From the Minneapolis bicycle and pedestrian update newsletter: Good news

After being closed for over two and a half years, the Hiawatha LRT Trail between 11^th Ave S and 15^th Ave S will reopen to bicycle and pedestrian traffic on January 30, 2014 at 7:00 a.m. The closure was needed to complete work related to the Central Corridor/Green Line LRT project.

Please be aware that Central Corridor workers will periodically use the trail to access work zones and complete some remaining tasks. Also be aware of the new at-grade light rail crossing between 11^th Ave S and 15^th Ave S. When the gate arms are down, bicycle and pedestrian traffic is required to stop until the arms are raised. While the crossing is not frequently used at this time, light rail traffic will pick up in the coming months as vehicle testing and training are performed. Additional light rail safety information related to bicycles and pedestrians can be found here. The Green Line LRT is scheduled to open to the public on June 14, 2014.

Other good trail news: The east side Midtown Greenway ramp at Bryant Ave S will officially reopen in approximately one week.

The latest version of the Twin Cities Bike Map is now available for your phone, and it’s still free. I’ve made several significant advances on this version. The map now covers nearly 1200 square miles of the Minneapolis/St. Paul metro area; from the St. Croix River to Lake Waconia  (west of Lake Minnetonka) and from Marine on the St. Croix to Hastings. I’ve added new labeling and cleaned up the roads and trails to make them more readable. The free app, from Avenza, allows you to find your exact location on the map using your smart phone’s GPS system. It also allows you to customize the map by recording your route and adding photos or placemarks.

I think you will enjoy the updates.

Get the App, Then get the Map.

1. Go to the App store or Google Play and search for “Avenza.”
2. Download the free app. You only have to do this once.
3. Then go to the Avenza Map Store by opening the App and clicking the “store” icon at the bottom of the page.
4. Search for “Bikeverywhere” in the search box. You will see all the maps developed so far by Bikeverywhere.

Problems? Comments? Suggestions? Contact me through this site or on Facebook. I’m looking to make this the best bike map you will ever use on your phone. Your feedback will help me make the improvements that you want the most.

The Twin Cities Bike Map is now available for your phone. This is a prototype, so I’m offering it for free and looking for feedback. The map covers Minneapolis, St. Paul and the inner ring suburbs, roughly defined by Hwy 169 to the west and the Interstate 494/694 loop to the south, east and north. It is at the same scale and detail as the detailed side of the paper Twin Cities Bike Map, but it carries the detailed labeling further west.

Version 1.0 is a prototype. The routes and trails are current, but it still needs design work. My goal is to make the file size smaller for your phone, improve the labeling and appearance and add a legend. This version is free for testing and feedback.

Get the app, then get the map.  Go to the App store or Google Play and search for “Avenza.” Download the free app, then go to the Avenza Map Store (look for the store icon at the bottom of the page). Search for “Bikeverywhere” in the search box. You will see all the maps developed so far by Bikeverywhere.

Problems? Comments? Suggestions? Contact me through this site or on Facebook. I’m looking to make this the best bike map you will ever use on your phone. Your feedback will help me make the improvements that you want the most.

Bikeverywhere’s series of maps for your phone now includes the Northfield/Faribault area.

This map covers a lot of area, from Cannon Falls, at the start of the popular Cannon Valley Bike Trail, to Faribault and the start of the Sakatah Singing Hills Trail.  The terrain is flat to low rolling hills with a series of scenic lakes to the west of Interstate 35. Most of the bike routes are on low traffic, paved roads, but gravel grinders will  find a small selection of gravel roads that weave through farm country on very low traffic routes.

Northfield is home to St. Olaf College and Carlton College so it has an urban setting and cultural amenities not often found in a town of 20,000 people. The Mill Towns Trail winds through historic downtown and around Sechler Park, offering views of both the Cannon River and the railroad.  Paved and unpaved bike routes radiate in all four directions from downtown.

Faribault is slightly bigger than Northfield at 23,000 people but the culture is entirely different. It’s an attractive town with well established neighborhoods, and great cycling options. Head southwest to enjoy the Sakatah Singing Hills Trail. Follow one of the many scenic road routes to the west to circle a variety of lakes or explore the rolling hills and farm country of Rice County. None of the hills are extremely steep, but some can climb, or descend for nearly a mile.

