When the St. Paul City Council adopted the St. Paul Bike Plan in 2015, jubilant cheers erupted from the assembled crowd of helmet-toting bikers in City Hall. For the first time in the city’s history, there was an actual roadmap for how and where to build bike routes on the city’s streets. It set a course that would, in theory, transform St. Paul car-choked streets into places that allowed more people to get around without having to drive.
Though the pace of change has been pedestrian, having the plan on the books meant that, little by little, bike lanes appeared on streets like Cleveland Avenue and a dozen other main drags. The 2015 plan was a turning point for bicycling in the city, which was recently ranked as the seventh best large city for bicycling in the US. (Minneapolis ranked No. 1.)
Eight years later, the city’s public works department is updating the plan to reflect greater aspirations. The update is driven by the fact that a lot has changed in the world of bike planning over the last decade. Notably, many cities have focused more on protected bike lanes, more popular with cyclists than stripes of paint. These are spaces where cyclists are separated from vehicle traffic by concrete curbs, bollards, or something more substantial than paint or flimsy plastic.
[image_credit]MinnPost photo by Bill Lindeke[/image_credit][image_caption]The temporary design for the 10th Street Capital City Bikeway, which peters out at an onramp.[/image_caption]
An ambitious plan
For the most part, St. Paul’s new plan is relentlessly ambitious. Off-street protected trails are the clear focus of city efforts this time around. Eight years ago, these green “protected lane” lines were a rarity on the plan map. More often, the 2015 map offered a spectrum of design approaches ranging from (useless) “sharrows” to bicycle boulevards to on-street bike lanes.
[image_credit]City of St. Paul[/image_credit]
That vote has big implications for the bike plan because, while not directly linked to bike infrastructure, the new investments would quickly lead to bicycle investments. As Senior City Planner, Jimmy Shoemaker, explained, it’s not a coincidence that many of the proposed routes selected as “priorities” in the bike plan are also identified by the sales tax funding. Much of the new money would go to reconstructing main streets, and almost all of the new designs include high-quality bikeways.
[image_credit]City of St. Paul[/image_credit][image_caption]The proposed bike plan has one key map that features “priorities,” proposed lanes that are circled on the map and would be first in line for funding.[/image_caption]
Other highlights of the priority list include:
- The Summit Avenue regional trail (much discussed)
- A bikeway on St. Anthony or Concordia, next to I-94, which poses major challenges due to dangerous onramps, but could transform a often deadly situation by the interstate
- A five-mile-long protected Bikeway along East 7th and Minnehaha Avenue, on the East Side
- A two-mile long protected bikeway along Cesar Chavez, on the West Side
- A four-mile long protected bikeway on Hamline Avenue, from Pierce Butler Route to Montreal Avenue.
(The last three projects all appear on the city’s sales tax list.)
The downtown challenge
Back in 2015, the first of two centerpieces of the bike plan was the Grand Rounds, an off-street loop around the city linking up as many parks as possible. That portion of the plan has proved a rousing success. Three large segments along Como Avenue, Wheelock, and Johnson Parkways opened up in the spring of 2021. The Grand Rounds, as it’s called, is now 99% complete and in great shape for recreational riders.
The other big leap forward was the Capital City Bikeway, an ambitious network of off-street trails through downtown, long a place where bike lanes go to die. Beginning with a key stretch of Jackson Street, the off-street protected lane was unveiled in 2016. Since then, the city has added another (technically temporary) design running 9th and 10th streets. Just this spring, staff unveiled a four-block curb-protected segment along Wabasha Street, running from City Hall to the Children’s Museum.
[image_credit]MinnPost photo by Bill Lindeke[/image_credit][image_caption]The Jackson Street Capital City Bikeway opened in 2016.[/image_caption]
At one level, it’s an understandable problem. Construction downtown is expensive thanks to high density and old streets full of infrastructure. That’s why the Capital City Bikeway was always intended to be built in stages, links that one-by-one would eventually cohere. The updated bike plan includes dates for the next parts of the Capital City Bikeway: a key Kellogg Boulevard segment is planned for 2025-2027; the other key link, a two-block segment along St. Peter and 12th Streets, is currently marked as “UNKNOWN CONSTRUCTION DATE.”
