da Blog

A number of times in the last year or two I’ve seen this phenomenon where the street is taken over by a couple hundred bikers. I had noticed it a couple times, but it seemed like maybe it was a one-time or seldom-practiced demonstration. After seeing it a couple more times and hearing that they did it in San Francisco as well, I realized it was a much bigger event.

Although the event, which is called Critical Mass and happens throughout the world in many major cities, is very unorganized by design, it obviously is a program that promotes cycling in one way or another. Here in Minneapolis, as in most places, people gather on their bikes and ride through the streets of the city together on the last Friday of the month. In Minneapolis they bike north on Hennepin Ave. through downtown and then down University through the U of M area.

The first Critical Mass event took place in September 1992 in San Francisco as a protest of how unfriendly to bikes the city strets were. Since then, it seems that Critical Mass has become worlwide and less goal-focused. One constant, though, is that the large mass of a couple hundred bikers have decided to bike through the streets of cities disregarding any sort of traffic rules, stoplights, or cross traffic. Because it is so big and so purpsefully unorganized, it also seems that members seem to relish the incidents with police or citizens.

I think that, in general, Critical Mass gives the wrong impression to society. Those who are trying to get home from work through downtown are just annoyed by a couple minutes of cyclists blocking their way. I enjoy biking around town, but I respect all rules and signals while biking, of course. I just think that, if anything, the general populace (and maybe the city) will just consider Critical Mass to be a bunch of annoying hippies trying to piss us off and not some sort of protest. Plus, I thnk the Twin Cities, at least, has plenty of support for cyclists with plenty of bike lanes throughout Minneapolis and St. Paul and a pretty extensive network of trails. It seems that it’s pretty unneccesary to me.

I found some new features on Google Maps recently, so I thought I’d use a real-world example to demonstrate them. Last night I was going to leave work by biking to the light rail station, riding the light rail downtown, and then biking the rest of the way home. Before I left, though, I found out that there was a pre-season Vikings game last night. In case you didn’t know, the train is packed full, and I mean really full, of drunken rednecks on the way to the Vikings game, and it’s not pleasant for someone who’s just trying to make his way home from a day of work. So, I thought this the perfect time to ride my bike all the way home, without any MetroTransit involved.

To get started, I put in my work and my home locations into the search box:

Here’s what I got:

It immediately gave me a nice looking map, but it’s all on major freeways. I’m not going to bike on those! However, those smart guys at Google think of almost everything, and just about then I spotted a checkbox that said, “Avoid Highways”. Once I checked that, I got something more like this:

Now that’s good. I can do that. I quickly looked through the roads and made sure I was familiar with them and knew where I was going. There were a couple parts in the Richfield area that I wasn’t sure if I’d ever been on, but I knew it was straightforward enough that it would work. I loved the idea of taking the frontage road along 77 and taking Park Ave. through south Minneapolis, because I knew they are not too highly trafficked and that most of Park Ave. has a nice bike lane. I knew that I wanted to stop at my mailbox downtown like I usually do on Thursdays, so I wanted to see a closer look at the downtown route.

I happened to hover over the route line and a friendly note popped up saying “Drag to change route”. So, I clicked on the line and dragged it over to the mailbox place. The route and directions automatically readjusted.

However, I’ve had the experience of trying to bike down 7th St. S., and I know it’s congested and leaves no room for bikes. Because of experience and consulting a map of downtown bike lanes, I decided that 9th St. S. was a much better option, with a nice, dedicated bike lane on the left side of the road. So, I just clicked on the route and dragged it off of 7th St. and voila!

However, this was not too helpful. I didn’t want to make my trip more confusing by going off Park Ave. and biking around the Convention Center. Thankfully, I just clicked on the map again and made the map route me through Park Ave. and 9th St.

Of course, since I was running late and missing dinner anyways, I decided to make another stop for dinner. (Besides, I wouldn’t want to use the 3rd Ave./Central Ave. bridge because it’s got very little room for biking on the sides. I usually take the Stone Arch Bridge, which it’s sad this bike/walk trail isn’t even shown on Google Maps.) So, I dragged the line up to Chipotle, of course.

Instead of zooming out, I just clicked on “Show All Directions” and it snapped back to the full view. Also, all the stopping points (and the stopping points I made to just make sure the route was to my liking) were reflected on the turn-by-turn directions.

It ended up being a great 12.6 mile bike ride, and it only took 65-70 minutes, if you don’t count stopping to fill a tire with air, stopping at my mailbox, and eating some Chipotle. But it was a lot of fun, and it was almost an adventure. Thanks to Google Maps, though, it made the details of where to go really easy. (No, I didn’t print them out and refer to them every couple miles or anything like that - I kept them in my head.)

I was leaving the light rail platform and noticed for the third time today a new MetroTransit ad affixed to the entrance of the platform. Check it out:

Apparently it’s not marketed at me, because it makes no sense. As much as I can figure, it seems they’re saying that they don’t have bridges that collapse. Or something. If it makes sense to you, maybe you can enlighten me.

UPDATE: Here’s some new information I found.

Last week we biked to Hidden Falls and on Tuesday I biked to and from work, but I needed to kick it up a notch this weekend because I didn’t bike at all on Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday. So, I biked for 17 miles (and got a bit of walking in over by the lakes). Here’s the map:

First, I biked along the Hiawatha Light Rail line for a bit until I got to the Lake Street Area. There I biked right onto the Midtown Greenway, which stretches all the way through South Minneapolis and a good way beyond. The Greenway is a great, long path that replaced an old railroad bed that stretched all the way through South Minneapolis and further west. The western end of the Greenway opened in 2000 and is a nice, wide path in most places for biking and walking. Throughout all of Minneapolis, it is in a bit of a trench that goes underneath almost all the streets along 29th Street, but it is nice and green and has landscaping projects going along with it. It is connected to a further trail west, such that I biked past Highway 100 before turning back.

Plans are still in gear for the east end of the Greenway, although it is almost complete. The crown jewel of the Greenway seems to be a bridge they are currently constructing that goes across Hiawatha Avenue and the Light Rail line. (Temporarily the bikers and walkers just had to walk across the busy street at a light, but now you can’t even do that with the bridge construction.) It looks like the designers were trying to rip off Norman Foster, but I just found out from this blog post that it is because of all the obstructions they had to get the bridge through on the East side where large power lines, another bike path, and light rail collide. It’ll definitely be fun to ride across.

On the way back, I decided to take a more road-focused but direct way home. I rode up Hennepin Avenue until it became a bit of a freeway, at which time I found a cool bike/walk bridge and a path down to Loring Park. I just then biked through downtown on Nicollet Mall and then across the Hennepin bridge to University Ave. It was a great 17-mile trek, and I really enjoyed exploring Minneapolis by bike.

I’m looking forward to this. Back when I was a kid, I biked all around the quaint little town of Hastings. Finally, now, I’ll hopefully start to do that on a limited basis. Today I purchased a nice, new bike for use here in Minneapolis. I didn’t waste any time, for I biked about 17 miles to a picnic and then to the light rail station that I’ll ride to regularly. By biking a mile or two to the nearest light rail station, I might even be able to cut down on commute time because I don’t have to ride along the bus lines. I’m really looking forward to getting to bike around the city a lot more. Although, I’m a bit sad that Hannah is leaving and that I will no longer be able to get rides from her. Thanks, Hannah, for all the great morning drive times. (Now I’ll have to find some way to stay informed about politics and news because I won’t have NPR in the morning.)