Frances Bula header image 2
← →

Minneapolis Adventures, Part 1: Bikeshare

June 27th, 2012 · 4 Comments

I’ve never been to this city much beloved of urbanists, ranking right up there with Portland as the coolest place that is so much better than whatever city we are currently living in.

So I’m waiting to be blown away. So far, wafting along pleasantly.

We took light rail in from the airport to our hotel: an easy walk from baggage claim, not too much of a Mensa test to buy tickets (something that I find often happens in other cities, where you can’t use cash on the bus or tram but you can’t figure out where to buy the tickets or tokens), tickets only $1.75, a 22-minute ride to our stop where I got to overhear three Somali/Ethiopean/? teens in traditional dress using the f-bomb and talking about their messed-up love lives at one end of the car and a bunch of very Norwegian-ancestry Minnesotans talking about their Harold Stassen campaign-button collections at the other end. Cool intro to the demographics.

After hiding out from the 100-degree heat for the afternoon, walked two blocks to the NiceBike station and, again, managed to rent two bikes without needing a computer-science degree. It was $6 for a daypass, with lots of warnings that the price escalates steeply with each half hour and, if we wanted bikes for longer, we should go to a rental shop. (Plus our hotel had given us the NikeBike map of bike streets, trails and lanes around the city.)

And off we went through downtown and then onto the Cedar Creek trail, yes, helmetless, as were most of the people we saw on the NiceBikes, though the many many commuters and racing-jersey cyclists were not. We wound our way through an industrial area and alongside several highways and eventually to a more forested areas down to one of the lakes for a swim, then hopped back onto the trail and then the Midtown Greenway — an AMAZING route that is separated completely from the regular street system and takes you all the way through town.

Finding a place to park the bikes at the end proved to be beyond our map-reading skills, though. The little dot was deceiving and we ended up circling around quite a bit.

However, thanks to getting lost in that part of Uptown, we discovered a gem of a small Italian restaurant where we sat outside (no railings to separate us drinkers from the regular folks! just a table and chairs and the sidewalk! and a bench along the side of the building where people could just drink if they wanted!) and had a beer and lobster risotto and roasted fresh radishes in the warm warm late-evening air. Not in Fargo any more, folks, no sir.

Categories: Uncategorized

  • Agustin

    Sounds like a great way to spend the day! I’d like to visit Minneapolis one day.

  • Bill Lee

    I thought the tram fare was higher from Airport.

    At least buy some leather cycling gloves while there. Small, light and they protect the hands in a spill. Not nice to type with a pencil with a ruined hand.
    Checked Calhoun’s Bikes for helmets?

    Closest big city to Winnipeg, (they don’t count flyover cities as Regina in leaping to Calgary) and why bookstores are so poor in the ‘Peg, but great in Minneapolis. Often a good (long) drive down for book shopping after the Winnipeg Hospital Auxiliary Polo Park book sale.

    It’s nice now, but consider doing all that in Winter (-20 C) and 30 cm of snow and the reason for the famed Skyways downtown linking the towers with 2 storey up elevated enclosed catwalks. You are in the hottest two months. Usually about 32 C, (announced as 90 F so you feel hotter down there)
    No sales tax on clothing. Mall of the Americas in Bloomington and July 1 new higher duty free limits on return to Canada.
    Caribou coffee chain a bit better that *$.

    You saw some Ethiopians but they have the largest concentrations of Hmong (mountain Vietnam people) in the U.S.
    http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/27/2743000.html
    [If you don’t cross over to bucolic St. Paul]

    Households, 2006-2010 167,141
    Bachelor’s degree or higher, pct of persons age 25+, 2006-2010 43.6%
    Mean travel time to work (minutes), workers age 2006-2010 16+ (minutes) 22.1
    Median household income 2006-2010 $46,075
    Per capita money income in past 12 months (2010 dollars) 2006-2010 $29,551
    Persons below poverty level, percent, 2006-2010 22.7%
    Women-owned firms, percent, 2007 32.1%
    Total number of firms, 2007 39,273

