Jonathan Mason is a dedicated cyclist. Almost every day, all year round, he bikes to work in St. Louis Park from his home in St. Paul — and the first leg of that 26-mile round trip commute carries him straight down the iconic, tree-lined Summit Avenue.
Better bike infrastructure would make Mason’s commute easier. Summit has a bike lane, but paint stripes are all that separates it from the traffic lane on his left. To his right, Mason must constantly eye the parked cars: “You’ve gotta pay attention or you’re gonna get doored.”
So you might think Mason would be thrilled about St. Paul city officials’ plans to add new, off-street bike trails along the entire length of Summit Avenue.
You’d be wrong. “I don’t want this trail,” Mason said. “I’ll never be on it.”
Summit would be “another orphan trail,” he argued. “Make-work-project, bridge-to-nowhere bulls—. It just stinks, and it doesn’t make sense as infrastructure.”
Summit Avenue is already one of the city’s most-biked routes, and it’s long overdue to be ripped up and reconstructed from the sewer pipes to the road surface. City officials argue that rebuilding, whenever it happens, will be a prime opportunity to make the route more bikeable for cyclists of all ability and comfort levels.
So city officials have drawn up an overview for what that remade street might look like: The Summit Avenue Regional Trail Plan goes before the St. Paul Planning Commission on Friday, and could be headed for a City Council vote by the end of May. If the council adopts it, the city would still need to secure an estimated $100 million for the street project before construction could actually start.
[image_credit] MinnPost photo by Kyle Stokes[/image_credit][image_caption]Almost every day, Jonathan Mason commutes by bike more than 26 miles round-trip to his office in St. Louis Park from his home near St. Paul's Summit Avenue.[/image_caption]
Most of the controversy around the project has revolved around trees: Opponents fear city officials are dangerously underestimating the risks to the lush canopy that shades most of Summit — risks that they say building the bike trail would exacerbate beyond what’s typical for a street repair project.
The bikers who aren’t thrilled about bike lanes
Though some critics have aimed barbs at “spandexed Tour de France wannabes,” leaders of the main opposition group, Save Our Streets, say their coalition is not anti-biker — and as proof, they point to the hardcore cyclists who’ve joined their ranks, like Mason.
Mason actually thinks the new bike trail would be a downgrade: In trying to make Summit more attractive to everyone, Mason believes city officials will wind up with a trail that’s less efficient for experienced bikers like him and more dangerous for casual bikers.
He also feels the city is squandering an opportunity to fund a more ambitious east-west bike route: the long-sought extension of Minneapolis’ Midtown Greenway across the river to St. Paul, which would connect to the bike trail along Ayd Mill Road — a route that, for now, doesn’t really take riders much of anywhere.
But cycling advocates who support the off-street bike lanes say Save Our Streets and opponents like Mason are overlooking the benefits of the Summit route, which would improve the link between downtown and a list of high-traffic destinations along Summit and Grand avenues. Plus, the Greenway extension isn’t a new idea, and even staunch proponents say connecting it to St. Paul would still take years of negotiations with railroads and interagency cooperation.
“It’s a good route that should be explored along with Summit Avenue,” said Brett Hussong, a landscape architect with St. Paul’s Parks & Recreation Department, which is crafting the Summit plan.
That said, “you don’t want to miss a once-in-a-generation opportunity to make a street safer, especially one that goes east-west,” said Soren Jensen, executive director of the Midtown Greenway Coalition. “We strongly support the protected bike lanes on Summit Avenue. We don’t think paint is enough to protect people.”
[image_credit]MinnPost illustration created with StreetMix[/image_credit]What Summit Avenue design would increase biking?
The Summit Avenue trail has become the latest venue for a debate that’s familiar to cyclists about how to build bike facilities that feel safe enough to lure more people into biking, either for recreation or as a means of preventing emission-producing trips in a car.
City surveys show that most cyclists along Summit Avenue don’t use the current, on-street bike lanes. Hussong said that number might improve if the city built new bike facilities with these less-avid users in mind.
So as part of their latest draft regional trail plan, city officials proposed narrowing the roadway and building new, raised bike lanes separated from the roadway by a six-inch curb. On the stretch of Summit east of Lexington, the new design calls for eliminating roughly half of all on-street parking spaces to make room for the new bike trail.
“We need to try to design for the less confident riders and people that are not utilizing [Summit’s bike lanes] at this moment,” said Hussong, “not design for the more confident cyclists that are already using it.”
[image_credit]MinnPost illustration created with StreetMix[/image_credit]
Last year, Sonja Mason served on a technical advisory board for the project. One of her early points of advice, which came from feedback she gathered on another recent trail project: pedestrians and bikers would prefer to choose a path that matches the speed they’re traveling — a “slow” path versus a “fast” path — rather than designated paths for walkers and bikers.
“Bicyclists and walkers wanted the fast bicyclists on the roadway,” Sonja Mason said, “and then a wider sidewalk for people walking their dogs, biking with kids, that cool guy who in the summer rides his adult trike around with the music — they’re slow.”
Sonja Mason said the city could make Summit safe enough to lure even some reluctant cyclists with simpler changes: a wider bike lane, marked in bright green paint; clearer crosswalks at intersections; narrower traffic lanes.
