Roosevelt Drive is a residential street started in the 1970s and completed in the early 2000s. Though not considered a collector street by the City’s transportation plan, it is the primary access for 14 “presidential” streets. The older portion of the street has no sidewalks whatsoever. The southernmost portion (from Truman Court to Tyler Court) has a sidewalk on the south side.

Roosevelt Drive is walking distance to three schools, the NCRC, and arguably the downtown. There is some redemption in that there are shared-use paths that connect at several points to Jefferson Park and the sidewalk along Jefferson Parkway West. (This is the reason it was not included in my top 10 list.)

One particularly irritating issue with Roosevelt is that the road itself is very wide — I have not measured, but at least 40′ (32′ is standard). With little on-street parking used and no marked bike lanes, all this width serves to do is increase runoff and encourage cars to drive faster.

I saw an excellent piece in Slate last week about getting bicyclists to better-abide by traffic laws. One of the things brought up is something we’d discussed a few times on the Task Force: stop signs. Officially, in Minnesota and almost all other states, a bicycle is required to stop at stop signs like a vehicle. However, actually recommending this to bicyclists is problematic, because, as anybody who has ridden a bicycle knows, it’s extremely inefficient to stop completely and start again.

The Slate article contained a link to a video made for Oregon about the “Idaho Stop.” The Idaho Stop is a law that allows bicyclists to treat stop signs as if they were yield signs — they can’t violate cars’ right of way at the intersection, but they don’t need to stop if there are no cars in the vicinity. A law like this (HF4245) was proposed in 2008 in Minnesota, but it never made it past committee.

Here’s the video; it’s definitely worth a watch.

With the assistance of the Parks & Trails Council, property negotiations with owners on the south side of the Cannon west of Cannon Falls, are moving along. Kent Skaar, DNR, confirms that Mr. Goudy is willing to sell the river front piece. Steve says that engineering for trail from Cannon Falls, across the Wienrl property, under Highway #52 will be done this winter. Funding for these purchases and trail development was certified last bonding session, 2008.

The Friends group will submit support letters to Dakota County for their bonding request, to the Joint Powers Board for the $550,000 for acquisition between Dundas and Faribault, and to Northfield for the Legacy application for trail along the east side of the Cannon River, Northfield to Dundas. Meg Otten and City personnel are writing that grant application, due Nov. 13. Steve Janusz shared the Fillmore County/Root River lodging tax progression. Amazing what a good trail network accomplishes in tourism.

We discussed the construction of the new bridge on Canada Avenue, underpass space for the trail and preservation of the old Iron Bridge for pedestrian use. We discussed trail alignment in/around Northfield.

Treasurer John Stull will be cashing CD’s to repay the City $121,086, the Friends share of the Total $1,025,449 bridge cost. About 1/3 Federal funding, 1/3 bonding, 1/3 city & Friends.

Just Foods sent a check for $424 from their re-used bag project. Thank you.

On Thursday, Oct. 15, 9:00 am, Legislative Bonding committee at the City of Northfield Transit garage. We’re requesting $850,000 for right-of-way acquisition!

I’m the lead organizer for Walk to School Day here in Northfield, Minnesota, again. It promises to be a fun event, as usual!

Here is our press release for this year:

Students at Northfield Middle School and the three public elementary schools will celebrate Walk to School Day again this year on Thursday, October 8.

It promises to be a fun event for many students who have a safe route available from their homes. Not only will they get to walk with their friends, but there will be prizes and recognition as well.

The event is part of the district’s Safe Routes to Schools program, which is designed to help students and communities gain the benefits from increased walking and biking. Those benefits include improved health, a stronger sense of community, and reduced traffic congestion and air pollution.

The event also helps to illustrate the benefits of “complete streets”–streets that are built to accommodate all users, including pedestrians, cyclists, and the handicapped. Unfortunately, all too often streets in our society are incomplete.

Students will receive maps of recommended routes, and adult volunteers will be stationed along the routes during the morning and afternoon travel times. A Northfield police officer will be located at the intersection of Jefferson Parkway and Division St./Highway 246 during both the Middle School and Bridgewater travel times. Bridgewater students who live east and northeast of the school are asked to ride the bus as usual due to concerns with that intersection.

