Comments on: Why Minneapolis is the real No. 1 biking city:

By: Ajax Ulu

Ajax Ulu — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 20:57:13 +0000

to Jack on pedestrians

“…then, when the light turns green, they just keep walking and walking until the light turns red. Well, at this point, I can’t take a left because I have to wait for these idiots to get across the road and the left turn signal cycle lasts about 10 seconds total. It’s pretty frustrating, to say the least.”

You wanna talk about frustrating? What is UP with Minnesota drivers? In every place I’ve ever lived, the pedestrian has the right of way. Yet here in the Twin Cities, drivers regularly cut off pedestrians to make a left or right turn. You actually call pedestrians ‘idiots’ for daring to cross on the green. In the six months that I’ve lived here, I’ve been nearly hit 3 times because I was idiotic enough to think that the green light and the walking man meant it was ok to cross the street… and that Minnesota drivers (like most drivers elsewhere)might at least have the courtesy to let a pedestrian cross the street. After the 3rd near-miss, I finally began to realize that the drivers in question aren’t the oddball a-holes, but rather, are indicative of the auto-centric, “get-outta-my-way”, Twin Cities driving culture. I’ve witnessed it time and again, and you, Jack, just provided further evidence.

By: Shaun

Shaun — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 03:55:19 +0000

Mary, go to this website: http://www.ci.minneapolis.mn.us/bicycles/10000Bicyclists.asp
Then click on “US Census Bureau.” That has some details on the 2005 count. Also, if you go here: http://www.ci.minneapolis.mn.us/bicycles/Count_Report.pdf, and scroll down to page 12, there is a bit more information as it relates to Mpls. On the actual census website, you have to click on American Factfinder and then American Community Survey to get to the non-2000 information (I know way too much about this stuff;) It does miss kids under 16 (biking to school), and it doesn’t count you as a cyclist commuter if it’s not your most frequent form of commuting. They do send out the surveys year round now though, which is quite different from the old way of doing it in early April (they’re now dropping the long survey every 10 years - the last one was in 2000).

By: John Siqveland

John Siqveland — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 13:43:51 +0000

Mary -

I don’t. Maybe this is of interest to you?

Mpls did a major bike count recently. It’s here: http://www.ci.minneapolis.mn.us/bicycles/bicycle-counts.asp

Some older bike/ped #s here:
http://www.metrocouncil.org/planning/transportation/TBI_2000/TimeofDay_7county.pdf

By: Suz

Suz — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 13:39:31 +0000

A lot of those surveys are skewed by the way they ask the questions. I recently participated in one about how “green” your lifestyle is. Your choices were bike-commuting 5 days a week or none. If you bike-commute 2, 3, or 4 days a week, you couldn’t give an accurate answer.

By: Monte

Monte — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 12:46:04 +0000

If that’s all they measured I’d rather they say “bicycle commuting city” or something like that. Otherwise the implication is recreational riding or other non-commuting riding somehow isn’t “biking”.

By: Mary

Mary — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 11:55:57 +0000

John — do you know anything more about the 2005 data-gathering? When I checked the census website, all I found was the stuff on the 2000 census, with the dates it was collected and the details of the question on commuting (that it only asked about transportation to work, and that it only asked about the method used most days in the previous week). This would miss all the students biking to school. Even if every single person in the city biked to work two days a week and drove three days, you would get 0% bike commuters.

By: John Siqveland

John Siqveland — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 19:52:18 +0000

Stephen Gross -> Mary

It’s based on the % of bicycle commuters who work in Mpls. and comes from a recent census report (it does not include suburbs or St. Paul or various other residents such as students living in dorms). It does not measure recreational use or non-work trips.

The report is here: (Look under ‘Detailed Tables’): http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/american_community_survey_acs/010230.html

By: Barry

Barry — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 18:54:48 +0000

Riley, any form of transport is gonna be more dangerous in a snowstorm. Some people (SingleSpeed) like the challenge.
I could be wrong, but I thought many car/bike collisions are in really good sunny weather when people think nothing can go wrong and just do whatever they want.

By: SingleSpeed

SingleSpeed — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 01:55:35 +0000

Yep. The first snowstorm is always fun because I put the road bike away and get out the old mountain bike. It’s fun to crunch around through snow piles and such. This past snow storm I was trying to make my way down Franklin Avenue during rush hour but all the cars were moving so dang slow. I hopped up onto the sidewalks, which were unplowed and bumpier than the streets. Even WITH the rougher terrain, I was moving WAY faster than any of the cars and having fun romping over piles of snow. …But, to be certain, by the end of winter I’ve had enough of snow and brown goopy stuff everywhere and wish it was dry.

By: Mary

Mary — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 01:06:12 +0000

The 2000 census data reflect transportation in the week before April 1, 2000. In Minneapolis, the temperatures ranged from about 26 degrees to 49 degrees that week, with no precipitation. Good biking weather, in my opinion, but not the sort of temperatures that bring out big numbers of cyclists. Unless you biked more days than you drove that week, you would not be counted as a bike commuter at all. If the census were in June or September, we’d probably beat Portland.

I did chicken out on the cycling the past couple of days. The bike lane was several inches deep in rutted brown glop, and I didn’t feel like fighting rush hour traffic in the traffic lanes in the dark.