Investigating the effects of bike lanes in Minneapolis

> The economic impact of pulling people OUT OF A CAR and INTO THEIR environment is perhaps under-appreciated.

All you have to do is stop and take a look at pictures where you see lots of people riding bikes or walking near businesses and then contrast that with a 4-lane road to get an idea of how much more economic activity is generated locally for a business.

If you don't have an automobile industry (and even if you do) you are pillaging your own economic well-being by taking thousands of dollars from families and forcing them to send it to far away places that make cars and oil and gas when they could be spending it in their own neighborhoods and towns.

It's fucking crazy that we do this. I don't know how much more emphasis I can put on it. Requiring people to drive a car 20 miles, 40 minutes, whatever to just live their lives is so stupid it defies belief. That's not to say you can't have a car (or two). It's to say that we shouldn't design all of our towns and cities around moving cars around instead of people. We're literally making ourselves poor trying to do this.

69% doesn’t seem like the kinds of gains you’d hope for. If you’re going from unsafe infrastructure to protected bike paths I’d want to see a tripling of ridership.

Not really surprised. The foundation was already there. Maybe 15-20 years ago Minneapolis started to build bike lanes along old railways and trolly lines. Some of the paths spanned the city and became thoroughfares totally isolated from traffic. The city had a good thing and kept at it. Good for them.

Worth mentioning is that the city has grown in population. That was designed by previous mayoral campaigns to bring in industry. Lots of suburban folks also started moving back into the city too in the 2010s, so demographically the city was ripe to see more cycling. There’s also just a better culture for exercise and outdoor activity in Minneapolis. It used to be one of the fittest cities.

I’m not sure this could work everywhere. Minneapolis has different planning than most cities I’ve seen. There’s a lot of residential space (that’s now being re-zoned), which means more room to build on and options in case bike paths reroute traffic. The streets are generally larger and there are lots of parallel avenues and boulevards that facilitate partitioning of cyclists and cars. Personally, I find this to be ideal for commuting, and Minneapolis began to experiment with closing streets to cyclists a long time ago. I’ll stop myself from ranting about the budget for interstates and road maintenance compared to the cost of 76mi bike lanes though.

Build it and they will come.

I just visited Minneapolis for EYEO Festival. I was amazed at how good cycling was there. I now can't see my hometown the same and have started considering Minneapolis to move to.

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