Last-minute disarray on Bryant Avenue reconstruction is a bad sign for Minneapolis Public Works

On Thursday on Zoom, the Minneapolis Public Works convened an extraordinary “stakeholder engagement” meeting. Jenny HagerDirector of Transportation Planning and Programming, did her best to point out that everything was fine around Reconstruction of Bryant Street. She went more than an hour Asking questions about last-minute changes to a two-and-a-half-mile project in the heart of South Minneapolis.

It didn’t go smoothly. At the heart of the issue was why the plans, which had already been approved by the city council and signed by Mayor Jacob Frey, were hastily amended. When asked why the plan was not resubmitted to the City Council, which has technical jurisdiction over street design, Hagar explained her point.

“This is not going backwards because the design review continues to align with the goals of the project,” Hager said. “(It) continues to conform to tap (Transportation business plan) and the (approved) Street Design Guide. It does not fundamentally change what was included in the original design.”

As the meeting continued, it became apparent that the revisions to the plan were not complete. After one question, Hager admitted that the department had no firm plans for most blocks of the project. If the rebuilding of Bryant Street were taking place months in the future, all of this would be normal, but work on Bryant Street started this morning. Crews have already been hired and bulldozers are in the ground.

For a public works department that’s usually transparent to making plans as you go, it’s a huge departure from the Minneapolis approach to transportation. Even if you love the changes, which squanders security in the new street, the process is a red flag. Reflecting the shifting power dynamics between the mayor’s office and city council, the changes feel like a step backwards for equity and climate action.

An overview of the Bryant Street project

The Bryant Street Rebuild is a once-in-a-lifetime reconstruction of a residential street that runs through the heart of South Minneapolis. More than just repaving, the $4.7 million project represents an opportunity to reshape the street from the ground up. In this case, planners and engineers are installing entirely new elements for the streets, from dirt to sidewalks, trees, sewers, rain gardens, concrete and light poles.

While Bryant Avenue is quiet residential, it is a major biking corridor. It runs north-south through the heart of the dense Wedge neighborhood of Minneapolis, paralleling busy Lyndale Street which unfortunately, is too packed with cars to be safe. In 2010, Bryant was converted into a “Bicycle Street,” a type of bicycle infrastructure that in theory reduces vehicular traffic and prioritizes cyclists.

In practice, the city of Minneapolis installed almost no traffic calming measures for the street, reducing “boulevard” features to little more than paint and the occasional sign. As a result, it has long been Bryant Pike Boulevard running joke Among Minneapolis cyclists, a street where bikes should have taken priority has instead become easy fodder for honking bikers.

That’s why Public Works’ 16-month Bryant Avenue engagement was based on designing a better bike lane. The final design, approved by the Minneapolis City Council and Frye in 2021, was utterly innovative. Shuttle service took Bryant to busy Lyndale Street, two blocks away, turning Bryant into a slow, one-way thoroughfare designed around people walking or rolling.

More importantly, it introduced a range of traffic calming elements including bumps and bumps, which, according to Deputy Principal Brian Dobbs, were “very successful” in reducing speeds along the southern half of the street (Phase One). This is exactly the kind of design articulated in Minneapolis’ ambitious “Vizion Zero plans,” and it’s increasingly important as the traffic fatality rate has soared since the COVID pandemic.

All of this changed at the last minute. Published Public Works Publishing A message about Bryant On the project website on April 30. The updated plans make two major changes to the council-approved street design, both of which reduce safety elements for people on foot or on bicycles.

First, the new layout removes the bevels (alternating sides of car parks) in favor of a straight left lane of traffic. According to Hager, the changes were necessary because of concerns about the arrival of fire engines. Public works employees testified that Minneapolis drivers had problems parking close to the curb, especially on the left side of the street.

“We thought people would park closer to the curb than they do today,” Dobbs said. “Even in the fall, people would park two feet away from the left sidewalk[so]emergency vehicles and larger vehicles would have trouble getting through.”

The other big change is that the protected two-way bike path has been moved next to the street, instead of being stowed into a 4.5-foot grass street. This is in order to incorporate an angled “mountable rim” along its length, allowing emergency vehicles to drive onto the bike path if needed. As one rider explained during a stakeholder meeting, from a safety perspective, the change is to lower the bar.