West of Lexington, Summit is already “suitable for all bikers,” Sonja Mason argued. East of Lexington, “it is a commuter route, you should honor the commuters that are there, and then make it the best that it can be within its constraints — without all these sacrifices.”
One of those sacrifices, opponents say, could be trees. The group Save Our Streets hired an independent arborist who estimated that 60% of the avenue’s trees would be “unlikely to recover” from the Summit project. City officials have discounted that claim, saying that reconstructing any street — with or without bike lanes — will always put some trees (between 8% and 15%) at risk.
Short of selecting a completely different route, Sonja Mason thinks city officials could consider a parallel bike boulevard route just one block to the north.
“Portland,” she added, “is just as beautiful as Summit, honestly.”
What would be the safest design for Summit Avenue bikers?
Lauren O’Brien — who lives two blocks off of Summit and bikes on the avenue two or three times per week in the summer — is among those who don’t think off-street paths on Summit are the answer.
“When we’re biking on Summit, yes, we’re sticking within the [on-street bike lane] most of the time,” O’Brien said, “but when there aren’t cars, you can spread out a bit and pass others who are going a little slower, giving them some more respect and space.”
These concerns about speed bottlenecks are a key reason why Jonathan Mason worries that Summit’s proposed off-street trail won’t be useful to him. He needs to pedal fast to efficiently complete a 26-mile round-trip bike commute — and he worries other potential car-to-bike converts might run into similar problems.
He also said an off-street trail “makes you feel safer, but you’re not safer. It’s more stressful for someone who knows the dangers.”
Like some opponents, Mason fears that removing bicycles from the road surface will make the street feel wider, and thus encourage cars on Summit to speed faster. He also worries about greater dangers at intersections with an off-street trail; when bikers use on-street bike lanes, Mason feels drivers are more aware.
Save Our Streets has pointed to a study from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety that the risk of crashes on “one-way, protected bike lanes” was basically the same as biking on a major road with no bike lanes at all.
However, that same study also found that elevated off-street lanes had among the lowest odds of crashes, and other research studies have found these “cycle tracks” are some of the safest designs for cyclists. To many avid bikers, these findings are basically settled science and much more applicable to the Summit proposal.
Opponents of the off-street lanes are “completely misrepresenting the findings of that particular [IIHS] study,” said Zack Mensinger, co-chair of the Saint Paul Bicycle Coalition.
Summit bike trail supporters say opponents’ fears don’t match their experiences cycling.
When Meredith Richmond bikes on the street, “I’m getting threats from the left by distracted drivers veering into the bike lane,” she said, “threats from the center, because trucks park in the bike lane; and threats from getting doored on my right.”
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Richmond, who lives near Summit and bikes to work year-round, said she would feel safer on an off-street trail. She also appreciated the city’s plans for “tabled crossings” at intersections — which raise pedestrian and bike crossings six inches above the road surface on what is essentially a very large speed bump.
Another project supporter, Ben Quam, testified to the St. Paul Parks and Recreation Commission that he’s been hit by cars twice while biking in the street: “It’s an ever-present concern.” He said an off-street bike trail would make Summit safer.
“I’m a parent to a one-and-a-half year-old son. I can’t wait for him to learn how to ride a bike,” Quam said. “But he will not be riding a bike at Summit anytime soon … unless you build this bike path.”
While the controversy may be fresh, city spokesperson Clare Cloyd said the exploration of a regional trail on Summit Avenue dates back to at least 2005, when St. Paul officials asked the Metropolitan Council to designate Summit as a search corridor in a regional park plan.
Supporters say Summit Avenue is a natural pick for an east-west bike route: It connects downtown St. Paul with five of the city’s colleges and many more retail destinations — and it’s also a jewel of the city, with more than 1,500 trees and rows of Victorian homes.
Summit has also had on-street bike lanes since the early 1990s — and some opponents argue that other parts of the city are in greater need of both bike infrastructure, and a new amenity to spur economic development.
This is why Jonathan Mason is excited about the extension of the Midtown Greenway from Minneapolis to the Ayd Mill trail. A 2021 analysis commissioned by the Midtown Greenway Coalition found that extending the trail into St. Paul would generate some $980 million in economic benefits in an area that’s mostly industrial — and perhaps prime for development.
“There’s a huge economic opportunity. What economic opportunities are going to come from this investment in the Summit Trail? Zip. Zero,” Mason said.
Mason suggested a route for connecting this new trail to downtown St. Paul: a quiet, underutilized off-street path that connects to Grace Street, just north of Jefferson Avenue in the West Seventh/Fort Road neighborhood. Mason said funneling riders down this path to the trails along the Mississippi River should be straightforward.
“There’s a better route here — and we can finish the route,” Mason said. “We can make a system that goes from this beautiful Greenway to connect to the path that goes to downtown.”
There’s some renewed interest in the state Legislature to study the Greenway extension idea. But a railroad still owns the bridge that would connect the existing trail to St. Paul — or the tracks between the river and the existing Ayd Mill trail, for that matter — and the government may not have the leverage to force them to sell or share it.
