For years Minnetonka Blvd was a standby for one of my favorite bike rides into the western suburbs. The route involved going west on Valley View Road, then skirting the shores of Lotus Lake and rolling along Lake Lucy Rd to Galpin. That got me to Excelsior. From there I shot straight back to Minneapolis via Minnetonka Blvd. It was a fast road, with an intermittently good shoulder and a tailwind. I didn’t care for the increasing amount of traffic on the road, but there weren’t a lot of good alternatives, so I tolerated the vehicles.

That changed several years ago. I found myself taking the Lake Minnetonka Trail, or turning up to ride Cedar Lake Rd. If I was interested in adding hills, I took a combination of roads like Ridgewood and Lake St south of Minnetonka Blvd.

Today I decided to go back to Minnetonka Blvd. It wasn’t any fun at all. Traffic is still high, the shoulders are falling apart and the intersections with major cross streets aren’t easy to negotiate. Apparently other riders have come to the same conclusion. I didn’t see a single rider on Minnetonka Blvd. Four years ago that would have been unthinkable.

Minnetonka Blvd will no longer be designated a bike route on the Twin Cities Bike Map. The change will be noticeable with the next press run. I can’t predict when that will happen. If I sell out this press run, the change will come when I reprint. At the latest, it will appear with the scheduled update in 2014. The Twin Cities Bike Map is always evolving to reflect the changing conditions for bicyclists in the metro area. Although the changes aren’t usually as large as removing a major east/west corridor, they are frequent and numerous. I’ll be out there checking out new routes and doing my best to keep the bike map as current as possible.

The Dakota Rail Trail between Highland Road in Minnestrista and Kennedy Memorial Dr in St. Bonifacius will be closed until May 25. The trail will be closed in this segment while Highland Road is being reconstructed at a right angle to improve sight lines for trail users and motorists.

Trail users traveling west should detour south along Highland Road, then west along Kennedy Memorial Dr, rejoining the trail where it intersects with Kennedy. Trail users traveling east should detour along Kennedy Memorial Dr east, then north on Highland Road until it rejoins the trail.

For more information, go to www.ci.minnestrista.mn.us

This trail, between Dresser and Amery in west central Wisconsin, is tucked into an area of rolling hills, lakes, marshes, maple and oak forests and farmland. The trail is flat, with a hard packed limestone surface suitable for narrow road tires. During our visit over Easter weekend the trail was in bloom from wild fruit trees, and maples had already started to green up due to our unusually early spring .

The trail is named after Harvey Stower, a member of the Wisconsin Legislature and long time mayor of Amery. The name also refers to the numerous lakes along the trail. Lakes near the western end of the trail are large enough to support cabins and recreational boating. Others such as Kinney Lake, between Deronda and Amery, are seepage lakes which depend on groundwater and local precipitation. Seepage lakes are usually surrounded by marsh and virtually inaccessible.

The trail doesn’t appear to get much use, which is too bad because the frequent lakes and lowland marshes create scenic stopping points and break up the tunnel effect along better known trails such as the nearby Gandy Dancer Trail. Of greater interest to this long time road rider are the paved, low traffic roads that intersect and run parallel to the trail. Those roads weave among the rolling hills, skirt lakes and wander through woodland and farm country. I’ll be back to explore those roads later this season.

The Stower Seven Lakes Trail isn’t part of Bicycle Vacation Guide, but it will be part of the new Bikeverywhere website planned for spring of 2013.

Today, as I was scouting bike routes between Waukesha and Washington counties, I came across a sign announcing the impending closing of Colgate Rd.  Colgate Rd is quite a nice north-south low-traffic route. Unfortunately for Colgate it crosses a railroad and the Wisconsin Commissioner of Railroads has been on a tear to eliminate railroad crossings. All the alternate routes in the area are far more heavily traffic. It is likely that what makes Colgate attractive for bikes–low traffic–sealed its doom from the Commissioner of Railroads.

It turns out that the rustic road mentioned in an earlier post that was destroyed as a through route–Hoosier Creek Rd–was also done in by the Commissioner of Railroads.

Road work on the intersection of county P and I-94 is now nearly complete, including bike paths connecting the two sections of the Lake Country Trail east and west of county P and trails passing under the interstate. The intersection includes four traffic circles.