Again this year Walk to School Day is funded through the Safe Routes to Schools grant that the school district and city won in 2008. The $30,000 grant includes money for “encouragement” programs such as Walk to School Day.

The grant has also funded an engineering study of walking and biking routes to the district’s K-8 schools. The study has been completed and will be released soon to the public.

The Northfield Safe Routes to Schools Task Force and Northfield Public Schools are organizing the local Walk to School Day in cooperation with the City of Northfield. Many schools around the world will be celebrating Walk to School Day a day earlier. Here in Northfield, the Safe Routes to Schools Task Force decided that the local school schedule makes October 8 a better day for the event.

Forty years ago nearly half of all kids walked or bicycled to school. Today less than fifteen percent get to school that way, and many are driven to school in motor vehicles. Public health experts believe that reductions in physical activity are partly to blame for dramatic increases in rates of diabetes and obesity in children.

Since 1997, communities around the U.S. have been celebrating Walk to School Day. Around the globe, International Walk to School Month brings together more than 40 countries in recognition of the common interest in walking to school.

In its twelfth year, U.S. participation reached a record high with more than 2,800 events from all fifty states and the District of Columbia registering in 2008. Many more communities held events but did not register. For more information visit the National Walk to School and International Walk to School web sites.

The Northfield News ran an article this week — Late starts lead to traffic jams outside schools — about congestion around the South Division Street school strip (High School, Bridgewater, and Middle School). Reading it, I had trouble feeling sympathetic for parents “forced to find an alternate route” in the crowded traffic. Even more grating were the suggested solutions:

[District Superintendent Chris] Richardson said the high school is also encouraging students to use a “back route” to Raider Drive through Koester Court. The alternatives, Richardson believes, should help separate traffic going to the high school from traffic going to Bridgewater and the middle school.

Getting people to drive to the schools in a slightly different way might alleviate some of the symptoms, but the real problem here is that there are just too many cars on the road. Every child has access to the school bus. If they must drive due to extracurricular activities, they can certainly carpool. And of course, they can bike or walk.

Now part of what prevents biking and walking is an infrastructure problem. Division Street south of the High School is just generally terrible, and 2200 Division is simply a bad location for the Middle School, at least until some significant growth occurs on the south edge of town. Though these are important — and I plan to write more about the issues with this stretch of Division in a future post — the main issue here is the choice to not walk or bike. The main access for the schools — Jefferson Parkway or Division St — are busy roads, but all three have alternative routes.

Northfield High School

NHS can be accessed from Linden Place to the north (shared-use path that cuts through the tennis courts), or Raider Drive to the west.

Bridgewater Elementary

Bridgewater can be accessed from Roosevelt Drive (by way of Tyler Park) to the west. The sidewalks on Jefferson Parkway are also perfectly adequate for walkers.

Northfield Middle School

This has the most unsafe main entrance, but there’s a smaller west entrance off of Carter Drive (Roosevelt to Fillmore to Carter) which is perfectly safe for walkers and bikers.

It’s not always viable to walk or bike, but this was a nice September morning. I see no reason why more kids couldn’t have been getting themselves to school with their own two feet.

10. Greenvale Avenue and North Spring Street

This is only #10 because it actually no longer is missing a sidewalk. The City installed a sidewalk along the north side of Greenvale Avenue when the road was reconstructed in 2003 and along North Spring Street in 2008. Why do I mention it? Because it’s shocking to think that for more than 40 years, two busy residential collector streets less than half a mile from a school had no sidewalks whatsoever. While only one side of each street received a sidewalk, the sidewalks function well and, outside the downtown, Greenvale’s is one of the most heavily used sidewalks I see. Both of these are City-maintained streets.

9. Spring Creek Road

This could be a poster for problematic suburban design. The 1980s Mayflower Hill development has sidewalk coverage. It’s not terribly far from the downtown. And yet Spring Creek Road — which for years was the only access road — is extremely narrow and has no sidewalks. It makes the neighborhood isolated from the surrounding community, and essentially treats walking as a novelty — not any serious form of transportation. Spring Creek Road is the responsibility of the City of Northfield.