“To me, it’s a totally separate project,” said Mensinger, pushing back on the notion that the Summit and Greenway proposals are competing alternatives: “No one says, ‘Oh well, we can’t make 35W better because we just made 94 better.’ Why does it always have to be some kind of either-or situation if we’re talking about creating safe, accessible routes for cycling?”
Not that I like the overall design anyway, but putting a bike lane on each side of the street is wasteful and makes no sense. Put a slightly wider lane on one side of the street with a dashed line down the middle of it. Mpls’ West River Parkway bike trail is 2-way and about 8-9′ wide.
Two-way bike paths along roads like this are extremely dangerous. Have you ever watched a driver approach a stop sign, intending to turn right? He is ALWAYS looking over his left shoulder to see if he is clear to turn right. If there are no cars, he will likely turn without stopping and without looking to his right. I have seen this so many times that I will never again bike on a path in the opposite direction of traffic. You want to see a real waste of money? Build it that way and watch how most riders will instead use the street going the other way.
It is difficult to believe the city wants to spend $100 M on a controversial project that many do not want, while so many of our city streets are nearly unusable because of numerous potholes which remain infilled – a huge safety issue.
The $100M is for the total street resurface project, which isn’t controversial and in fact has been delayed past its scheduled maintenance.
$12M is the cost to add the bike lanes, some of which is paid with grants.
I also like to ride fast and I 100% support a separated bike lane. If you want to go faster than the going speed on the trail, you ride with traffic in the road. People do it all the time on the river parkways. Mason’s arguments aren’t even logically coherent—he’s claiming both that the trail will be a waste of money and nobody will use it, and that the trail will be so crowded that he won’t be able to ride fast on it. I don’t think you should be giving airtime to unsupported arguments from cranks and passing it off as news.
It’s too bad you can not make your arguments without attacking a person’s character-this aggressiveness is what gives bikers a bad name. I hope everyone sees that for we who are automobile users he is proposing and stating that we will still have cyclists in the car lanes -sounds like a very dangerous situation to me.
Cyclists are *always* allowed in road lanes (with a few very specific exceptions like freeways). It absolutely does not matter if there is an adjacent path or not, it is the cyclists decision. If you’re going to come opine about your beneficence and superiority as an “automobile user”, the very least you could do is know the rules of the road.
By the way, calling someone’s arguments logically incoherent is not an attack on their character, it is an attack on their flawed arguments. Let me know if you need an example to help you understand the difference and I’d be happy to attack your character to demonstrate.
I have to agree with Mason in this article. I don’t commute by bike anymore (I work from home now), but when I did, I generally found it frustrating that bike infrastructure was being created for people who don’t actually bike much, children and tourists and recreational users, rather than the people who are heavy users of that infrastructure. Ben Quam mentions he won’t let his kid bike down Summit—to my mind, a bike lane is like a street, it is not a place where children play. This is nearly as absurd as complaining that he can’t let his son drive down 94.
I would also echo Mason’s point about intersections. The majority of accidents occur at intersections, and the best defense a cyclist has at an intersection is to be visible to car drivers, and to watch out for cars that might cross the path. Separating the bike lane with a row of parked cars makes cyclists harder for car drivers to see, and it makes it more difficult for a cyclist to see what cars are doing. So Mason is right when he says that separated bike lanes like this create an illusion of safety but actually make things worse.
Summit is always in awful condition. The separated path is a much better design for this reason alone. There are orders of magnitude less wear and tear on a dedicated bike path.
I’m truly torn about questions like this. I want more bike infrastructure, period, but I don’t love elevated, separated bike lines myself.
I am an experienced biker, but I don’t wear spandex or clip shoes. I don’t ride an e-bike. I guess I travel on the faster, more confident end. When I have been on elevated bike lanes I feel uncomfortable. It’s harder for me to navigate baby strollers and people wandering looking at their phone or the trees than it is for me to navigate car traffic. I know many people that I bike with find street intimidating and obviously the potential dangers are greater. Me knee jerk response is to support the separated lanes, but I am wary that they will be better.
The unstated confusion is that bike paths and bike lanes are not the same thing. Users that want kids to be able to safely use the bike lanes on summit want them to be bike paths. Inversely, bike paths that are appealing to slower cyclists are unappealing to faster cyclists. Then, when bike paths run along roads, car drivers expect all cyclists to be on the paths.
A commenter above notes west river road in minneapolis. This path draws users of all abilities & use types. On busy days many cyclists move to the road, because passing slower trail users gets tedious. But the road has no shoulder, so car drivers get impatient with the road cyclists. This creates dangerous passing situations.
In short, there’s not an easy answer. On the immediate topic, as a faster rider I prefer the on road bike lane on summit to the proposed trail. And, frankly, separated bike paths in residential areas don’t make a lot of sense, particularly if you’re maintaining separated bike & pedestrian paths.
As this article points out, the St. Paul Bike Coalition does not represent the view of all cyclists, many of whom prefer to keep the existing bike lane. All the proposed separate lane will do is provide a place for casual cyclists, pedestrians, scooters, and dog walkers to saunter and avoid each other while serious cyclists will continue to use the street which will no longer have a protected lane for them.
