As a Minneapolis cyclist, I do my share of whining about the conditions of our city’s bike infrastructure. The roads are a veritable minefield of potholes, the city’s priority level on bike lane upkeep seems to hover somewhere below stop-sign graffiti removal, and I have no clue what the city planner was on when they decided to put a bike lane between car doors and the curb on 1st Avenue downtown. Most cyclists in the area will be able to regale you with the myriad of injustices we face on a daily basis at the hands of our fair city. Still, deep in our hearts, we know that we have it pretty good compared to, say, our neighbors in St. Paul and far better than our suburban and rural counterparts.

Ever tried to take a walk in Brooklyn Park , or any other suburb/exurb for that matter? One quickly starts to notice the absence of sidewalks, crosswalks, or any real indicator that people do anything but drive. Most of our transportation structure was built at a time before mounting gas prices and carbon emissions started giving people second thoughts about car ownership so, naturally, most of these streets are designed to accommodate the maximum amount of cars possible and not much else. There’s a new bill going through the legislative process on the state level that would change this. It’s called “Complete Streets,” and the idea is simple: rebuild roads in a way that balances the needs of cars, bikes, pedestrians and public transit.

Let’s start with an example: Snelling Avenue in St. Paul is a state highway. Under the policy of Complete Streets, when it’s bridges over Energy Park Dr. and Como are redone, city planners would take into account that the freeway style on/off ramps put cyclists and pedestrians, who frequently use the two streets as connectors between the cities, at higher risk. The streets could be made more accessible to pedestrians and bikers, and speed limits could be lowered to make things less dangerous.

Complete streets would also allow for communities to have more flexibility in development projects for their cities. White Bear Lake is currently locked in a battle with the state over development on Highway 61 that runs through their downtown. The community wants to make changes to lower the 45 mile per hour speed limit and make the lanes narrower in order to make their downtown center more liveable for their residents, but certain state regulations require streets with an average traffic volume (ATV) of a certain level to be 12 feet or wider and have a certain number of lanes, severely limiting the city’s interest to develop wider sidewalks and bike lanes.

Laws seen as “bike laws” have a hard time gaining traction with a certain type of driver, but Complete Streets is far from cycling-supremacism. The law simply looks to allow city planners to develop streets in a way that suits the needs of each community. That doesn’t sound so bad, does it?

Tags: Bikes