8. Hester Street and Dundas Boulevard (Rice County 78)

The first of several roads problematic because of multiple authorities. Dundas Blvd (which becomes Armstrong Road in Northfield) is a beautiful road, and a portion of it is adjacent to the Mill Towns Trail. However, development at its intersection with Hester Street creates a need for sidewalks. The pedestrian-friendly downtown Dundas is literally a short block away from those developments, but one has to walk along Dundas Blvd and down a steep, narrow hill on Hester Street to get there. Neither one has sidewalk coverage. The City of Dundas and Rice County are responsible for these streets.

7. Nevada/9th/Maple Streets

Nevada/9th/Maple (which essentially form one north-south street) are an important access from the area south of Woodley to downtown, as well as a common route to Sibley School. It’s an old road: the 600 block, for example, does not even have curb and gutter. Newer and more recently improved portions of the road do have sidewalk coverage (full coverage near Jefferson Parkway), but there’s a clear need to bring the rest of the street up to that standard. The City of Northfield is responsible for these streets.

6. Lockwood Drive/North Linden Street

Another example of a residential street built in the post-WWII anti-sidewalk craze. Lockwood Drive has partial (east side) sidewalk coverage north of the county line, but no coverage in Rice County. It is helpful that a shared-use path cuts through to Greenvale Elementary, but to access that path (or to go into town or elsewhere) requires kids to walk on the street for some distance. The City of Northfield is responsible for these streets.

5. South Highway 3

This one can’t be blamed on distant history. The road was reconstructed in the mid-90s (you can see Google Earth imagery of the road in 1991), but sidewalks were included only from Woodley Street to Jefferson Parkway. The only sidewalk south of that point — a shared-use path — runs on only one side, from 110th Street to Heritage Drive. Well it used to run to Heritage Drive. Since the Community Bank building was built, the path was removed and never restored. It now dead-ends at the Life 21 church.

Granted, the road reconstruction occurred before Target/Cub and Heritage Square were built, but it’s still appalling that in a widening and reconstruction of a road like this that no accommodations were made for nonmotorized users. The road should have either a shared-use path or sidewalk on both sides, at the very least until 110th Street (Rice County 1), but preferably until East Hester Street or Cannon City Boulevard/East Street. The only reason I did not rank this higher on the list is that Jefferson Road provides a suitable alternate route with much better access for pedestrians and cyclists. The Minnesota Department of Transportation and the Cities of Northfield and Dundas are responsible.

4. West Fifth Street (Minnesota 19)

I know almost nothing about the history of West Fifth Street, though it has been improved somewhat in recent years. Currently there are sidewalks along the north side of the street from Highway 3 to South Orchard Street and, on the south side, from Highway 3 to the western edge of the Malt-O-Meal Campbell Mill. There are odd shared-use paths that run from Armstrong Road to just east of Walden Place, but they run right up against the curb, are in absolutely terrible condition, and have no connection to Northfield’s sidewalk network. In the daylight, you can walk on them, but walking at night, you’re almost guaranteed to trip or roll and ankle in one of the many cracks or potholes. The Hwy 3/19 Multimodal study shows a “future” sidewalk along Fifth Street, but it’s unclear if that is being included in the grant application or if it’s simply a statement that, someday, it might make sense to have sidewalks there. And yes, it certainly would make sense.

3. 110th Street East (Rice County 1)

I grew up near 110th Street, so this one is a bit personal. When I was eight or nine, I remember that I used to be able to walk down the side of the road to the Corner Mart in Dundas. There would be a few cars, sure, but it was a pleasant enough walk. Today the road carries about 3,950 cars a day (2008) — up from 1600 in 2001 — and is the exclusive access for several hundred homes. The road is also extremely narrow (11′ travel lanes) and has no paved shoulders, making it extremely uncomfortable for bicycling (I speak from extensive experience bicycling on this road).

Rice County, Bridgewater Township, and the Cities of Dundas and Northfield are responsible. Dundas deserves the strong scolding: they allowed developer D. R. Horton to build hundreds of homes in Bridgewater Heights (which uses 110th Street as its only road in or out) in the mid-2000s on the promise that they would build a shared use path as a part of “phase two.” Since they have yet to sell all of the homes of phase one, D. R. Horton’s shared-use path is looking pretty distant. Northfield is also responsible for increased traffic as a result of Target/Cub, the new Middle School, and developments in southeastern Northfield.