[image_credit]City of St. Paul[/image_credit]
Bike plan tensions
That’s a key tension around the bike plan. Lofty ambitions about new off-street paths and bridges over the railroad barriers plans are great, but how long will it take to build them? When it comes to spending city resources on short-term, interim and less refined bike infrastructure, is the perfect the enemy of the good? How should St. Paul allocate scarce funding?
It’s a tough question, and city planners are generally mum on the subject. Still, the plan’s format holds out the possibility of tactical approaches that could change streets more quickly. A lot of it has to do with money, and how to allocate resources in a city dealing with endless pothole triage.
“While those [temporary designs] are less expensive than full street reconstructions, they’re not free,” Shoemaker told me. “They come with challenges with maintenance and upkeep. Those are not necessarily things we can’t overcome, but it is a funding issue. Sometimes pursuing funding for capital reconstructions can be easier than finding money for ongoing maintenance, even of temporary low cost Jersey barriers and flexible delineators.”
My personal take on it, as someone who has biked in and out of downtown St. Paul hundreds of times, is a that few small projects could make a big difference. The goal should be to activate and connect the existing bike loop to popular bike routes, as quickly as possible.
[image_credit]MinnPost photo by Bill Lindeke[/image_credit][image_caption]The current St. Anthony Bike lane could be extended for another five miles along I-94.[/image_caption]
City staff are still accepting comments from the public on the new plan, still in draft form. The draft should go before the City Council in early Fall.
All in all, there’s a lot of promise in the new bike plan document. Especially if the sales tax passes in November, expect to see a lot of road construction projects in the next few years. As the potholes disappear, bike lanes and quality sidewalks will start to take their place. Once everything starts to connect, St. Paul might one day challenge Minneapolis for its “Best U.S. Bike City” crown.
Here’s a few holes that taxpayers need filled.
St Paul taxpayers just digested a 15% or $805 million property tax increase. They are facing an additional 1% metro transit and housing sales tax. They are now being asked to vote for an additional 1% sales tax which will bring the total sales tax in St Paul to almost 10%.
What are taxpayers receiving back for these tax increases . How much of this 1% is being spent on bike trails ? How many of St Paul’s citizens receive any benefit from bike trails and how many will actually use them ? Let’s face it , cyclists are primarily white , male and are capable of paying a sales tax as they ride their $1,000 plus bikes on their own trails that they believe they are entitled to and everyone should pay for. In the meantime the city is unsafe , the schools are failing and the roads are full of holes.
Hi Jeff, seems like a gross over-generalization that the typical cyclist is a white male. While out cycling I see people from every background out riding.
I agree with you though, we might need to look at alternative ways to fund the bicycle infrastructure projects going forward. As someone who uses this, I’d be interested and willing to pay for it.
There is some diversity but it’s a documented fact that white males make up something like 70%-75% of cyclists. That’s what I’ve always seen when I ride.
East 7th is plenty wide enough to easily accommodate some bike lanes. The same is true for Pennsylvania from Phalen Blvd to Rice Street. It’s just such a glaring missed opportunity for the well-designed trail along Phalen Blvd to end the way it does at Pennsylvania. It needs a connection to the Charles Street bikeway, which should be on Sherburne (but that’s another story).
So glad I got out of St Paul and Ramsey county after 28 years. I know many people in Mac Grove/Highland who have left and many who are planning to leave. All the tax increases and money going to bike paths and reparations instead of roads, plowing and policing. St Paul has its priorities messed up.
I really applaud the City of St. Paul for having these ambitious goals. It seems to make a certain amount of sense to do short-term projects that have the highest impact. Having the ability to connect up with other routes would be really helpful. I have appointments in St. Paul from time to time and like to ride my bike, but there’s not currently a great option to do that. The people of St. Paul deserve to have a multitude of transportation options to get around the city. Fewer drivers means less wear and tear on roads, less congestion, less time sitting in traffic.