The La Crosse, WI area is the first of a new series of bike route maps that I am developing for your phone or mobile devices. La Crosse is in the southwest corner of Wisconsin on the Mississippi River and in the heart of Wisconsin’s Driftless area. The city itself, and the city of Onalaska to the north, are in the relatively flat valley created by the confluence of the LaCrosse and Mississippi Rivers. Head east to ride on some of the most remote, scenic, and hilly roads you will find anywhere in the continental US.

The Driftless area is an unglaciated part of the state that has been cut into narrow valleys, called coulees, and rolling ridges.  Expect climbs up to a mile in length as you ride from coulee to ridge, and exhilarating descents as you come back down. This is farm country with small farms and woodlots in the coulees and larger farms on the ridges. Wisconsin’s history as a dairy state works well for bicyclists. The state has paved nearly every road in the area so milk trucks can get milk from farm to market under any weather conditions. For bicyclists that means paved roads, often with as few as 50 cars per day.

The map is available for your iPhone, Android or tablet. The first step is to download the free app from either the iTunes Store or Google Play. This is a one time download.  You can now download any map on the Avenza Map Store. To find the La Crosse map, search for LaCrosse, WI Bike Routes. Or just search for Bikeverywhere to see more maps as I develop them.

I’m giving away the first 50 downloads of the La Crosse Bike Routes map with the hope that I can get feedback that will help me make it even better. After the first 50 downloads, I will charge $4.00.

The free map app has a lot of features. The most important is that you can use it with the GPS in your phone to track where you are. This only works, of course, if you are in the La Crosse area. But even before you get there, you can lay out routes, add points of interest, measure distances and numerous other things. Check it out. The app is always free, but hurry on the map. It won’t take long to get to 50 downloads.

Three new trails opened in the Milwaukee area this summer:

1. Three Bridges Trail. This is a linear park that acts as a branch of the Hank Aaron Trail. It runs between the Urban Ecology Center at 37th Street and the Mitchell Park domes.
2. Southern extension of the Interurban trail from Brown Deer Park to Mill Road as part of Milwaukee County’s Oak Leaf Trail system. A Glendale trail, finished last year connects Mill Road to Sydney Pl allowing an alternative route from downtown Milwaukee to Brown Deer Park.
3. Two new sections of the Kinnickinnic River Trail. The first runs between Washington Street and Maple Street parallel to and to the east of First Street. The second runs from Lincoln Avenue, just east of First Street, south and swinging west to Sixth Street at Rosedale St. A new bridge takes the trail across Chase Street. There is no connection at Chase. To get from the first to the second section, go east on Maple St to First Street and then  south on First to Lincoln.

It was also announced that the western portion of the Hank Aaron Trail will be closed starting next year to allow reconstruction of the Zoo Interchange.

I’ve been testing a new service called Avenza Systems, Inc. Avenza converts maps from a vendor, such as Bikeverywhere, into phone apps. Users download the free PDF Maps App from the Apple App Store, then access the Avenza map store to download maps for free or for purchase. The service is currently available only on I-Phones, but an Android App is in Beta testing and should be available by next spring.

The app, according to Avenza, allows you to view, zoom and pan maps using standard touch screen gestures. You can see your location on the map using the phone’s GPS, record your ride, orient yourself using the built in compass and add placemarks, such as favorite restaurants, bike shops or rest areas. And you can do it all offline, which means you will always have the base map even if you don’t have cell service.

It all sounds pretty cool, but now I want to see what you think of it in the real world. For my test map I’ve created the Forest_Lake 100, a 100 mile bike ride that starts on the Gateway Trail, loops through Marine on the St. Croix, then heads north and west on low traffic paved roads to Forest Lake. The route skirts lakes, rolls up and down hills and wanders through the rural landscape north of the Twin Cities.

You don’t have to ride the full 100 miles to test the map. You can see how it works just by riding the Gateway Trail or doing the shorter part of the route that wanders through northern Washington County.

The app is free and I’m offering the Forest_Lake 100 map for free as well. I want as many people as possible to test it and give me feedback. Tell me what you think about the app, the process of downloading it, finding the map, how well the map and app work together, how easy or difficult it is to read and anything else you can think of. Feel free to comment here or to send me a personal email. If I can get this dialed in, I will develop a wide range of bike maps for use on your phone.

