NEWS

How frozen Minneapolis became a biking mecca

This story is part of "Iowa biking: Welcome or not," a series exploring Iowa's bike culture and the state's attitude toward cyclists.

Timothy Meinch
tmeinch@dmreg.com
A cyclist approaches the Stone Arch Bridge on the north side of downtown Minneapolis. The former railroad bridge over the Mississippi River has dedicated walking and biking lanes and prohibits motorized vehicles.

MINNEAPOLIS — The traffic light turned red, and Councilwoman Lisa Bender braked to a halt on her way to work on a balmy December morning.

She paused her talk of population diversity and neighborhood growth for a sip of coffee from the mug she carried. Then, as the signal turned green, she pedaled through the intersection, continuing her 2½-mile commute to City Hall.

Six months ago, the 37-year-old mother of two sold her car and joined a growing number of year-round bike commuters in a city where the average winter low hovers around 15 degrees.

It’s no accident that Minneapolis, despite its frigid winters, has surged to the top of national rankings for urban biking and was the only U.S. city included last year on a global index of bike-friendly communities. Since 2000, the percentage of bike commuters here has jumped 170 percent, with an estimated 10,500 at the latest count in 2014.

6 lessons biking mecca Minneapolis can teach Des Moines

Minneapolis' bike-friendly reputation advanced on the saddle of key elected officials, grassroots advocates and critical investments that over the past decade helped transform it into a mecca for biking. And community leaders say their success can — and should — be replicated in cities such as Des Moines.

Last year, the League of American Bicyclists stuck Des Moines with bronze status for the fifth year in a row — its lowest honor for bike-friendly communities. Des Moines' lack of bike lanes — combined with no designated staff or advocates marshaling cycling efforts in City Hall — contributed to its lackluster ranking.

Minneapolis, in comparison, was awarded coveted gold status from the League of American Bicyclists.

“I go to Des Moines a lot, and I feel it’s really on the cusp of being one of the great American cities," said R.T. Rybak, mayor of Minneapolis from 2002 to 2014. "But the streets really aren’t working for people.”

A cyclist and runners cross the Stone Arch Bridge on the north side of downtown Minneapolis. The former railroad bridge over the Mississippi River has dedicated walking and biking lanes and prohibits motorized vehicles.

Secrets of Minneapolis' success

Des Moines' shortcomings coincide with several of Minneapolis' strengths that have helped catapult the city's bicycling reputation.

Local advocates cite three critical elements that coalesced to elevate Minneapolis' standing:

  • Mayor Rybak was as an energetic political advocate who helped prioritize bike initiatives.
  • The city was one of four U.S. communities selected for a federal pilot program, securing roughly $25 million for bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure.
  • City officials built the Midtown Greenway, a 5.5-mile expressway trail that connects the city’s network of bicycle features.

Many in the Minneapolis cycling community, including Ethan Fawley, co-founder and director of the Minneapolis Bicycle Coalition, point to Rybak as a crucial political champion for their cause.

Rybak said biking was a key component to his platform as an elected official.

“A large part of what I ran on was to create more livable, walkable communities with alternatives to cars — starting with our biking,” Rybak said.

The former mayor identifies what he calls the “holy grail” for bike-friendliness in any U.S. city: “Win back the streets that we’ve surrendered universally to cars.”

He preaches that every street should be a community-building destination. Momentum for bikes and pedestrians requires a wide paradigm shift for city engineers and the public works department that typically prioritize motor vehicles.

Rybak said that means more than simply painting bike lanes on streets; it requires strategizing how and where to place infrastructure to create a network connecting people to places.

“Paint is cheap. Bollards are cheap, too, and bikers deserve a little bit of protection,” Rybak said. “Every budget I developed, even during the toughest times, had some room for biking improvements.”

In Des Moines, City Manager Scott Sanders said he agrees the cost for biking infrastructure is minimal. Public buy-in and support, however, remain daunting hurdles in his mind.

He said a poorly planned bike lane that appeared on Hubbell Avenue, only to be removed in 2012 after public outcry, set a strong tone.

“A lot of times it’s just buying into the idea that we could do without one of the two or four lanes of traffic," Sanders said. "It’s more about getting the public ready for it."

Last month, Sanders announced plans to create 16 new city positions in 2016, but none involves a bike or pedestrian coordinator or planner.

MORE ON BIKING IN CENTRAL IOWA:

'From fringe to mainstream'

Minneapolis' many plaudits, including American Bicycling Magazine’s No. 1 bicycling city in 2010, come largely because of its commitment to cycling infrastructure.

Today, the city has 225 miles of on- and off-street bike lanes, compared with fewer than 100 miles 15 years ago.

