On Monday, April 11^th, Nicollet Mall was closed between Grant Street and Washington Avenue.  The closure will continue for approximately four weeks, and will facilitate curb, gutter, and concrete slab replacement on the Mall.

The suggested detour route follows Marquette and 2^nd Avenues.

Happy Riding,

City of Minneapolis Bicycle Program

According to reports from neighbors just before the bridge was closed, kids would stand in the middle of the bridge and rock it back and forth for entertainment. In the interest of bicyclist’s safety, I tried to rock the new bridge. It held firm.

Updates to the Twin Cities Bike Map will once again include the bridge as part of bike route options in south Minneapolis.

Twin Cities Bike Map 10th Edition

It took over a year of research, primarily by bike, and hundreds of hours of work in our new GIS software, but the results are worth every minute of effort.

Here are some highlights from the new Twin Cities Bike Map.

* Expanded urban detail: The 10th edition extends south to cover most of Bloomington and east to the river crossing between South St. Paul and Newport.
* All new research: New and expanded trails in Apple Valley, Shakopee, Rosemount, Eden Prairie, Maplewood, Woodbury, Cottage Grove and Hastings. New on road routes everywhere
* New design: Bike Trails, busy bike routes, the LRT and North Star Commuter Rail lines, background colors and more have been re-designed for a cleaner, more readable look.

What hasn’t changed is the attention to accuracy and detail, the tear and water resistant paper and the price.

The maps are on their way to bike dealers and book stores now. Stop by soon and ask to look at the new Twin Cities Bike Map. You can also buy the maps directly from Bikeverywhere.com.

Rosemount is at the outskirts of the developed metro area. It’s a developing city with some amenities for bicyclists and a nearby oasis at Umore Park, the agricultural and research grounds of the University of Minnesota. Plans for Umore include a sustainable community of 20,000 to 30,000 people, but for now it’s a quiet throwback with unusual structures from its short life as the Gopher Ordnance Works and buildings dating from post World War II.

Paved roads at Umore are the smaller part of the network of routes through the grounds. Those are the routes highlighted for bicycling in the Twin Cities Bike Map, but a rider with wide road tires or a mountain bike has many more options for exploring this flat expanse of agricultural land.

Rosemount has put some effort into building a network of bike trails and roads with wide shoulders. The primary route loops through some smallish parks and around housing developments. There are no major destination spots along the trail, and signage is non-existent, but the trails are pleasant and young enough to still be in good condition.

During one brief flurry of building activity Apple Valley developed a suburban style “downtown” with plantings, colored pavers and other amenities designed to create a central gathering spot for city residents. The effect is more pleasant than a typical mall, but the auto is still king and getting to “Downtown” by bike is a chancy endeavor for all except the most experienced and traffic savvy riders.

That said, the city is negotiable by bike. By combining indirect residential streets and the trails mentioned above, you can get close to almost any part of the city. I saw a surprising number of riders during a mid-August weekend. Most were riding the weedy trails mentioned above. Apple Valley has a few short trails running through parks, but they are mostly access trails and not worth seeking out for a recreational ride.

For me, part of bike route research is following instincts and researching dead end roads. I’ve frequently found connecting bike trails and useful additions to the map in unexpected places. The Pine Bend Cemetery is one of those surprises. It won’t add anything to the Twin Cities Bike Map, but it is a fascinating find.

I found it by following a suggestion from Dave Olson, my most trusted bike route adviser in the Twin Cities. He was the first to tell me about the new bike trail along Concord Blvd in S. St. Paul and the potential for a connector via the frontage road heading south along Hwy 55. The connector works well, providing a quick exit from Downtown St. Paul towards the Three Rivers Refinery and points to the SE.  My hope, however, was to get all the way to Spring Lake Regional Park and eventually to Hastings, so I slipped past a “Road Closed” sign just to see what was further south.

The road ended at Pine Bend Cemetery, an oasis of tall trees, ankle high grass and the thin white  tombstones that date cemeteries to the 1850s and 1860s.  The white limestone or marble was used extensively in the 1850s because it was easy to carve, but rain slowly dissolves the rock. Later tombstones were made from more durable granite.

Pine Bend Cemetery is about half the size of a football field and only half of the grounds have tombstones and a semi-maintained look. It is fairly typical for old, rural towns, but Pine Bend has been absorbed by the city. Hwy 55 makes a very noisy, and close, neighbor and the refinery looms large across the highway.

That juxtaposition, of a rural cemetery and the noisy trappings of modern society, pulled me back to the cemetery a couple of days later to take photos and wander the grounds.