The problem with the proposed lane is that it crosses a road intersection every block and each of these intersections has a stop sign behind the bike trail and far from Summit itself. Motorists will tend to not stop at the sign, but cross the trail until they get to Summit to check for cars. This means that bikers on the trail will have to slow down and check for oncoming cars at every single intersection.
The section of Lexington Ave, from Larpenteur to Country Road E, is a case in point. I bike commuted along this stretch for nearly 20 years and can attest that cars almost never stop at the sign, but cruse over the trail and stop at Lexington. They actually block the trail while waiting for cars to clear on Lexington. The proposed trail on Summit will be the same, only with ten times more traffic.
Couple points:
First I think Mack and Mason are spot on about intersections being the most dangerous. I bike Summit 3 or 4 times a week now for a total of 700 to 1,000 miles every summer. I have seen more bodies on the pavement at Cretin and Summit than anywhere else- several are CPWs (cell phone walkers) and some bikers. It is a scary intersection as a biker with pedestrians ignoring the lights and being disconnected from their surroundings with cell phones- it is like dodge ’em cars. Think you need a tunnel for St Thomas students or phone blocker in that intersection. Don’t see proposal helping that intersection.
Second, I was extremely disappointed our city mayor/council did not do the AYD Mill Road or Short Line as planned. It is really disconnected from everything and I have yet to use it. I think the city did not want to work with the state or feds to get the grants to connect it to the Greenway. What a disappointment! What a waste to leave this disconnected trail in the middle of our city. Poor planning or unwilling to plan does not help bikers or pedestrians on this trail. Really wish they had done the whole project as planned.
Third, I simply think finishing the AYD or Short line bike route to Greenway makes more sense now that part of it is done. It is a better use of very limited resources that our mayor complains about (new city sales tax and double digit property tax increases). Why? Current Summit Avenue is mostly separated with blvd. and well marked. Losing the trees due to disease cuts recently has already made it look worse. Can’t imagine losing more trees on this iconic road. I prefer to bike in same direction as traffic-ideally with opposing traffic separated like on much of Summit with a boulevard.
I think one of the prime reasons the city didn’t take the extra time it would have required to work with the Feds and the State on grants for Ayd Mill is the road was in absolutely hideous shape. It was nearly unusable, and getting worse the the day. Something had to be done, and fast. I seem to remember reading somewhere it was sucking up to 20% of St Paul’s road repair budget.
The basic issue here is that we are catering to a very vocal minority at the expense of the rest of society. I believe the planning departments are populated with bikers and so we are getting something that has the appearance of grassroots but is in fact opposed by the vast silent unrepresented majority. Council members will pretend that this has ‘been through the process” and take the easy vote to approve it against the will of the people. We also need to answer the question of snow removal as they have found in Mpls that it is impossibly difficult with people being cut off from their driveways and parked cars with large deposits of snow unable to be removed all along the route. Also, if the fast bikers are going to be in the car lanes maybe we should make that illegal where there is a bike lane because this is a very dangerous situation. We already have enough walkers who don’t use the sidewalks but walk in the streets.
Generations of building for cars, which has resulted in pedestrian and bike hostile fast, wide roads pretty much makes driving the only choice for what you call the “vast silent unrepresented majority”. That’s the same “vast silent unrepresented majority” that almost all of our infrastructure is built for – how sad they are so unrepresented.
City streets are not freeways, they are mixed use for all vehicles.
I am curious about snow removal though; an elevated bike lane seems to make that more difficult.
Depends on how it’s prioritized. In minneapolis bike trails are often plowed will before side streets. But pedestrian paths aren’t plowed, so many bike paths become shared multi-use paths in winter. On-road bike paths tend to disappear as snowpiles encroach on the street & parked cars encroach on bike paths.
People on summit ought to ask what the snow removal expectations are for the various proposals.
I live a few blocks off of Summit at Dale and drive it most days. I have been following the discussion but don’t have a particularly strong opinion for any given solution. I do, however, have a good feel for how Summit get used. Car and bike commuters, casual bikers, runners, sightseers, walking tour groups, limos, dog walkers, homeowners, renters, churchgoers, students, etc. etc. There is no single solution that will satisfy all users; everyone needs to compromise. Cars can’t drive as fast – take the I94, Grand, Selby, St Clair, or some other route or stick with 25 MPH on Summit. Fast bikers, use the lanes we have (I like the idea of clearer paint and marking). Casual bikers, use the wide sidewalk or as mentioned earlier, take Portland, Holly, or any other East-West side street. When I was a kid, I never biked on a main road unless I had to. Homeowners, trees may be lost anyhow as the street is redone for all users (including users of sewer and water). Be thankful you don’t live where the Ash trees have all been removed.
It seems like we’ve lost the notion that in public life you never get 100% what you want; there is always compromise. It is great to have the debate and duscussion, but we all need to get Summit fixed as soon as possible so we can all enjoy a jewel of Saint Paul.
“When I was a kid, I never biked on a main road unless I had to. ”
I’m an adult comfortable riding in traffic when I have to – and I still avoid biking on main roads. Why take the chance? Too many idiot / inattentive drivers out there. Or, as they put it in motorcycling class, “Ride like 90% of drivers don’t see you – and the other 10% want to kill you.”
