Ambassador event was held at the Seward Montessori School in South Minneapolis. Two Seward parents applied for a City of Minneapolis Safe Routes to School mini grant and identified the partners to pull off a fantastic week-long event in the students’ gym classes. Over 450 first through fifth grade students participated in helmet fittings, a brain injury simulation, safety talks with the Minneapolis Police Department, ABC quick checks, and a short bike rodeo.

The event was a strong community-based effort that featured partnerships with the Bike Walk Ambassador program, volunteer Bike Walk Ambassadors, Seward parents, AAA, the Minneapolis Police Department, and Hennepin County Medical Center.

To host an event that targets bicycle and pedestrian safety at your favorite school, request an Ambassador at www.bikewalktwincities.org. To get involved with and volunteer for pedestrian and bike education, become a volunteer ambassador. Give the Bike Walk Ambassadors office a call at 612-333-3410.

The Ambassador program is an educational and outreach program of the City of Minneapolis, which, in partnership with the Bike Walk Twin Cities initiative, encourages people in Minneapolis and 13 neighboring communities to bike and walk more and drive less.