Had I been able to just look toward the back of the cemetery and block out the traffic noise, I would have lingered longer, but the noise from the highway and the smell of the refinery drove me away. I moved on, but in my mind I still carry that rural cemetery image of a quiet, shaded oasis.

Bicycle detours are currently in place on the Hiawatha LRT Trail under I-94 and the Camden Bridge over the Mississippi River. The Hiawatha LRT Trail detour is intermittent, and is anticipated to take place on July 20th and 21st, as well as July 26th to 30th. A detour route will be signed. The Camden Bridge over the Mississippi River detour is in place throughout the summer. The detour is signed and available online (pdf). For further details on those and other bicycle detours in Minneapolis, visit our detours website.

One more detour: The Cedar Lake Bike Trail will be extended beyond the Twins Stadium and to the Mississippi River this fall. Estimated completion date is in November. The trail may be closed at the downtown end while construction crews build the connector between the existing trail and the new extension.

Old Bike Trail Acess I-94

The reconstruction of I-94 between Minnesota and Wisconsin several years ago created a new alignment for the bike path over the St. Croix River. The new path crosses the river on the south bridge of I-94 instead of the north bridge. As a result, the access trail from the north side has been closed. Vegetation is slowly encroaching on the trail.

The change has made Rivercrest Rd and 21st St from the north unnecessary. They will not be designated as bike routes in the 2011 update of the Twin Cities Bike Map.

Other changes: 24th St N, from the NE corner of Tartan Park in Lake Elmo, now connects the two broken segments of 20th St between Tartan Park and Neal Ave. The road provides a more direct connection to Neal Ave and points north.

Woodbury: More trails and new alignments. Woodbury’s trail system is quite extensive, but utterly confusing because it has no trail signage.

The Loring Park Bike and Pedestrian Bridge connecting Loring Park near downtown Minneapolis and the walker Art Center Sculpture Garden has been closed for reconstruction. The work will include replacing wooden decking and touch-up painting. The closure will last about one month. Riders can cross at the major intersection of Vineland/15th and Hennepin/Lyndale Ave.Crossing lights are available, but the intersection is wide and should be navigated carefully.

40th St. S, just west of the town of Afton, is closed between Neal and Trading Post Trail for repaving. The pavement has been removed and deep trenches and loose dirt make it impassable. No word on when the road will re-open. The inconvenience is offset by a dramatic reduction in traffic on the rest of 40th St. S.

Neal Ave. S (near Afton) between 50th and 70th has been repaved. Current versions of the Twin Cities Bike Map indicate that it has rough pavement. That is no longer true. The 2011 version of the map will not have the warning.

S. Robert St in St. Paul is under construction. although it is not a bike route, traffic from this busy road has been re-directed onto Rich Valley Rd, a bike route. Rich Valley Rd now has a considerable amount of traffic and is not desireable for riding. The  detour may exist through most of the 2010 riding season.

Flooding this spring on Black Dog Rd along the south side of the  Minnesota River broke up the asphalt in a number of places. The road is stil rideable, but portions are now gravel instead of asphalt. The road won’t be repaired before 2011, at the earliest.

My biggest complaint about the trail is that it has no signage. “You are Here” maps or other indications about where the trail goes would help trail users find their way around the system.  The problem is compounded in the parks by multiple intersecting trails, some merely connectors to a neighborhodd,  others major trails in their own right. We wandered around for several hours, enjoying the scenery for the most part and re-orienting ourselves when we reach major intersections, but I never got a real sense of where the trails went until the next morning when I downloaded my GPS track onto a map. The trail also has a few very steep exit/entrance connectors that will make most folks walk uphill and scare any mother who’s child wants to skate down the ramp on a scooter or skateboard.

Getting around Woodbury by road is more of a challenge.  Woodbury was built when cul de sacs and winding roads with no destination were considered the height of residential development. The net effect is a constant funneling of all vehicles, bikes included, into collector routes and major roads. Woodbury has done a credible job of building and maintaining bike trails in the right-of-way of the major roads, but like all bike trails along major roads, these are noisy, the scenery is minimal and crossroads are dangerous.

Despite the drawbacks, we found some beautiful roads, such as Pinehurst Rd north of the Tamarack Nature Preserve. The new routes will appear on the 2011 update.

One road that will disappear as a bike route is Lake Rd. When first built, a decade or more ago, it was a low traffic, free flowing road through the city. Traffic has increased dramatically ove the years and with new updates of the Twin Cities Bike Map it has gone from low traffic to high traffic.  Traffic is now high enough that it is no longer an acceptable bike route. Several alternates have been found and more research is needed to avoid the last mile or two of  Lake Rd. The changes will appear on the updated bike map.