The proposed trail claims to be a ‘linking trail’, by Met Council definition, linking the Sam Morgan Trail along the river and Mississippi River Blvd. The segment that is the actual link between the Sam Morgan Trail downtown and John Ireland Blvd/Summit Ave, by the Cathedral, travels up Eagle Parkway and Kellogg Blvd. It rises 168 feet over 0.75 miles (by comparison – Ramsey St. hill rises only 129 feet) through dense pedestrian and vehicle traffic around Xcel Center. The 8 to 80 crowd, for whom the City claims this is being built, will not be able to navigate this steep grade. Difficult grade was one of the reasons the city gave for rejecting other potential routes. This plan fails the linking trail test criteria.
Um, height is not grade. Ramsey hill is a 10% grade, 129 ft vertical over 1270 horizontal. 168 feet over 3/4 mile is only 4% grade.
Hi Gary, glad to hear your voice here. I saw the video proposing the Short line/Grace Street idea. I agree that Kellogg is dangerous as it is; has steep grades all the way down Eagle Parkway. And yes, the steep grade precluded consideration of other routes. There is yet one more route to the Sam Morgan trail: Jackson Street. Jackson, Sibley, and 10th street already have separated lanes, per the Capitol City Bikeway. And Kellogg is slated to be developed as such, all the way to Union Station.
Everyone is hoping that the Short Line Spur will one day become a trail. It shows up on the newly revised Bike Plan in the “some day” map. Until the CP rail agrees to sell it, that’s not an honest proposal. But as anyone who has ever used a map will know, there is more that one way to get from A to B. For many people who don’t consider Summit’s current configuration to be safe, the Summit Regional Trail Plan will be an excellent one.
Liked Andrew’s comment about minority even though I am in it as an avid biker. I do see the city ignoring people as most of the people around Hamline Library want it upgraded not torn down for a one story suburban model- city ignores want we want or having great discussions like this one. I am glad current city officials were not in power dealing with Landmark Center, St Paul Hotel, downtown Library, Union Depot, or they would be leveled.
Also liked Andy’s comment about discussion is good for give and take. I really agree about the clearer markings- ESPECIALLY AT THE INTERSECTIONS. Trees- usually utilities are buried under street deep enough to avoid the heavy truck weights so think it is mostly a non-issue. So I hope we will continue to promote the trees on this iconic street. Trees are one of the jewels of the Twin Cities.
Protected bike facilities aren’t for those of us who are already riding. It’s about creating an environment where more people can use bikes for transportation.
Also, why do we discuss these things like we aren’t 50 years behind the rest of the world? The Dutch and the Danes don’t paint a stripe on the side of the road and call it a bike facility. This stuff has been figured out already.
I appreciate the nuance in the above comments. I’m not a biker, but rather a person who bikes. I value good biking facilities, but also an urban setting that preserves mature trees and is not dominated by parallel ribbons of hard surface. There are multiple public values to be reconciled here.
As an experienced rider, I’ve never (aside from potholes) found the Summit Ave bike lanes wanting in any regard. I agree with commenters that a separated trail in a setting with many cross-streets is both more subject to braking interruptions, and more dangerous, than sharing the same road surface with automobiles. I would offer Johnson Parkway as an analogous setting. The stopping and starting just getting down that separated trail is an aggravation, and I’ve had multiple near misses there from oblivious drivers turning off of Johnson, or coming from side streets and blocking the trail.
As for less-experienced riders, I’d suggest just giving one or more of the streets parallel to Summit a good bike boulevard treatment, perhaps with operable signals at Cretin, Cleveland, Fairview, etc. I’ll often ride parallel to Summit, rather than on Summit, and these are very pleasant streets to ride on. If I were riding with young kids, or were an inexperienced rider, I wouldn’t see the need to ride on Summit. Summit doesn’t need to accommodate a customized facility for every mode of movement.
The raised bike lane will be more dangerous than the painted lanes on the street. With a multitude of cyclists of different abilities, there is no place to veer away from an impending crash.
Intersections will be another problem. When on the street and making a left turn, one waits for a break in the traffic and moves to the left lane to turn. When on the raised trail, that is not possible.
I often resist some of the historical preservation efforts, but support it in this case. Summit Avenue is a priceless street, due in large part to all its trees.
I have seen this process before. Promises are made that trees will be saved, and those promises are quickly forgotten one construction commences.
Unfortunately, the evil cycling activists have greater strength with a city council that easily caves to activist mobs.
Take all the pictures you can, because Summit will be destroyed once this project begins.
When the lawn signs went up last summer, warning of an existential threat to Summit Avenue from an as-yet unspecified plan to improve the bike lanes, I found the use of a nautical distress signal (SOS) to be absurd.
Steve, you have upped the ante, in calling me “evil,” because I advocate for separated trail facilities for cyclists. Your accusation would be offensive, if it weren’t pathetic. Here’s your chance to tone it down.
Trail opponents can be understood to want to preserve the status quo, because change is unnerving and scary. If that’s true for you, it doesn’t make you a bad person. My choice to replace driving with cycling and transit use is, I feel, an honorable one. Because the consequences of preserving the status quo indefinately will be much more destructive than what you fear.
