Thursday on Zoom, Minneapolis Public Works held an unusual “stakeholder engagement” meeting. Jeni Hager, director of transportation planning and programming, did her best to suggest that everything was fine around the Bryant Avenue reconstruction. She spent most of an hour taking questions about last-minute changes to the two-and-a-half mile project in the heart of south Minneapolis.
It did not go smoothly. At the heart of the issue was why plans, already approved by the City Council and signed off by Mayor Jacob Frey, were hastily being altered. Asked why the plan was not re-submitted to the City Council, which technically has jurisdiction over street design, Hager explained her perspective.
“This is not going back because the design revision continues to align with the project goals,” Hager said. “(It) continues to align with the TAP (Transportation Action Plan) and the (adopted) street design guide. It does not substantially change what is included in the original design.”
As the meeting went on, it became clear that the plan revisions were not complete. After one question, Hager admitted the department didn’t yet have firm plans for most of the project’s blocks. If the Bryant Avenue reconstruction were happening months in the future, all of this would have been normal, but work on Bryant Avenue began this morning. Crews are already under contract and putting shovels in the ground.
For a normally transparent Public Works department to make up plans on the fly represents a big departure for Minneapolis’ approach to transportation. Even if you like the changes, which water down safety on the new street, the process is a red flag. Reflecting the shifting power dynamics between the mayor’s office and the City Council, the changes seem like a step backward for equity and climate action.
An overview of the Bryant Avenue project
The Bryant Avenue reconstruction is a once-in-a-lifetime rebuild of a residential street running through the heart of south Minneapolis. More than a repaving, the $4.7 million project represents an opportunity to remake the street from the foundation. In this case, planners and engineers are installing completely new street elements, from dirt to curbs, trees, sewers, rain gardens, concrete, and light poles.
While a quiet residential street, Bryant Avenue is a key corridor for bicycling. It runs north-south through the heart of Minneapolis’ dense Wedge neighborhood, parallel to busy Lyndale Avenue which sadly, is too choked with cars to be safe. In 2010, Bryant was converted into a “bicycle boulevard”, a kind of bike infrastructure which, in theory, minimizes through car traffic and prioritizes bicyclists.
[image_credit]MinnPost photo by Bill Lindeke[/image_credit][image_caption]The Bryant Avenue reconstruction is a once-in-a-lifetime rebuild of a residential street running through the heart of south Minneapolis.[/image_caption]
That’s why Public Works’ 16-month Bryant Avenue engagement process was predicated on designing a better bike lane. The final design, approved by the Minneapolis City Council and Frey in 2021, was quite innovative. It moved transit service off of Bryant and onto busier Lyndale Avenue, two blocks away, turning Bryant into a one-way, slow speed route designed around people walking or rolling.
Most importantly, it introduced a suite of traffic calming elements including chicanes and bump outs, that, according to Deputy Director Bryan Dodds, have been “very successful” at reducing speeds along the southern half of the street (Phase One). This is precisely the kind of design outlined in Minneapolis’ ambitious “Vizion Zero plans,” increasingly important as traffic deaths have spiked since the COVID pandemic.
That’s all changed at the very last minute. Public Works posted a posted a letter about Bryant on the project website on March 30. The updated plans make two key changes to the Council-approved street design, both of which reduce the safety elements for people on foot or bicycle.
First, the new design removes the chicanes (alternating sides of car parking) in favor of a straight traffic lane on the left. According to Hager, the changes were necessary due to concerns over fire truck access. Public Works staff testified that Minneapolis drivers have had trouble parking close to the curb, particularly on the left side of the street.
“We thought people would park closer to the curb than they are doing today,” Dodds said. “Even in fall, folks were parking a couple feet away from the left curb (so that) emergency vehicles and larger vehicles have a hard time going through.”
[image_credit]Minneapolis Public Works[/image_credit][image_caption]The two-way protected bike path has been moved next to the street, instead of being buffered by a 4.5-foot grassy boulevard.[/image_caption]
“The change most disappointing to me was moving the bike lane closer to the street,” testified Chris Meyer. “The boulevard in the original design makes it safer, especially for getting kids to use it. You have a barrier so that cars can’t just run into you.”
Faster Traffic on Bryant Avenue
The Bryant Avenue changes might seem like small potatoes, and in the grand scheme of things that might be true. While they make the street more dangerous, there will still be a curb-protected bike lane, even if it’s adjoined by a curb that easily allows trucks to drive on it.
But the changes also reflect a departure in public process for Minneapolis. In my experience, it’s not normal for a long-approved plan to be scrapped at the very last second.