“The most disappointing change for me was moving the bike lane closer to the street,” Chris Meyer testified. “The avenue of the original design makes it safer, especially to have kids use it. You have a barrier so cars don’t just hit you.”

Faster traffic on Bryant Street

The Bryant Street changes might seem like small potatoes, and in the grand scheme of things that might be true. Even though it makes the street more dangerous, there is still a sidewalk-protected bike lane, even if it is adjacent to a sidewalk that allows trucks to easily drive onto it.

But the changes also reflect a departure in Minneapolis’ public operation. In my experience, it’s not normal for a long-approved plan to be canceled at the last minute.

“The proposal passed by City Council was less than 30% of the design,” explained Deputy Principal Brian Dobbs. “We have a conceptual design scheme that goes through the city council, and it’s a 5% to 10% plan. Taking a 2D plan and turning it into a 3D plan is a lot of work.”

As St. Paul’s planning commissioner for a decade, the process Dobbs describes is unusual. Traffic architects use distinct language for street designs: “30% geometry” refers to a general layout while “60% geometry” has specific dimensions at intersections, and so on. Although not needed, St. Paul Public Works typically designs 60% to 80% to public, the level of detail was also a standard for major Minneapolis projects.

If Minneapolis Public Works normalizes sending out “10% engineering” plans to the city council and the public, it effectively cuts the 13-member council, and the larger public, from the detailed work of street designs. This is a significant change from the past, when the City Council usually took the lead in transportation designs.

This is important because, for bike and pedestrian projects, details matter. The little elements that remain ambivalent about the Bryant Avenue project, such as sidewalk design or intersection intersections, are important pieces of the safety puzzle. If the Bryant Avenue project sets precedent, these decisions will happen behind closed doors with virtually no public scrutiny.

The end of the transfer consensus

This isn’t the only recent chaos surrounding a major transportation project in Minneapolis. Last year saw the end of a long battle Staff suggested bus lanes on Hennepin StreetAnother street rebuild. Design has become a political confrontation involving The mayor vetoed the eight-member council majority. Like Bryant, the affair exposed rifts within Public Works, as staff-driven plans were canceled at the last minute by department leadership.

There is a cost to this mess. The public works employee in charge of the Hennepin project subsequently left the department, and according to several former and current employees, she wasn’t alone. Several key public works employees have left the city for a variety of reasons over the past two years, including some of its more experienced transportation planners.

Under Principal Margaret Anderson Kelleher, who was appointed by Mayor Frey a year ago, the public works transformation appears to be part of Minneapolis’s new “strong mayor” system of government. According to a report in Southwest Voices, Quoting an internal emailToday, management is likely to adopt a “let (Manager Kelleher) wing” approach, which is more in response to direct complaints than business community in the city.

For their part, public works employees denied that the changes to Bryant Avenue were a response to commercial pressure, instead pointing to the effect of snow on emergency vehicle access. When asked, Dobbs explained that management has been considering changes to Bryant Street since January, after heavy snowfall in the winter.

Public works less see?It wasn’t long ago that Minneapolis Public Works was a national leader in transportation planning, Geometric street designs They are often found in countries with safer streets. Plans such as the City Transport Action Plan, Vision Zero Action Plan or the 2040 Master Plan reflect a commitment to model hierarchy (i.e. prioritizing pedestrians, transport users and cyclists) and reducing vehicle miles in the city.

Today, many of the city’s most advanced transportation options have receded to the side of the road or, in the case of the Bryant Street bike lanes, have been literally pushed to the sidewalk. Instead, Minneapolis’ cutting-edge street designs seem to be slipping back toward mediocrity, with parking complaints trumping safety and climate goals.

“We’re working very quickly,” Hager said during the stakeholder meeting. “We’re really in the design-build phase right now as construction starts on Monday. We’re handing over design plans to contractors as quickly as we can get them done. It feels very fast for us, too.”

By the time you read this, construction will have already begun, so don’t email your councilman asking for changes to vague plans. Instead, South Minneapolis residents, including most elected officials, will find out what the street will look like when finished.