Connecting the Cedar Lake trail to the river
Twins ballpark planners design a trail to suit cyclists
(via KM)
This is good news; an important cycle path connection and it looks like some good input on the project from local users. The safety aspect is an important point, and nobody will want to ride through an enclosed tunnel if there’s any fear of someone blocking the way or waiting just out of sight. I haven’t seen reports of actual safety problems on the Greenway (despite some well-founded concerns, it being effectively a topless tunnel), but I also expect that most personal attacks (including those to cyclists) aren’t publicly reported unless there’s a death involved. The couple of cyclist attacks i have heard of seemed like just the wrong place at the wrong time, and not being targeted because of cycling.
Another interesting thing is that from the cyclist point of view, it’s a relief that something is getting done to complete some of the frustrating gaps in the Twin City area cycling network, but I wonder how the typical non-cyclist will react. There has been a lot of infrastructure work done around town over the past few years beyond the higher-profile projects like the Midtown Greenway. Miles of on- and off-street bike paths have been quietly installed, and they mostly don’t make the news perhaps because of their limited interest or low cost. However, now that there is more of an established cycling infrastructure, with more cyclists about, closing some of those aforementioned gaps is becoming more of a priority, and it ain’t going to be cheap.
In short, the era of plucking the low-hanging fruit of striping bike lanes is making way for the era of big projects, and of integrating cycling projects into nearly every infrastructure change around town. When the city of St. Paul held it’s Bicycle Summit last year, one very popular proposal was that the city officially adopt the Complete The Streets policy. In a nutshell, this policy requires that all street give equal and equally safe access to anyone using it, for any mode of transport. It’s encouraging to see this sort of thinking in the Twins ballpark planning, and we need to keep on city and highway planners on task to continue this trend.