“The proposal that the City Council passed was less than 30% design,” explained Deputy Director Bryan Dodds. “We have a conceptual design layout that goes through City Council, and it’s a 5% to 10% plan. Taking a two-dimensional plan and turning that into a three-dimensional plan takes a lot of work.”
As a St. Paul planning commissioner for a decade, the process Dodds describes is unusual. Traffic engineers use distinct language for street designs: “30% engineering” refers to a general layout while “60% engineering” has specific dimensions at intersections, etc. Though not required, St. Paul Public Works typically submits 60% to 80% designs to the public, a level of detail has also been standard for major Minneapolis projects.
[image_credit]Minneapolis Public Works[/image_credit][image_caption]According to Jeni Hager, changes were necessary due to concerns over fire truck access.[/image_caption]
This is important because, for bicycle and pedestrian projects, details matter. Small elements that remain undecided about the Bryant Avenue project, such as curb design or intersection crossings, are critical pieces of the safety puzzle. If the Bryant Avenue project sets a precedent, these decisions will happen behind closed doors with almost no public scrutiny.
End of Transportation Consensus
This isn’t the only recent chaos around a major Minneapolis transportation project. Last year saw a drawn-out fight over staff-proposed bus lanes on Hennepin Avenue, another street reconstruction. The design became a political standoff involving a mayoral veto of an eight-member Council majority vote. Like Bryant, the issue exposed fissures within Public Works, where staff-led plans were scrapped at the last minute by department leadership.
There’s a cost to this disarray. The Public Works staffer in charge of the Hennepin project subsequently left the department, and according to multiple former and current employees, she was not alone. Many key Public Works staff have left the City for a variety of reasons over the last two years, including some of its most experienced transportation planners.
Under Director Margaret Anderson Kelliher, appointed by Mayor Frey a year ago, the shift at Public Works seems part of Minneapolis’ new “strong mayor” system of government. According to reporting in Southwest Voices, citing an internal email, the Department today is more likely to embrace a “let (Director Kelliher) wing it” approach, and is more responsive to direct complaints from the city’s business community.
For their part, Public Works staff denied that the Bryant Avenue changes were a response to business lobbying, instead pointing to the impact snow has had on emergency vehicle access. When asked, Dodds explained that the Department has been mulling changes to Bryant Avenue since January, after the winter’s heavy snowfall.
A less visionary Public Works?
It wasn’t too long ago that Minneapolis Public Works was a national leader in transportation planning, engineering street designs often found in countries with far safer streets. Plans like the city’s Transportation Action Plan, Vision Zero Action Plan, or 2040 Comprehensive Plan reflected a commitment to a modal hierarchy (i.e. prioritizing pedestrians, transit users, and cyclists) and reducing the city’s vehicle miles traveled.
Today, many of the city’s most forward-thinking transportation choices have fallen by the wayside or, in the case of the Bryant Avenue bike lanes, been literally pushed to the curb. Instead, Minneapolis cutting-edge street designs seem to be retreating toward mediocrity, where parking complaints trump safety and climate goals occupy a back burner.
“We are working very quickly,” Hager said during the stakeholder meeting. “We are really in a design-build phase right now with construction starting on Monday. We are handing contractors design plans as quickly as we can get them done. It feels very fast to us as well.”
By the time you read this, construction will already be underway, so don’t email your Council Member to ask for changes to the vague plans. Instead, the people of South Minneapolis, including most of its elected officials, will find out what the street will look like when it’s done.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct the spelling of Bryan Dodds’ name and the date the Public Works Department posted its letter about Bryant Avenue.
Meanwhile, MAK appears to be in hiding. All the power and no accountability. Great job, people.
This comes with little surprise for many of us that have seen Metro projects come in way over budget and way over time. When loyal followers of MNDOT, Public Works and all Governmental run agencies never hold them accountable, you get this. It is now safe for a taxpayer funded agencies to tell the folks that fund them, our project will be what determine it to be, keep paying for it and just be happy we are “working for you”. You get what you demand out people and agencies, when you demand little you get little!
The state really lucked out not having MAK be the DFL gubernatorial candidate in 2010. She probably would have fumbled that election, but if she managed to win, this situation demonstrates her lack of resolve. With 1 btu of heat she folds like a $5 card table.
The city doesn’t need leaders who feel ashamed of being a big city. Minneapolis has a population who is open to transformative ideas of transportation not centered around cars. Too bad unelected and unelectable people like MAK get to do stuff like this.
