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.