The west end of the Midtown Greenway bridge will come down on the north side of 28th Street, a couple blocks west of Hiawatha. I haven't heard how the Greenway crossing will be controlled, but this looks like a great place for some innovative traffic management.

The Dutch have been trying two traffic light features that are increasing cyclist safety and reducing conflict with motorists:

In many areas, in addition to the usual buttons on posts, they have loop detectors under the pavement to trigger green lights for cyclists. This eliminates the problem of having one rider stop next to the button but not push it, then ride across against the traffic light, leaving the law-abiding riders to sit through an extra cycle. If detectors are also positioned before the intersection, the lights can be triggered as the cyclists approach. In the "greenest" regions of the Netherlands, this is done to reduce the amount of time that bikes wait for green lights, so that cycling becomes easier and more efficient.

In addition to the loop detectors, some Dutch cities are trying countdown timers on the traffic signals. These are like the timers at Hiawatha Avenue which show how many seconds remain on the green light -- but they show how many seconds remain until the red light turns green. This lets the waiting cyclists know that their approach has been registered, and it tells them that their wait won't be all that long. Where these timers have been introduced, cyclists rarely cross against the lights.

The Midtown Greenway is becoming a major corridor for bike commuters, and it will be essential to keep the crossing at 28th Street as safe and as conflict-free as possible. It would be a good place to try these innovations.

It would be a great place to try them, but what I've heard is that all we're going to get is blinking yellow lights (when pushed) like the crossing on Minnehaha. Kind of sucks, IMHO.

The city is currently planing the blinking yellow lights, but the Midtown Greenway Coalition in conjunction with the Lake Street Council, the Hi-Lake Business
Association, and the East Phillips Neighborhood Group (I'm not sure what their actual name is, I'm affraid) is trying to get the city to place a stop light and a traffic table (similar to the ones on the East River Road behind Coffman Union) at the crossing on 28th street (which is more like a half a block west of Hiawatha, right by the Roof Depot and the Smith Foundry). With any luck, we will be able to get a loop in the sidewalk, but the blinking yellow lights at the Greenway and Minnehaha Avenue are a bad idea (no accidents yet, but it's not a safe intersection), so we at the very least want a stop light.

At the moment the Greenway gets an average of 2000 cyclists a day, and on a busy day it gets as high as 3000 or more. That is more users than 90% of all city streets.

MNDot keeps usage statistics for major "trunk" routes, and if I read the map correctly (see above like), that area of 28th street averages about 13,900 cars a day. (I'm not familiar with traffic volume maps though, so I could be reading it wrong.) That seems high to me, but considering the number of cars during rush hour, it's believable, if depressing.

Given this extremely high volume of traffic, both automobile and cycle, it seems that this intersection will require some pretty serious traffic management, particularly since the weekday peak hours are the same on both routes (on week days, a very large percentage of Greenway traffic is cycle commuters). The yellow lights are a bad idea on Minnehaha, but could easily be a disaster on 28th street.

By the way, there is an article on this subject in the new edition of the Midtown Greenway Coalition's newsletter which spells out the MGC's possition on the matter in greater detail. Also, if you feel like getting involved in the MGC, please consider becoming a member and/or coming to some of our meetings. Our discussion on this subject is over, but the Land Use and Transportation Committee is still discussing our position on at grade crossings of city streets in general (this one, because of the bridge, was decided to require special attention, and the board has already passed a resolution). Our calender is posted on our website.

If you have any other questions about the Greenway, feel free to write them up here on the board, or come up and talk to me at SNR.


Gabriel

When a popular local cyclist dies at the 28th Street intersection because one car barreled on through the blinking yellow light, while two lanes of 28th Street traffic stopped and waved the cyclist through, we'll have a big memorial effort, the city will be eager to put up a suitable crossing light, and donations will pour in so that we can have a proper traffic signal. But why should we have to suffer through the tear-jerking TV and newspaper coverage when we could just cut out that dead middleman altogether?

Let's just have a "Pre-Memorial" campaign in "pre-Memory" of you, me, the promising young grad student from the U, the funny kid who always loved to bike .... Our "Pre-Memorial Fund" can raise the 50 grand that an ideal traffic light would probably cost, and get a system with the two features cited above.

If the 5000 cyclists who use the Greenway on a busy day won't or can't each kick in 10 bucks for their own memorial, maybe some health care organizations would set up a parallel "Pre-Fund" for the crippled cyclist (you, for instance) whose insurance doesn't fully cover the costs of putting in a handicapped ramp. Heck, I might donate to that fund for ME. Especially if it meant that I wouldn't actually have to use it.

Actually, I'd be willing to toss in another ten for the same sort of traffic light on Minnehaha.

That's the crucial flaw of the blinking yellow lights, and I think it's what we need to focus on when talking to city engineers, etc: there's no defined way for automobiles to respond to such lights. They're not stop lights, so a driver that goes through is obeying the law. But a driver that thinks, "hrm, big blinking yellow lights are telling me something important" and stops for cyclists is acting in a safe, responsible manner and also obeying the law.

So drivers can stop or not stop, and cyclists using the intersection have no way to know what they'll do. Stop signs and stoplights are sometimes ignored, but everyone knows what they mean.

I like the pre-memorial idea.

Good thinking, livewombat! Now how to pitch
this to the City & MNDOT and the Greenway Coalition?

Well, you don't have to pitch it to the Midtown Greenway Coalition, as we are already advocating the stop light and traffic table idea. In point of fact, the MGC primary purpose is to be the communities voice with the City (who operates the Greenway), the county (who owns the Greenway) and MNDOT; so we are here to advocate FOR you. In this particular case, the agency involved is the city. I'm not sure who at the city we are working with (I'm on the board, not staff), but I'll try to find out so anyone who wants can write letters of support.