I entered the Parks & Rec.’s public forum a couple of weeks ago with a strong opinion of the best course of action (eliminate all parking and simply widen the bike lane) and left mulling five points inspired by others’ comments:
1.) Most importantly – this planning process was deeply flawed. While many institutional stakeholders were engaged early in the process, a public forum was not allowed until the plan was at ‘90%.’
2.) Other paths are possibly better. Why not Montreal or Portland Avenue? (I live on Portland and love the idea of it being a dedicated bike route). The analysis in the published ‘90% Plan’ for why these other alternatives were discarded isn’t robust enough to indicate that other routes aren’t viable.
3.) Summit Avenue is a street. How did the notion of it becoming a ‘Regional Bike Path’ come to be? (Thank you Stokes for some insight. I’m curious about even more of the details….)
4.) We shouldn’t be trying to appease all biking populations with one path – they have different preferences and behaviors. Bike one/two biking populations, and cater to their needs.
5.) The indirect costs are not being discussed enough. How much wealth exists in the trees alone? What is the monetary value of 950 mature trees in a prime location? How would property values change – and as a result tax revenue, by making Summit less beautiful?
(A corollary: it would be helpful to see usage data on different bike routes. I rarely seen a bikers on other bike lanes throughout the city – Why not? Am I driving during off-peak biking hours?)
As decision-makers consider their votes in the coming month, I hope they will choose to scrap this plan and begin again with what should have been the very first event: a public forum.
” it would be helpful to see usage data on different bike routes.”
Strava.com has a heatmap that shows you the most popular routes that people have tracked on strava. Summit is very well travelled by bikers between the river and Lexington or so.
As one might expect, the most well travelled routes appear to be the paths around the lakes and along Minnehaha creek & the river. Plus the greenway.
I helped advocate for the Summit Avenue bike lanes back in the late 1980s when Summit west of Lexington was two traffic lanes in both directions and was like a freeway. Since installed, traffic speeds decreased substantially; the bike lanes have been very successful and the lane markings have been subsequently refined to add some buffering. I have seen bikers of almost “all abilities” using these lanes. East of Lexington is more challenging, but if you remove one side of parking, you could also make these bike lanes buffered.
By putting in multi-use off road trails or cycle tracks or glorified sidewalks and not providing on-road bike lanes, you are essentially forcing higher speed recreational and commuter bicyclists up on these paths with slower users (or further inciting motorists and causing safety issues if bikers have to share the traffic lane). Add to that the awkward street and driveway crossings, reduced sight lines, and the uncertainties of snowplowing and maintenance. And those not comfortable with wide bike lanes can use side streets or the sidewalks. The very admirable goal of getting more people to occasionally bike should not be at the expense of the many avid and serious cyclists who have been using these bike lanes (mostly) safely for years.
P.S…. There are folks who are not comfortable driving on freeways, so do we reduce speeds to 35-40mph to placate those occasional reluctant freeway users? I’d think the regular freeway drivers would be adamantly opposed…
The culture-war framing of the Summit reconstruction distracts from critical context. Why is this street being rebuilt? Why is the city proposing this design? Let’s start with the reminder that the parkway and all the underground sewer and water systems need total reconstruction to provide basic services to the people who live along Summit Avenue, no matter the street design.
But that doesn’t get at the context that ought to be centered when discussing the reconstruction design.
The Summit bike lanes, as they exist now, are dangerous. Multiple people, hard-core lycra-wearing cyclists among them, have died in the intersections. The proposed design uses what research has shown makes streets safer for everyone. It’s a basic city responsibility to build streets designed to protect people’s lives, in an era when more and more people are being killed in traffic violence, also if a few atypically powerful bicyclists don’t like that design.
There’s also well-documented pent-up demand for all-ages bike routes. Most folks don’t ride because our streets are dangerous (see the point above). Again and again, we see that when we build all-ages routes, people who don’t ride currently ride them. I commuted on the Summit bike lanes for years, I found them unpleasant and sometimes scary but fine-enough for me, but what I want is to be able to bike to Grand Avenue destinations with my elderly mom and under-10 kids.
This sort of design change, and inviting more people out of cars, is key to hitting our climate change goals. Transportation is the biggest source of climate emission reduction goals. We can reduce those enough only if we collectively walk, bike, and take transit more and drive a bit less. Until we have a network of safe and pleasant bike/walk routes, it’s unrealistic to expect people to make those shifts. Just as we need both major corridors like Lexington Avenue and neighborhood streets like Portland Avenue, people biking need a network. This route is one route in the network we need. The Greenway-Ayd Mill connection that’s supposedly the alternative to Summit is another part of that network. It’s not either or.
Without this context, readers cannot understand this story, and as written the context is absent.
Great discussion! Thanks, everyone. Would that we could have had this level of information, insight and ideas back in the day (2005?!), when the regional trail idea for Summit was apparently first raised.
I appreciated the distinction made above, between bike paths and bike lanes. Let’s talk about trails, too. When I think of trails, I think of rural and suburban locales–not the heart of an urban area. It seems some long-distance bikers want a bike freeway through St. Paul. I’m glad to see the alternative presented in this article.