Only 14.4 miles are painted “sharrow” lanes that simply remind motorists to share the lane with bikes. About 5½ miles are on-street protected bike lanes — an emerging gold standard for safe urban cycling, and the City Council approved a plan last summer to add 30 more miles of protected lanes by 2020.

The effort, like most of Minneapolis' bike improvements, will be overseen by four full-time city planners dedicated to pedestrian and biking matters.

Locals like Fawley, who helped start the Minneapolis Bicycle Coalition in 2009, say having dedicated bike/pedestrian staffers with the city and an active bike advisory committee is crucial to establishing infrastructure such as bike-specific lanes, bridges and traffic signals. That pushes cycling “from fringe to mainstream” for the public, he says: “It kind of normalizes it.”

In 2010, when Minneapolis won the No. 1 bike-friendly city title, the percentage of workers who commuted by bike had reached 4.3 percent — second only to Portland, Ore. Five years earlier, it was at 2.4 percent, according to the U.S. Census American Community Survey.

Iowa transplant Andrew Voss, 37, crosses the Stone Arch Bridge on the north side of downtown Minneapolis on Dec. 10. Voss commutes by bike year round from St. Paul to downtown Minneapolis.

Tying in parks, trails

The big financial stimulus for Rybak’s bike-friendly vision came in 2005 with a federal pilot program dedicated to non-motorized transportation.

Minneapolis was one of four cities chosen, launching its Bike Walk Twin Cities initiative and dozens of projects with the aid of more than $25 million in federal support.

In four years, 127 miles of bike lanes were added, along with 4,000 bike parking spaces.

The new infrastructure created a connected network that piggybacked on to Minnesota’s long-standing heritage of parks, trails and outdoor recreation.

“Where we’ve gotten to in Minneapolis is that biking and pedestrian infrastructure is a critical part of the network,” said Matthew Dyrdahl, the city’s top bike and pedestrian coordinator. “I don’t like to call it an amenity.”

Biking has played a central role in social and commuting life for Amy Oberbroeckling, an Iowa native who moved to Minneapolis three years ago after graduating from the University of Iowa.

On her 3½-mile commute home from the heart of downtown, she says it’s apparent that street planning and design take cyclists into account.

Without that support, she may not be biking at all. Three months after she moved to Minneapolis, a taxi driver struck her at a four-way intersection.

“I remember going up on the windshield and cracking it. Then I was on the road,” she said.

She was taken to the hospital and treated for whiplash, scrapes and bruises. She now plans her trips in advance (mainly using the Google maps biking feature) to find downtown routes that have “a bike lane at a minimum.”

“They are huge, and they do make me feel safer,” she said. “It’s still really easy to get most places on a street or on a bike path.”

Year-round Minneapolis bike commuter Timothy Hellman, 36, originally from Bancroft, Iowa, crosses the Martin Olav Sabo Bridge over Highway 55/Hiawatha Avenue south of downtown Minneapolis. The bridge is part of the 5.5-mile Midtown Greenway.

A gateway to biking

Tying together Minneapolis' biking routes is the iconic Midtown Greenway, which functions like a bike highway on an old railroad line and runs 5½ miles east to west just south of downtown.

It built out in sections, revitalizing some neighborhoods while it “directly led to a lot of new people biking,” first as recreational riders and then commuters, Fawley said. “It’s a gateway to trying biking as transportation.”

Residents such as Bender insist that biking is more efficient than taking a car downtown.

On Dec. 10, en route to City Hall, Bender pedaled past her 4-year-old daughter’s preschool on her Trek Allant utility bike, a yellow basket on the front holding her full mug of coffee.

“Alice is sick today,” Bender shouted to the teacher welcoming students outside.

Bender is a former city planner who lived in San Francisco and New York City before settling in Minneapolis.

She helped start the local Bicycle Coalition and has campaigned for biking infrastructure since announcing her bid in the 2013 election. She ousted the incumbent of the Uptown ward with 64 percent of the vote.

Local riders consider bicycling in the snow and freezing temperatures a symbol of pride, likening it to cross-country skiing or snowmobiling.

“It’s a way to own that winter doesn’t have to be horrible,” Fawley said.

Data from the bicycle coalition suggests a growing portion of the city's population, 10 percent to 15 percent of Twin Cities bike commuters, stick with it through the winter. Many get fat-tire bikes or invest in studded treads.

The city supports that interest by plowing and maintaining the Midtown Greenway and many bike lanes year-round. It’s a hardcore niche within Minneapolis’ bigger cycling culture, but one that’s drawing its own attention.

Next month, the annual Winter Cycling International Congress meets in Minneapolis, marking the first time the 4-year-old convention will take place in the United States.

Rybak says it's the progress he envisioned a decade ago.

“We created a politics where you shouldn’t mess with the biking,” he said.