A lack of comprehensive planning for the future put the city in this mess. Oh, the firetrucks are too big. Is there a reason for their size? Let’s not look into whether we can down size the fleet if possible, let’s redesign around a couple trucks.
And the reason for the fire trucks being the current size they are is fire fighter ego. Same reason a guy drives around in a full size pickup truck with a lift-kit installed.
Minneapolis is diluting public safety on once in a 100-years street updates to preserve toxic masculinity. Other countries get by just fine with much smaller fire trucks.
Not a great excuse from public works with a strong mayor system in place that could make the necessary changes required so all the parts work together.
Ha! Hats off my friend, we’ll played! You had me blinded til the “toxic masculinity” part. Good stuff.
Well, I think the truck pictured is a pumper truck: carrying its’ own water for fire fighting. Probably in excess of a 1,000 gallons. A half ton Pick Up driven by an ego free firefighter with 2 – 55 gallon drums of water probably is not a good idea if the goal is to extinguish fires…
Yes, the process stinks, but I do like the redesign. I’m guessing some learnings from paralleled Grand Avenue re-do also played into this.
They’ve also added raised sidewalks on the cross street which is definitely a win.
On the Phase I portion, biking directly adjacent to long-leashed dogs is not a great experience and I’ve noticed people don’t really respect the designated mode pathways. Separating with a green buffer should mitigate this more effectively.
Lastly, this new design no longer ‘hides’ the cyclist behind parked cars/trees/prairie grass like the previous iteration did (in theory, preventing left hook risk).
I will grant you the speeds may increase. It would be an interesting graduate study on average speeds with/without the chicane approach contrasting phase I/II. Raising sidewalks on Bryant itself on non-stop intersections would be an effective alternative speed-limiting approach. Just head North of Bryant itself (North of 29th street) to see how it works today.
I would encourage anyone to view the presentation that was covered at the stakeholder meeting. For all the wailing and gnashing of teeth, the Bryant Phase II project is still very much centered on bikes and pedestrians, but with a nod to the not-trival problems that have occurred in Phase I. “Pushed to the curb” is a nice turn of phrase but the diagrams show a preserved 3′ buffer between the traffic lane and bikes, and cars to be parked on the other side of the road (no one should be surprised that drivers can’t park snug up against a snowbank on their left and still exit the car!) . People with normal sized cars have been unable to get out of their driveways. Vehicles have found stretches of the street impassible.
Also while it has not gotten a lot of attention, the current sidewalk adjacent to bike trails has become in effect a 15′ wide sidewalk and people often meander down the bike lane oblivous to the bikes coming behind them. As the road gets more bike traffic, the benefits of a buffer between the pedestrian sidewalk and the bike lanes will become apparent beyond having somewhere to put all the snow.
These may be inconvenient facts, but they are still facts and I think it would have been unconscionable for public works to put on their blinders and ignore real world experience. The abruptness of the process here is a fair point to criticize, but the changes themselves reasonable and reflect a couple seasons of experience. And while “construction” starts very soon, this actually means first a long period of “destruction” as the existing street and roadbed and curbs and trolly tracks and utility’s are dug up and discarded and regraded long before anyone starts setting the frames for the new curbs and lanes. While timing to make updates to their plans is tight, its not as imminent as some of the critics would suggest.
https://www.minneapolismn.gov/media/-www-content-assets/documents/Bryant-Ave-S-Stakeholder-presentation-1-(4-6-23).pptx
If the bike paths are moved to the curb, every single boulevard tree will have to be cut down on that side. If it remains where it was originally planned, there’s no sidewalk for pedestrians. What a totally effed up project.
Currently there are no boulevard strips on Bryant Ave south from Lake street to 42nd Street.
You can check from your PC by viewing aerial maps.
No. the curb they are talking about, where the bike lane meets vehicle traffic, today is in the middle of asphalt. There are no existing trees. There will be sidewalk for pedestrian either way. The only difference on that side is when the bike lane slides torwards the vehicle lane, a grassy median between bikes and cars goes away, and appears between bikes and the sidewalk.
Another casuality of the 2021 disaster unfortunetly
Remember when Minneapolis had good government?
RT looks stellar in comparison
Actually he basically started the whole bike lane business. If not its implementation then certainly the philosophy behind it. I’m not against biking – I ride myself. That’s how I know dedicated bike lanes are a frivolous, unnecessary luxury that we can’t afford or put in place without stomping all over everyone else’s rights. There simply isn’t enough room.
Thank goodness for MAK…!! It’s so rare these days to see anyone, in charge of anything in government, who actually seems to care that the final effect of some desired change should be PRACTICAL. …And to having the unintended consequences both considered and prevented via plan adjustments. THIS is appropriate urban planning and development.