Also plans have surfaced that would extend the Lake Country Trail west from Oconomowoc to Watertown in Jefferson county. The route would follow a powerline that using a former interurban right of way. The biggest obstacle is the need to bridge two crossings of the Rock River.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel recently reported on a donation by GE Healthcare of a half mile corridor that will provide the “final link” in connecting the current Glacial Drumlin State Trail’s western terminus in Cottage Grove to Madison. The article is not clear about the route to be taken or the location of the half mile corridor, although the route would generally follow the Union Pacific rail line.  An article in the Wisconsin State Journal last year gave more information on planning for the connector.

Today, in preparation for the third edition of the Milwaukee and Southeast Wisconsin map I was in the Burlington area checking routes shown on previous maps, including the roads the Wisconsin Department of Transportation has designated as Rustic Roads.

I was very surprised then to see a “dead end” sign at the intersection of one of these rustic roads, the Hoosier Creek Road. I took the road nevertheless and found that it had indeed been made dead end. A substantial section had been torn up and no trespassing signs posted. It appeared that the former public road had been handed over to private interests.

Both ends of the road still sport Rustic Road signs and it still appears on the DOT’s map as a through route.

I have never seen this before, where a public road was closed and converted to private interests. I wonder if this is legal. On my way home I kept thinking of Putin’s Russia where people who are politically well-connected can obtain public enterprises and become very wealthy.

I sent an email to the DOT and will report any response.

A web site called Walk Score rates cities and neighborhoods for walkability, the ability to walk to destinations like stores and coffee shops. Of the fifty largest US cities, Minneapolis is ranked ninth most walkabable with a score of 69. Milwaukee is fifteenth (score: 61). Madison had a score of 55. All three are rated “somewhat walkable.

The site also rates individual neighborhoods. Scores over 90 are called “walker’s paradises.” In the Twin Cities, Minneapolis’ downtown east, Loring Park, and Lowry Hill East and downtown St. Paul are rated as walker’s paradises. Milwaukee’s most walkable neighborhoods are Northpoint, Murray Hill and Juneau Town. In Madison, the capitol area is the only one.

The least walkable cities in Wisconsin are Caledonia, Pleasant Prairie, and Mequon. All are in southeast Wisconsin (on the Milwaukee bike map) and are areas near Racine, Kenosha, and Milwaukee that have recently become urbanized. Given their low density, it is unlikely that these areas will ever become walkable. But perhaps they could be made bikeable.

One tool on the site allows the user to type in an employer’s address and get back a list of apartments within a walkable or bikeable distance or available on public transportation. Apparently major apartment listings now include walkable scores (see this article in Slate), reflecting a growing desire to get out of cars.

The Three Rivers Park District Board of Commissioners has developed a master plan for the seven-mile paved multi-use Intercity Bike Trail, which will travel north-south from Lake Nokomis Parkway in Minneapolis through Richfield and to the Minnesota River in Bloomington.

The trail will connect to the Minneapolis Grand Rounds trail system at Lake Nokomis, Three Rivers Park District’s Nine Mile Creek Regional Trail in Richfield, and the Mall of America in Bloomington. Future connections across the Minnesota River to Dakota County’s regional trail system and proposed Minnesota Valley State Trail also are considered.

Copies of the master plan are available at www.ThreeRiversParks.org (search for “Intercity” in the search box at the upper right corner of the home page)

The public has the opportunity to provide comments from April 2 through May 1; written comments may be submitted by e-mail to ICRT@ThreeRiversParkDistrict.org, by fax to 763-557-5248, or by mail to: Three Rivers Park District, Intercity Regional Trail, 3000 Xenium Lane N., Plymouth, MN 55441

The southern leg of Milwaukee county’s Oak Leaf Trail follows Drexel Avenue. Construction has started on a new interchange that will connection I- 94 with Drexel, resulting in intermittent closings of Drexel between S 27th St and S 13th St. The Wisconsin DOT has posted a detour for cars but not for bicyclists. Unfortunately the car detour (north on 27th, east on Rawson, and south on 13th for those traveling towards Lake Michigan) does not work well for bikes, carrying heavy traffic and, in the case of 13th lacking a shoulder.

It appears that the best detour for bikes would be to go south on 27th, east on Puetz, north on Shepard, east on Forest Hill, and north on the power line bike trail to Drexel, for bicyclists traveling towards the lake. Those going away from the lake would take the same route in reverse. Note that Puetz Rd west of 27th lacks shoulders and can carry heavy traffic.

According to the DOT’s web site, Drexel will be closed until November.