It is important that we all support the same outcome, or the city might go in a way which we don't want, so I would encourage you to read the article in the current MGC Newsletter so we have a consistent message. Even better (or at least, equally important) is to become a member of the MGC and to come to meetings so your voice can be heard. In order for the MGC to represent the communities voice, we need to hear it. Meetings are all open to the public, so you don't need to join to come in, but every dollar helps us to achieve our goals.


Gabriel

OK, so Tim Springer at the MGC has a meeting on the 24th with a couple of Council Members on this issue, so if we are going to do any kind of community action (be it a letter writing campaign or a "pre-memorial"), we should wait until after we see how Tim's meeting goes. I've asked him to keep me informed, and will report the results as soon as I know.



Gabriel

Oh, and if anyone is interested, here is the Midtown Greenway Coalition's resolution on this crossing:


Resolution Recommending Traffic Control Devices
For the future Midtown Greenway trail crossing
of East 28th Street by Smith Foundry and Roof Depot
Adopted by the Midtown Greenway Coalition and Lake Street Council on 4/19/07

Background information

This roadway/trail intersection will open up to Greenway traffic mostly likely in the fall of 2007 when the Greenway bridge over Hiawatha is completed. This roadway/trail intersection is seen as particularly troublesome because:
â?¢ Approaching cyclists on the Greenway are coming out from behind adjacent buildings that create blind spots for the motorists traveling eastbound on East 28th Street.
â?¢ When approaching the intersection the westbound Greenway traffic (which is traveling southbound at this intersection) descends the long ramp of the bridge over Hiawatha Avenue so some cyclists will be traveling at high speeds through the intersection.
â?¢ The vehicular traffic here often speeds to make green lights at Hiawatha Avenue to the east or Cedar Avenue to the west, and there is a hill with the trail xing at the bottom of this hill.
â?¢ There will be very high volumes of bicycle and pedestrian traffic using the Greenway and crossing 28th Street here.
â?¢ A flashing yellow light does not require vehicles to stop, it only indicates an area where caution should be exercised.
â?¢ Observations at the Midtown Greenway crossing of Minnehaha Avenue show that most cyclists do not bother to push the button that activates the flashing yellow light and many motorists do not yield to Greenway users even when the light is flashing yellow.
â?¢ Large trucks are often parked along 28th Street, further blocking views.
â?¢ The Hiawatha Lake Business Association does not feel that adding a stoplight would create a negative impact for vehicular traffic, nor pedestrian and bicycle traffic at the E. 28th St. crossing. They know that this intersection is unique given the sight-line restrictions, proximity to the Greenway Bridge over Hiawatha Avenue, the observed speed of east bound and west bound traffic on E. 28th St. and the high population of people under the age of 18 in the Phillips neighborhood who will be using this intersection.

Traffic control currently planned by Hennepin County for this intersection will be the same as at the Greenway and Minnehaha Avenue (and as recommended by City staff)
â?¢ Zebra stripped cross walk (a step up from two lines for the crosswalk).
â?¢ Brightly colored signs warning approaching vehicles on E 28th Street.
â?¢ An overhead light that is normally off but turns to flashing yellow light when a trail user pushes a button.
â?¢ A stop sign for trail users.

RECOMMENDED SOLUTION:
â?¢ Stop light for vehicular traffic on 28th St and for Greenway trail users and
â?¢ a speed table to delineate the crossing area.



Gabriel

I'm glad to hear that they are recommending the light. It seems to be something that I've heard voiced by a lot of trail users, that the crossing won't be safe. Hopefully the city takes it under advisement.

Still, it would have been nice if someone had of thought about this when the bridge was first being planned. It seems like something that should be common sense looking at the intersection. I was surprised to talk with a couple Greenway coalition at the Global Bike Days and find that they hadn't even thought of it. Too much focus seemed to be on the one intersection on Hiawath being fixed, and not enough on how that fix would actually effect peoples' actual riding.

Maybe I'm just cranky.

Well, the problem is that continuing the bridge over 28th St would have added a HUGE amount of money to the construction, and because of the lightrail bridge, it couldn't just cross straight over Hiawatha.


Gabriel

This is what we need at that intersection.

Or we need one of these:



Along with one of these:

Innovative Bicycle Signal

I would love to see a traffic light configuration involving those pavement sensors.

The greenway is striped for directionality already, so cyclists know where they are supposed to be. A sensor can be placed near the curb line in each side's logical waiting position. The waiting sensor should be configured to send a green light request to the traffic light control computer, but only after continuously sensing a bicycle for two or three seconds, to avoid triggering the light when someone merely passes over the sensor. Once the light changes to favor the greenway traffic, another larger sensor placed something like 50 feet back on each side could be used to sense if more cyclists are approaching, and prolong the green light accordingly. The green should have an ultimate timeout of 30 or 45 seconds to keep auto traffic sane even if there is continuous greenway traffic.

pushbuttons located on both sides of the trail on both sides of the street could be pushed to send a green light request for pedestrians or people with composite bikes that are not able to trip the inductive sensors.

This would work even better if the actual crosswalk portion was built on top of a 20mph speed table. The intersection should have prominent stop lines on the pavement to make it obvious to traffic on 28th Street where exactly to stop. Any signage placed on the corridor should be placed in a way that it does not block sight lines of traffic in either direction, since there are already so many obstacles to see around.

I wasn't thinking of extending the bridge, I understand that's pretty much impossible. It just doesn't seem (from my outside view, and I could be totally wrong) that people were thinking of how to treat the intersection when they planned the bridge. I think that the stoplight should have been part of the plan from the beginning. Now that things are already kind of set, it's probably going to be harder to get it approved and funded by the city, I'd think.