I’d like to hear more from walkers, too. Where’s the St. Paul Pedestrian Coalition when we need it?
All due respect to Mr. Mason for his dedication to what seems like a monster bike commute. I wish there were more folk who show that kind of commitment to non-automotive transit.
And that’s the point, isn’t it? St. Paul says it wants to cut vehicle emissions by 40% within the next 17 years. We’re not gonna get there if we count on hard-core cyclists who are already using whatever infrastructure is available to them. Like a lot of other cities, we’re trying to cast a wider net to lure less-confident riders to leave their cars in the driveway and give their bikes a try.
Portland? Seriously? Nothing is stopping anyone from using Portland right now to ride between the same two points. Except Ayd Mill Road, which it doesn’t cross. And the University of St. Thomas, where it dead-ends. And major unsignalized intersections: Snelling, Lexington, Dale, Fairview, Hamline, etc. And zig-zags at Victoria Street. And that weird two-block stretch where traffic goes one-way on either side of Chatsworth (what’s up with that?). Other than that, I can’t see why thousands of daily bike commuter’s wouldn’t rather ride Portland than Summit. Ok, yes I can, because that is a dumb idea.
Summit will be rebuilt, or else risk seeing sinkholes, potholes, and water main breaks from its crumbling infrastructure. The risk to trees comes from the ensuing disturbance of tree roots; a fact that trail opponents know darn well. If the bike trail component is omitted from the plan, the loss of trees would be the same.
To add to the mix: beware trendy new street designs that won’t work for the people who use them — see what happened with Bryant Ave S in Mpls — designed for the designers, but it does not work for the people who live there and use it every single day — stuck fire engines & garbage trucks, no planning for snow… Summit has different issues, but the designers should not decide, the users should be heard…
Well, I can’t tell anyone what to do with Summit Ave. but I might have some interesting things to say about cycling in general, and research/design.
Back in the 1980’s a uniquely American cycling mentality and movement emerged from John Forester’s notion of vehicular cycling, or bike driving. Forester’s book: “Effective Cycling” was embraced by the male dominated cycling “culture” of the era, but it was based on a lot of bogus observations and garbage science. Vehicular cyclists like Forester actively opposed bike trails and infrastructure based on the theory that cyclists were safer and more “effective” (whatever that means) when they ride on the streets as-if they’re automobiles. Vehicular Cycling (VC) has been thoroughly discredited as “safe” riding style. That doesn’t mean no one should be riding on the streets but the overwhelming body of research has confirmed that separate bike infrastructure is safer. I personally think VC is one reason the US ended up with some of the highest cycling accident and fatality rates in the world. My point is that I think this resistance to bike paths on Summit Ave. is a remnant of VC mentalities and styles.
It’s important to note that until recently (the last 10-15 years) cycling safety research has been riddled with poor design and methodological errors. The Insurance Institute Study referenced here isn’t a peer reviewed publication, that doesn’t mean its garbage, but it’s not a gold standard analysis. ER based studies of bicycle accidents and injuries like this have a particularly dodgy history of conclusions for a variety of reasons I won’t delve into. One of the more obvious problems with relying exclusively on ER patients is that you might be self-selecting subjects who are prone to accidents and injury for some reason no matter where they ride. Given the fact that far and away a vast majority of cyclists never end up the ER with cycling related injury, THIS may not be the group you want to use to make infrastructure decisions.
The IIS study calculates odds ratios (OR’s) for different bike lanes compared to some streets, and that might tell us how protective some bike lanes are by comparison, but I can’t tell you why these people crashed, and it certainly can’t confirm that those who crash are crashing BECAUSE they’re riding in a bike lane; for those conclusions you would need more data and analysis that isn’t part of this study, you would need to rule out factors this study doesn’t even consider. This is why claims that “casual” riders are in more danger on bike trails and lanes isn’t really supported by the data or analysis.
One factor this study doesn’t consider is speed, how fast were the cyclists riding? This brings us back to the Summit Ave. design. You will note that many the cyclists who oppose bike lanes are those who want to ride “fast”. We almost never have this conversation but it IS possible to ride too fast on a bicycle. It’s entirely possible that unsafe speeds are a major contributor to bicycle accidents so attempting to accommodate high speed riding may be the REAL design error. Sure, it’s a free country, people can ride as fast as they can if they want, but it’s not a good idea for a variety of reasons. Eliminating bike lanes in order to accommodate speedy riders is probably a serious design error.
So many of these comments are thoughtful and polite. Thank you, citizens, for the opportunity at respectful dialogue. As mentioned above, the main reason my husband and I agreed to be interviewed is that we felt that the voices of the biking community was being presented as a monolith, when reality is far from that. I recognize some do, but not all bikers favor this plan.
I had three things I wanted to add to the discussions here.
(1) I’m quoted in the above article and so I wanted to add some background to the Portland Avenue “bypass” route suggestion.
The by-pass is not an either/or, and it’s a short section only — not for the full length of Summit. The entire length of Summit would continue to have on-street lanes, which would be improved by narrowing the driving lanes and adding that space to the bike facility, making an as-wide-a-buffer as the existing roadway allows.