So, no, this process is NOT a “red flag” “even if you like the changes”. It is how projects like this ought to work – but too often don’t – when a problem is identified. If planners for – dare I say it – the Southwest Light Rail had actually DONE SOMETHING at any of the points where flaws in the plan were identified, rather than digging in and refusing to make responsive and responsible changes to the plan, we would be riding it already, and it would have cost a little more than the original estimate, but far less than it’s going to, now.
So having managers in charge without direct “un-elect-ability” is a mixed blessing. They can mess things up when they don’t listen to anybody (Met Council / Metro Transit) or they can remedy shortcomings (as here) when they do listen to reasonable critiques (MAK). As usual, it’s not so black and white.
And, as should be obvious by now, having an onerous “process” that hampers executive decision-making saves nothing – neither time nor money. There were, after all, two alternatives to the way MAK handled this. We could have gone back through lots of “process” and ended up doing this anyway. Or we could have left the flaws in the plan as they were. Neither of those alternatives is better than what is happening.
Good, competent managers, doing their jobs well, will accomplish more than mindless adherence to the most restrictive “process” we can impose upon them, every time. We need to stop thinking that we can make things better just by making them ever-harder to approve, plan, and execute.
As an urban planning expert, Bill, you should be aware of how much too far we have already gone in the direction of forced “process”, and how much harder it makes it to get anything good accomplished.
But there was a process that took time and it’s still ongoing, as plans aren’t even finalized. It is just that the process, until the cat got out of the bag, excluded stakeholders (city council members) and most community members. Discussions about changes started in January, if not earlier. It would have taken minimal effort to let the public know and invite feedback. But now staff are spending time dealing with emails and complaints and have angered a lot of people. Staff are engaging people they previously cut out (city council members and community members). There’s been 2 lengthy zoom meetings already, and another scheduled next Thursday. Your notion that MAK’s executive prowess saved everyone time and hassle is not based in reality. We can be agile and practical while also being transparent and allowing for community input.
The Council are not “stakeholders” – the 400,000 Mpls residents are. Amusing that you would whine about the lack of transparency of this process when the entire 2040 plan – especially the elimination of car lanes with Transportation Action and Vision Zero – were smuggled past nearly the entire city. The only “stakeholders” (a very handy term to disguise exclusivity) consulted were the bike lobby (backed by corporate developers) who sold it to the Pedestrian Advisory Committee, Committee on Aging etc and ABSOLUTELY EXCLUDED ANY REPRESENTATION OF DRIVERS. So drivers aren’t stakeholders in transportation? I agree with one thing – it’s ALL been implemented too fast without transparency. Hence the city being sued and LOSING an environmental lawsuit against the 2040 plan. ALL OF THESE PLANS SHOULD BE HALTED IMMEDIATELY AND STUDIED FOR RESULTS SO FAR. Because there were no valid science-based studies done beforehand. Prioritizing bikes over motor vehicles in a major urban transportation system is completely impractical and irresponsible. I’ve been warning about the dangers of impeding emergency vehicles and increasing congestion – and thereby increasing greenhouse gases – by taking away vehicle lanes since 2018. But, even after losing a lawsuit, the blind arrogance of the self-righteous proponents of these policies carries on in the face of mounting exposure of evidence that no consideration of physics, math or reality as applied to transportation was figured into the equation. The new Public Works attempt at engineering on the fly – while actually a small step in the right direction – is further proof that the plans are too impractical to work in the real world. You are reaping what you’ve sown. THE BRYANT AVE PROJECT IS TOO EXPENSIVE AND PERMANENT TO HALF-ASS. STOP IT NOW – before homeowners, drivers (both groups who pay way more taxes for transportation) and all the other citizens get bilked out of another 5 million dollars. Back up and do it right or – better still? – don’t do it at all except what vital utilities etc are called for.
I live on this street and attended “public” zoom meetings during covid. Each meeting had about 30 people and we mostly objected to the designs. Next meeting, different design, we again objected. We requested more meetings when people could congregate again, for a larger public input: nope. A neighborhood Slow The Roll campaign to delay decisions until more input could be gathered was ignored. I have asked about accident statistics involving bikers and cars, no response. My observations over the past 20 years was that there was no issue. The south part built last summer has caused fires engines and garbage trucks to get stuck. Did you try driving thru this street this winter? Laughable navigation –and dangerous! I am glad they are reconsidering. The chicanes by themselves might be good, but with crazy clown parking and the bike lane and lots of snowbanks, it’s too much. Don’t even get me started on one-ways running into each other — no one understands that. We would like boulevards, more trees, some parking and room for emergency vehicles. When people commuted downtown, there were more bikers; not anymore.The 12 bikers will enjoy a lovely lane to themselves.