    Persons under 18 years, percent, 2010 20.2%
    Persons 65 years and over, Persons 65 years and over, percent, 2010 8.0%, 12.9% in State
    Female persons, percent, 2010 49.7%
    White persons, percent, 2010 63.8%, 85.3% in State
    Black persons, 2010 18.6%, 5.2% in State
    American Indian and Alaska Native persons, percent, 2010 2.0% 1.1% in State
    Asian persons, percent, 2010 5.6%
    ——-
    St. Paul
    Population, 2010 285,068
    White persons, White persons, percent, 2010 60.1%
    Black persons, Black persons, percent, 2010 15.7%
    American Indian and Alaska Native persons, percent, 2010 1.1%
    Asian persons, Asian persons, percent, 2010 15.0%
    Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander, percent, 2010 0.1%

    The population of Minneapolis has declined since its peak of 521,718 in 1950. The U.S. Census Bureau reported 382,578 in 2010, down from 382,618 in the 2000 Census. In contrast, the Minneapolis-Saint Paul metropolitan area including the suburbs doubled in population since 1950 and now has approximately 3.5 million residents.
    Increased housing production such as the construction of condominiums has brought Downtown Minneapolis’ population to a little over 30,000 inhabitants.
    From 1800 to about 1950, Minneapolis hovered around 90.0% white.
    Asians historically did not have a significant presence, but there are roughly 17,700 Asians in Minneapolis today, and their influence is growing. Their history began with labor workers working on railroads in the late 19th century who resettled in Minneapolis. These were mostly southern Chinese and in time brought families and others seeking fortune. The 20th century saw movement from other parts of East Asia including Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, and Korea. U.S. events in that region resulted in a greater influx of these populations, though Minneapolis only saw a small portion of the immigration, as most of these immigrants settled in California. Chinese dominated the group until the Vietnam War generated a large refugee migration into South Minneapolis in the 1970s. This followed with Southeast Asians who experienced the effects of other U.S. incidents in that area. The HMONG nomadic clans (from Vietnam area) were offered settlement and though most of that ethnic group went to St. Paul, Minneapolis received a significant share. As a result, the 2000 Census reported 13,883 people who marked “Other Asian” in the tic box, half of the Asian American group, while Chinese numbered at 2,447 people

  • Bill Lee

    via the sometimes interesting https://twitter.com/Transport_ELS

    “Estimating use of non-motorized infrastructure: Models of bicycle and pedestrian traffic in Minneapolis, MN”
    Landscape and Urban Planning
    Volume 107, Issue 3, 15 September 2012, Pages 307–316

    by Steve Hankeya, b, Corresponding author contact information, E-mail the corresponding author,
    Greg Lindseya, Xize Wanga, Jason Boraha, Kristopher Hoffa, Brad Utechta, Zhiyi Xua.
    from : a Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota, United States b Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Minnesota, United States
    Received 19 October 2011. Revised 5 June 2012. Accepted 6 June 2012. Available online 2 July 2012.
    http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2012.06.005
    http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169204612001910

    Abstract

    Traffic counts and models for describing use of non-motorized facilities such as sidewalks, trails, and bike lanes are generally unavailable. Because officials lack the data and tools needed to estimate use of facilities, their ability to make evidence-based choices among investment alternatives is limited. This paper (1) summarizes counts of cyclists and pedestrians between 2007 and 2010 at 259 locations in the city of Minneapolis, MN, (2) develops scaling factors for estimating 12-h (6:30 am–6:30 pm) “daily” counts from hourly counts, (3) presents models for estimating non-motorized traffic using ordinary least squares and negative binomial regressions, (4) validates each model using bicycle and pedestrian counts for 85 locations, and (5) estimates non-motorized traffic for every street in Minneapolis, MN. Across all locations, mean pedestrian traffic (51/h) exceeded mean bicycle traffic (38/h) by 35%. One-hour counts were highly correlated with 12-h “daily” counts suggesting that planners may focus on short time scales without compromising data quality. Significant correlates of non-motorized traffic vary by mode and model and include weather (temperature, precipitation), neighborhood socio-demographics (household income, education), built environment characteristics (land use mix), and street (or bicycle facility) type. When controlling for these factors, bicycle traffic increased over time and was higher on streets with bicycle facilities than without (and highest on off-street facilities). Our models can be used by policy-makers to estimate non-motorized traffic for streets where counts are unavailable or to estimate changes in non-motorized traffic associated with other changes in the built environment (e.g., adding bicycle lanes or changing land use).

  • Frances Bula

    @Bill. You”re a genius. I was looking for a study exactly like this for an upcoming story.