West of Lexington, Summit has wide bike lanes that were re-striped in 2019 or 2020 to a separation buffer. (Do you remember the 15 foot wide traffic lanes? I’ve happily almost forgotten them.) These on-street lanes meet NACTO, MNDOT and Met Council guidelines for all users, without widening the road and risking trees and history; without pitting “fast riders” against “slow riders.”
Similarly, east of Western (headed to the cathedral), the oldest bluff section of Summit features very low traffic levels; in short, these existing on-street lanes also meet NACTO, MNDOT and Met Council guidelines. To Ray W’s comments, it is wasteful to spend $2.8 million per mile for a trail when cost-effective $30,000 per mile bike lanes meet requirements.
The only problematic section is one mile from Western to Lexington, where traffic levels would seem to warrant greater separation due to traffic level. However, traffic level and speed limit are not meant to be the only two criteria. They are a starting point, and MN-Dot’s BFDM (Bicycle Field Design Manual) has further guidance. Summit is what what the manual calls “constrained conditions.” It has limited right-of-way width, and complicated land use context. This one mile section is the most constrained of all of Summit: narrow right of way, a triple (location, state, federal) historic district, plus the highest density on Summit with the most diverse land use; unsurprisingly it has the highest parking utilization along Summit. For “constrained conditions,” MN-Dot guidelines specify either downgrading to the “next best facility” and/or considering a “parallel” route. For Summit, both these options are great options that work in context. Keeping and improving the on-street lanes would provide that “next best” facility, for continued use by fast or weekend bikers or anyone else. The Portland bypass, running from Western to Griggs Street Bike Boulevard (just one block west of Lexington) would provide a low traffic, low stress bypass for leisurely bikers, rush hour avoidance, or anyone else. It’s a pretty simple solution. For those who might know, Summit and Portland line up at Western, creating an easy transition (just add an all-way stop sign). And, I stand by my quote above, that section of Portland has gorgeous historic homes and churches, including the Cass Gilbert’s St Clements and the Bookman Rowhouses, to name just two.
(2) In response to Paul U. above, I appreciate your comments about speed. Minneapolis has 10 mph sped limit on off-street trails for good reason — a cyclist struck and killed a pedestrian. But not planning for those who wish to bike faster than 10 mph, whether that’s speedy sport cyclists or e-bikers is not the correct solution. If we want to support cyclists and the new micro-mobility, we needs to plan for fast bikers.
I also wanted to address your concerns with the IIHS study is one of the few studies that did evaluate how and why crashes occurred, and it did delve into contributing factors to crashes, and it does address context factors in the wide spread of the “odds ratio” risk between separated facilities. One of the key factors identified was the frequency of junctions: street crossings and driveways. Here’s three key quotes from IIHS Study:
“Increased density of junctions increase the risk of bicyclist-motor vehicle crashes because they introduce additional opportunities for conflict (Li et al., 2017; Pulugurtha and Thakur, 2015; Siddiqui et al., 2012; Vandenbulcke et al., 2014; Wei and Lovegrove, 2013). Protected bike lanes with heavy separation in this study had fewer junctions than those with light separation, which likely contributed to their lower risk.”
“… a new IIHS study shows that protected bike lanes vary in terms of injury risk. Factors such as the number of driveways or alleys intersecting the lanes and whether the lanes are one- or two-direction affect the likelihood of a crash or fall.”
“Future research should systematically examine the characteristics that reduce risk in protected lanes to guide design. Planners should minimize conflict points when choosing where to place protected bike lanes.”
Summit is an existing context, a city platted with a grid-iron street layout. The conflict points are there: a cross street every 600 feet (4 per mile), plus over 150 driveways for houses, apartments, businesses, schools, churches and institutions. The side streets are higher traffic than most neighborhood streets, with folks accessing Grand from Summit and vice versa. Junctions are the main safety reason why Summit should not have a sidewalk level trail. It will be less safe.
(3) I also wanted to acknowledge Phillip G’s concerns for pedestrians. Summit is heavily used by pedestrians, more so than by cyclists, yet they are left out of the “regional trail” discussion completely. I participated in the DAC meetings and several of us tried to no avail to get pedestrians included in planning process. Could the sidewalks be improved as part of the trail? The wide sidewalks east of Dale are a rare and wonderful gift. They allow easy passing, side-by-side conversations between parents pushing babies in strollers, easy passing for Summit’s many runners, and plenty of space for parents to teach kids to ride bikes—that’s what we did when our kids were little. Why can’t sidewalk improvements be part of the discussion? Why can’t improvements to the running path on the island medians, just a simple soft surface permeable and level pathway be part of the trail?
This process is right now at a false dichotomy, this one flawed idea or nothing. It didn’t have to be this way. With a little more flexibility and creativity planners could have been presenting a one-of-kind regional trail that fit the historic, urban context, with Summit’s luscious summertime shade protected, its historic integrity preserved, parking access for renters and tourists and the disabled retained. A solution that truly put safety first for bikes and peds with evidence-based context-specific design. A design like that would have been largely free from acrimonious controversy. I hope it can still happen. Summit is too important to lose.
Here is a link to the full Study:
https://www.iihs.org/topics/bibliography/ref/2193