Well, it’s only natural that people who ride bikes would respond enthusiastically to new and better bike infrastructure, but people who ride bikes need to remember: There’s us who ride bikes… and then there’s everyone else. After decades of simmering territorial conflict I think it might be time to re-imagine the discussion with a few different assumptions.
I think the first assumption that needs to be abandoned is the: “build it they will come” idea that design dictates culture and behavior. New and better bike lanes aren’t a bad idea for those who use them, but we need to abandon the design delusion that new and better bike infrastructure will lure drivers out of their cars. If you look at the number of people commuting to work on bicycles you actually see an incredibly flat curve since 1980 (figure 1.1.3: https://data.bikeleague.org/show-your-data/national-data/rates-of-biking-and-walking/) and there doesn’t seem to be any significant correlation with new infrastructure. Sure, in the late 1980’s there was a big bump in the number of people riding bikes over-all but that number has more or less plateaued despite an small uptick during the pandemic. The big increase in cyclists actually preceded most of the infrastructure that’s been built in the last 10-15 years. You have some localized infrastructure related increases but even those seem to have plateaued in recent years which is why guys like Lindeke keep trying to imagine new and better bike lanes as they think will re-kindle the “surge”.
At this point we need to accept the fact that the only factors that will increase cycling ridership will be the introduction of e-bikes, and a dramatic cultural shift that is unlikely to take place. Building new and better bike infrastructure in-and-of itself isn’t going to dramatically change the transportation mix. So long as cycling remains a leisure activity, or sport, or “training” model of some kind rather than an integrated lifelong practice, we’re just not going to see any major cultural conversion. Basically a culture that doesn’t allow or encourage children to use bicycles for transportation and unsupervised recreation is never going to produce a large adult population of cyclists. When we build these bike lanes we’re building them for those who already ride, not for those who are going to trade in their cars and start riding.
I hate to point this out, but while Lindeke provides several photos of different bike lane designs and locations… the one thing all his photos have in common is that there isn’t a singe person riding a bike on any of them, so what different does it make really?
The other thing about bike lanes is a kind of paradox they represent. On one hand, people like myself who have been riding around for a half century will tell you we learned to ride and kept riding in days when there was no bike lanes or infrastructure at all. Listen: when I was 8 or 10 years old my mom used to pack my bike in the back seat of the car and drive us over to “Lake Calhoun”. She would then hang out on the beach catching some rays while I rode around the lake by myself on the one and only paved path that existed at the time (this would have been 1971-72) before the fatality that prompted separate bike and pedestrian paths. Yes… you read that right… can you imagine? A 8-10 year old riding a bike- WITHOUT A HELMET around the lake by himself! The horror eh? Whatever… point is for the first 20 years of my life I rode around on trails, dirt paths next to RR tracks, grass, and streets with nary a sign of bike paths anywhere to be found. I “commuted” daily from SLP to Uptown in the 80’s on streets and sidewalks. I like the bike paths and trails, and I use them all the time, but the idea that we NEED them to ride our bikes is a little wonky if you’re tying to change the culture. One of the great things about bicycles is the freedom of route choice, you can take a bike in so many places that you take a car or truck. I can get from my house to the Knowlwood Target or my local Costco on my bike in the half the time it takes in a car precisely because I don’t have to use street routes. I can get to my pharmacy drive-through in a fraction of the time it takes in a car because I cut through parking lots and parks. I’m not saying their a “bad” idea, but the idea that we “need” bike lanes on the streets in order to ride our bikes on the streets can get us into counterproductive territorial disputes over street space.
“there isn’t a single bike person riding a bike on any of [the photos].” It should be noted that across the four photos, there’s also just a single pedstrian walking and just three vehicles driving, so maybe it was just a quiet Sunday.
Could be, on the other hand it IS downtown St. Paul which is kind of a ghost town most of the time anyways.
Bicycle Bill strikes again…