Ideally, I’d like to see the entire road from Highway 3 to Hall Avenue (S. Spring Creek Road) upgraded to an urban design with sidewalks on both sides. That’s a pipe dream. More realistic would be shared-use paths on both sides from Highway 3 to Dennison Blvd/Division Street (MN 246), which would be compatible with the existing speeds and would only require minor regrading.

2. Woodley Street

Woodley Street is the second-busiest low-speed street (after Jefferson Parkway), but between South Highway 3 and South Prairie Street, there is no consistent sidewalk coverage. (Sidewalks were added to the portion east of Prairie this summer.) The sidewalks that are there (for a few blocks either direction from the Division Street intersection) are patchy and unkept, old thin 12×12 tiles that are more dirt than concrete at this point. The fact that the road is so busy makes the situation worse: people, kids especially, often will not bother to cross the street to walk on the correct side. East Woodley Street is a Rice County road; West Woodley is part of Minnesota 246.

1. Cedar Avenue (Rice 43/Dakota 23)

I believe Cedar Avenue — officially Falk and Eveleth Avenue — is the worst sidewalk omission for several reasons:

• It’s adjacent to St. Olaf and forms part of a road beltway around campus, popular for joggers.
• It’s adjacent to residential neighborhoods along Greenvale Ave, North Ave, Thye Parkway, and Lincoln Street.
• The road barely wide enough for two cars. The shoulders are narrow and unpaved.
• The speed limit is 30 mph around the most dangerous portion of the road (a 90-degree curve with limited visibility), but coming from the north, it goes very rapidly down from 50 mph, leaving many cars well above 30 in the 30-zone.

Unfortunately, it’s probably one of the problematic ones to deal with. This road affects two counties, one city, and two townships (Bridgewater and Greenvale). Ordinarily the townships would not pay toward county roads, however somebody would have to cough up for sidewalks on the Rice County portion, because the county certainly won’t.

(Thanks to Bill Ostrem for that picture, displaying the aesthetic mess of the road — another result of multiple authorities not working together. The Greenvale Avenue picture is from Google Street view, and the others are from Bing Maps.)

A note about the rankings: these are all fairly rough, though lacking pedestrian counts, it would be difficult to do it scientifically. Generally, I ranked them higher if they were A. close to schools, B. narrow on the road itself, C. busy/higher-speed, D. an exclusive way to get to or from a certain place, or E. already used by pedestrians.

While Richfield has had somewhat of a change of heart since it was originally laid out, retrofitting unsidewalked streets can always be difficult. The solution proposed by the consultants for 76th Street was a beefy 10′ shared-use path along one side, designed to handle all nonmotorized users of the road. This post does an excellent job of pointing out issues with sidewalks and shared-use paths. (Note that this excerpt treats the two as synonymous; Northfield considers a sidewalk to be 6-10′ wide and made of concrete; a shared-used path would be asphalt and 10-12′).

The problem with [the 75th/76th Street plans] is the belief that sidewalks are safer than streets for biking. Bicycle side paths such as the one on 75th have proved so dangerous that even the US government instructs that they be used in only the few locations where their dangers are insignificant. The problem is not just pedestrians; urban sidepaths cause difficult and dangerous car-bike conflicts at every driveway and intersection. How so?

A car backing down a driveway will slow down at street level before entering expecting fast moving vehicles. This is not the case for a sidewalk. Not seeing pedestrians the car will back out past the sidewalk to the street .

A car is more likely to see a bicyclist in the street when making a right hand turn but is less likely to see the bicyclist up on the sidewalk entering in to the street when making the turn.

The author goes on to back up the claim with solid numbers, which the Task Force has also discussed in the past:

Contrary to intuition, cyclists riding on bicycle paths (now called “shared use paths”) have a higher crash rate than cyclists riding on roads, although not as high a crash rate as cyclists riding on sidewalks (Aultman-Hall and Kaltenecker 1998). The risk of injuries on paths compared to roads has been calculated as 40%, 80%, and 260% higher (Moritz 1998, Aultman-Hall and Kaltenecker 1998, Kaplan 1976).