Get the app, then get the map. Here are the details:
For I-Phone users only: Use your phone to read the QR codes below.

Avenza PDF Maps App

If you can’t read the QR code, go to the Apple App Store and search for Avenza PDF Maps App.

After you get the App, try this QR code to get the map:

With your help, this could be a very exciting development for bike riders.

The Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board is making improvements to several trails, including the Dean Pkwy, Cedar Lake Pkwy, Brownie Lake, and Lake Calhoun Pkwy trails. Major construction will start September 3, 2013 and last through October 31, 2013. Please visit the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board website for detour information and project schedules.

I spent a little time in the Hastings area this weekend. The new Hwy 61 bridge is not safe for travel by bicyclists and pedestrians. It is still under construction and the lanes that are open are narrow with no shoulder or separated walkway. According to the MNDOT project page, the new span will include a protected sidewalk on the bridge for pedestrians and bicyclists and will be complete by late 2013.

The crossing, however, will not be that useful. the last line of the document reads: “Construction of future trail connections north of the bridge are not part of the new Hwy 61 Hastings Bridge project.” So you can get across the river from Hastings to the north side, but as soon as you get across you will be dumped onto Hwy 61, a very busy Highway with truck traffic. If we’re lucky, there will be a wide shoulder, but it won’t be a pleasant ride. I’ve tentatively removed the crossing from future maps, but will reevaluate after seeing the completed bridge and Highway.

On a more positive note: Dakota County has created a bike trail that runs from Hastings to Spring Lake Park, a beautiful park overlooking the lake created by the Lock and Dam in Hastings. The trail makes it unnecessary to ride on Hwy 42, a road that has occasional heavy traffic, but a broad shoulder. This is a great addition for Hastings residents who wish to ride to the park, but it is helpful for anyone riding in the area. I’ve used the park frequently on extended rides in the area. I’ve kept Hwy 42 as a bike route because it is functional and continues beyond the park.

Forgotten Trails

Two short trails on the north side of I-94 in Washington County have provided an innovative, but little used, connection for cyclists traveling east toward the I-94 river crossing at Hudson, Wisconsin. They connect the intermittent segments of Hudson Blvd between Manning Ave and Neal Ave and between Neal and Stagecoach Trail. The Neal to Stagecoach Trail segment loops behind the I-94 rest stop and provides cyclists with a convenient spot to take a bathroom break, fill water bottles and by a snack.

The innovative part of these trails is that they turn two dead end streets into bike routes. The streets themselves have almost no traffic because they go nowhere, but the trails make them part of a through route for cyclists. By contrast, Hudson Rd, on the south side of the Interstate, is a through road and heavily traveled by motorists.

I’ve had the trails on the Twin Cities Bike Map for nearly 20 years and make a point to ride them at least once between updates to check their condition. I did it again two weeks ago. I found weeds 18 inches tall growing through the cracks in the trail and several small sinkholes along the edges of the asphalt. The trails had been deteriorating for a number of years, but their current condition makes them barely rideable for now, and probably suitable for mountain bikes only in a few years.

Before removing them from the map, I decided to contact MNDOT to learn more about their future. I discovered that MNDOT didn’t know they existed. Over the course of 10 emails and two weeks I learned from Gina Matteco, MNDOT’s metro district bike coordinator that no one, including Gina, knew they existed. After digging through the archives, they found the paperwork.

They also discovered that they are responsible for maintaining the trails. This is unusual. MNDOT’s policy is that all trails built in their right of ways have to be maintained by local entities, such as counties or cities, but these trails were built before that policy became the norm, so maintenance is the responsibility of MNDOT.

Gina is an advocate for bicyclists, but she is also a realist. She made it clear that MNDOT’s budget is stretched thin and no money is available for trail maintenance. She will visit the trails next week, then try to persuade Washington County to take over maintenance. She isn’t optimistic.

I have to remove the trails from the Twin Cities Bike Map, a choice I make reluctantly. I’ve studied alternate routes, but none are as direct and traffic free as the north side of I-94. I realize that this is a small loss for cyclists, especially in light of how many improvements we’ve seen for the cycling community over the years. But I enjoy finding and presenting the little gems that make cycling in the Twin Cities area a little better. This was one of the more obscure finds, but one that is incredibly valuable for a select few riders.