Congestion Solution? Twin Cities Gets Bike Trails

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) – Jonathan Scott smiled as he pedaled slowly up a ramp to get on the Midtown Greenway, the last short stretch of his daily commute.

Scott peered both ways as other cyclists whizzed past before launching himself on the Greenway, a popular, lush bicycle and pedestrian path that cuts through the heart of south Minneapolis.

It’s a routine Scott has followed most days – only freezing weather stops him – in the past four years both to get exercise and to avoid the Twin Cities’ increasingly congested roads.

“ I think our trails are up there with the best,” said Scott, a patent lawyer who works in the city’s hip Uptown neighborhood.

Many other people think so too, and cycling’s popularity here is one reason Minneapolis-St. Paul will get $25 million from Congress to build more bike trails and paths. The other is Rep. Jim Oberstar, D-Minn., who pushed for a pilot program to see how trail construction could help relieve road congestion.

Communities in three other states – Wisconsin, Missouri and California – also received $25 million each in the transportation bill just passed.

“ We want to figure out how to make these trails useful, not just for fitness but for actual transportation,” said Lea Schuster, executive director of Transit for Livable Communities in St. Paul.

The Rails-to-Trails Conservancy, a bicycle advocacy group, proposed 12 communities for the pilot, and lawmakers narrowed the list to four. The Twin Cities was attractive because of a well-developed trail system that could be grown even more. Marianne Fowler, of the Conservancy, said Minneapolis has more people biking to work than any other city – 2.63 percent of commuters.

News of the grant brought plenty of ideas for using the money: billboards to promote the trail system, safe-riding classes, incentives for employers to add showers. But Bob Works, director of the state transportation department’s bicycle and pedestrian section, said it appears the money is earmarked for construction.

Officials aren’t sure how far the money will go. A mile of bike path in the suburbs can cost from $100,000 to $500,000, but in the city, that can grow to as much as $1 million because of the high cost of land acquisition. (A mile of new freeway, by comparison, can cost anywhere from $40 million to $75 million, according to the Metropolitan Council).

Even if $25 million does buy a lot of trail, bicycle advocates themselves downplayed the likely effect on congestion.

“ It’s not going to fix the Twin Cities congestion problem,” said David Dixen, a board member at the Parks and Trails Council of Minnesota. “That’s a wartime effort sort of thing.”

He said the money would “make minor improvements on a large number of projects and it’ll improve some.”

Erika Sass, of Robbinsdale, was also on the Greenway, riding to her job on Lake Street as she does every day. Gas is too expensive and she likes the exercise, she said.

Sass, who recently moved to Minnesota from Washington, said she was amazed by the extent of trails that weave through the urban streets. She said some of the $25 million should be used to finish unconnected parts of the Grand Rounds trail, a system that stretches for miles along several lakes, Minnehaha Creek and the Mississippi River.

Others in the biking community talked of putting trails in lower-income areas that have been largely underserved in the Twin Cities, including sections of northern and northeast Minneapolis. And still others said they’d like to see an effort to connect more trails to Minneapolis’s budding light rail line.

Scott said some of the current bike paths need maintenance, and he’d like to see more north and south routes that cut through the metro area. If paths are in better conditions, he said, more commuters will start to bike.

And it’s only fair, he said.

“ With the millions and billions they spend on freeways, it’s time they spend more money on trails,” he said.

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