Northfield’s Uses

This picture -- on East Woodley -- is an example of excessive path/road crossings, creating more opportunities for accidents with turning drivers

The Northfield Parks/Trail Plan proposes several shared-use paths on streets without bike lanes: Jefferson Parkway, South Division Street, Rice County 1, and 7th Street.

Good Uses

I think that shared-use paths are only appropriate in situations where most bicyclists cannot safely interact with traffic. Rice County 1 and Division Street (MN 246) south of Jefferson Parkway are two instances where this may be the case: both are 45+ mph roads that carry around 4000 cars a day. Both also have relatively few driveways and intersections, so the risks pertaining to shared-use paths are less severe. While an ideal solution (from a nonmotorized perspective) would be to simply slow down the roads, shared-use paths are a good solution to an inhospitable road.

Bad Uses

A bad use would be unnecessarily segregating motorized and nonmotorized traffic, or putting a path where there are frequent intersections or driveways. A 7th Street shared-use path would then probably be the most questionable, since the street handles relatively little vehicle traffic at only 30 mph and is lousy with driveways. Jefferson Parkway — like Woodley Street, which just received a shared-use path — is somewhere in-between. It’s a high-traffic road with no driveways and a fairly low speed (30 mph posted; I would guess 30-35 in practice). It could have a shared-use path with somewhat lower risk, but there’s no obvious reason why it could not have a bike path instead.

Who Benefits?

Ostensibly, the beneficiaries of a shared-use path would be casual riders, but for truly inexperienced users (e.g., kids learning to bike), there’s little a shared-use path can do that a sidewalk can’t. I think the real beneficiaries are drivers, who avoid having to interact with cyclists in the same way they would have to in a bike path.

Of course, interactions are inevitable, and if more of those interactions result in accidents, nobody really wins.

Though I imagine a lot of complexity to it, as it turns out, Minnesota’s pedestrian statute, 169.21, is actually quite blunt:

“Where traffic-control signals are not in place or in operation, the driver of a vehicle shall stop to yield the right-of-way to a pedestrian crossing the roadway within a marked crosswalk or at an intersection with no marked crosswalk. The driver must remain stopped until the pedestrian has passed the lane in which the vehicle is stopped [...].” (169.21 Subd.2a)

So essentially the rule of thumb is that a car must stop at any intersection unless controls are in place. This wasn’t that surprising for a residential grid, but it just didn’t seem right for a busy intersection like West 3rd Street and Highway 3. So I asked a helpful Mn/DOT engineer who confirmed that, yes, even at the intersection, cars must yield to pedestrians.

The restrictions

So while that is the rule of thumb, there are several limitations:

Traffic signals

As mentioned in the above quote, if there is a traffic light, pedestrians must abide by it.

Reasonable stopping distance

169.21 2a also specifies that “No pedestrian shall suddenly leave a curb or other place of safety and walk or run into the path of a vehicle which is so close that it is impossible for the driver to yield.”

Pedestrians must use mixed-grade crossings when provided

169.21 3b specifies that “Any pedestrian crossing a roadway at a point where a pedestrian tunnel or overhead pedestrian crossing has been provided shall yield the right-of-way to all vehicles upon the roadway.”

What about bicycles?

People operating bicycles are not considered pedestrians. If a bicyclist wanted the rights of a pedestrian s/he could dismount and walk the bicycle temporarily — helpful to keep in mind for difficult-to-cross roads like West 5th St (Hwy 19).

And yet…

Of course, the illegality of ignoring pedestrians does not seem to affect all drivers. I’m just amazed to see Malt-O-Meal employees crossing 5th Street. There are several warning signs both directions of pedestrian crossing, big flashing lights at the well-painted crossing, and occasionally even fluorescent yellow “STATE LAW STOP FOR PEDESTRIANS IN CROSSWALK” signs in the middle of the road. There are still cars that don’t stop.

Why? Because they don’t think the pedestrian is going to exercise his or her rights. Which is mostly true: we as pedestrians are not as aggressive as we should be. While I’m not advocating anyone walk out in front of a moving car “which is so close that it is impossible for the driver to yield,” being more assertive would go a long way to making pedestrian crossings safer and driving calmer.