As a biker I commuted downtown on Bryant from early 2008 thru Oct 2019. This is an improvement.
Having dirt/garden/whatever between bikes and the pedestrians seems better to me than the red plastic strip on the sidewalk between 42nd and 50th Streets.
On the 42-50 stretch it is a bit too easy for pedestrians to wander.
Although I have not seen what ‘mountable curb’ is to be implemented I think might like a “mountable” concrete curb between the bike path and the road
if the curb works as I have seen in Vancouver, Canada. Everyone knows their place but an occasional improvisational move by a bike is less likely to result in a fall.
The “mountable curbs” help drivers park in the bike lane and veer into the bike lane causing potential collisions with bikers and pedestrians.
Mountable curbs implemented downtown has greatly increased the incidents of people parking in the bike lanes for deliveries, pickups, and for overnight stays.
The “Mountable curbs” reduce biker safety.
Here’s the problem. Once you decide you are going to put bicyclists and pedestrians in places where cars MAY go, there is no perfect solution – just tradeoffs. Bumpouts, chicanes, and NON-mountable curbs are all ways to “force” separation, but what happens, in the real world, is that any combination of non-linear lanes and solid curbs results is drivers’ eyes being glued to the curbs – NOT aimed “high”, as they should be, keeping alert for both bicyclists and pedestrians, as well as cars on cross-streets or driveways.
I am constantly amazed that so many people don’t “get” this. I have lived a block from Minnehaha Parkway for over 30 years, and it has always had bumpouts and solid curbs. On snowy days and at night, I have hit the curbs often enough (flattened a tire once, lost a hubcap once) that, in any weather, THEY are what I am primarily looking at – despite my desire to keep “eyes high”. The recent redesign of Lyndale – Same thing. I would LIKE to stay vigilant for pedestrians (especially kids or pets!), but now I need to keep focused on where the next curb is going to “come at me” from. At least in the Bryant design, they will only come at you from the right, as is the case for the Parkway (along much of its length). And because Bryant is not curvy like the Parkway, that won’t be so bad. On Lyndale they come at you from both sides. Even though I know the well-intentioned idea was to make Lyndale SAFER for pedestrians, when I am a pedestrian, I will only cross Lyndale at an intersection, and, preferably, one with a traffic light. BEFORE, I was willing to cross anywhere. But I just can’t trust ANY driver to be “eyes high”, especially since any randomly chosen driver may be on Lyndale for the first time, and, even though I have been on it by now many dozens of times, I can’t drive it with “eyes high” myself…!
So, the beauty of “mountable” curbs on the left on Bryant, is that they will not become a “damage threat” to drivers – they will not become something one has to grimly focus on, when one SHOULD be on the lookout for pedestrians, pets, and cyclists to not hit.
This is an example of something that SEEMS to degrade bicyclist safety, but actually does not, and you can convince yourself of it if you simply put yourself in the place of a driver for a bit, either literally or figuratively.
I’m not sure an “orderly” fiasco is the gold standard of urban design. When academic theory meets actual streets people live on and use things can get a little messy for some very good reasons.
The logical flaw here always seems to be the assumption that we can design spaces for EVERYONE premised on a basic hostility towards people who drive cars. The marginalization of majorities isn’t necessarily a great design principle.
Bingo – the dedicated bike lanes are a sore thumb that just doesn’t fit in any of these designs. And you nailed it when you cited “hostility toward drivers”. That’s been the underlying motivation for taking away car lanes and overdevelopment from the beginning. The only sane way I can see to have bike lanes is if we simply widen the sidewalks JUST LIKE EVERY PREVIOUS BIKE LANE HAS BEEN DESIGNED! It wasn’t broken but that hasn’t stopped the selfish, entitled bike proponents from using our money to “fix” it. That’s why I say STOP THE 2040 PLAN, TRANSPORTATION ACTION PLAN AND THE IDIOTIC “TOWARDS ZERO” PLAN (or whatever that one is called) NONE OF WHICH DO WHAT THEY CLAIM. Whatever minimal benefits these plans provide to less than one-tenth of 1% of the population are grossly outweighed by the cost and VERY REAL HARM that they do to the entire city and everyone who sets foot in it. This charade is over – it’s been proven and exposed for what it is – a half-baked scam.