A matter of priorities
It’s consistently pissed me off that there is no legal crossing for bicycles or pedestrians between the Highway 169 and Highway 494 bridges over the Minnesota River — a gap of over 13 miles between bridges (20km). There are actually two bridges: I-35W and the Cedar Avenue Freeway, but both formally disallow cycling. There was a bridge immediately adjacent to the Cedar Avenue Freeway bridge that allowed humans to cross, but this has been closed since 2002, with no plans for repair made at the time of closure. (For cyclists’ “safety.” One wonders how much “safer” the occasional kamikaze cyclist on the Cedar Ave Freeway is.)
It’s not particularly likely that I will be bicycling from Northfield to the Minnesota River anytime soon. It’s a schlep. But Burnsville, Eagan, and Bloomington are all similarly dense cities in the same metro area, immediately bordering one another. From a residential area in Burnsville to a public school in Bloomington, it is 3.8 miles by car (5.75 km). Or 19.6 miles by bike (31 km).
It appears as of this May, there was trail funding for the City of Bloomington to restore the old bridge. This is promising, and I’m glad to see it happen. Nevertheless, this is not a trail issue. The Minnesota Dept of Transportation excluded bicycles and pedestrians in their designs for 35W and Cedar Avenue Freeway, and it behooves them to provide some reasonable alternative (going over 5x as far is not a reasonable alternative).
Let’s put this in perspective. Mn/DOT spent $288 million to improve the I-35W/62nd Street interchange. Not because the previous interchange was unsafe or because it was impossible to cross. Because it was too slow. And the users of the road don’t pay a time for the luxurious new fourteen lanes. The repairs to this bridge would cost less than $10 million, addressing an actual complete transportation roadblock (literally).
Even more infuriating is reading the comments on the Star Tribune article about this bridge. One example:
mckensm0: “Bicyclists should pay a toll to cross the bridge. They buy something akin to the MinnPass chip and have a scanner on the bridge.”
To be clear, MinnPass is a “Lexus Lane” system, which allows people willing to pay a toll to not have to drive slow with the proles. It is not a toll for using the road, which apparently only bicycles should be subject to.
I have nothing more to say.
