mpls: greenway update

The other day, I spoke with a guy named Kerry (a relative newcomer to the Midtown Public Greenway board) about how the 29^th street bike route is coming along. The project got some bad press lately when a woman got raped there.

Here’s the Strib article

The other assault happened two weeks earlier, about 3:30 a.m. Sept. 16, when a man snuck up behind a 25-year-old Minneapolis woman walking by the 11th Avenue bridge over the Greenway bicycle trail. He dragged her under the bridge near E. 29th Street.

[MPD Lt.] Whisney said the woman lost teeth after being beaten and raped by the man. No weapons were used in either assault, he said, and both victims had cuts and bruises on their faces.

The Greenway, as you know, is the dedicated bike/running path that runs down the 29^th St. corridor. There’s a lot of new development happening along it, particularly the Sears Building complex and the Ackerberg Lagoon Ave 10-story tower.

Apparently, the Greenway is trying to include minorities, who live all along it in large number, on the board and in the planning process. It’s a tall order, but it should be a high priority. There’s a lot of cultural and language barriers, and they certainly have nothing to learn from the DFL, which has a perennial problem with including non-whites.

At the same time, I watched the greenway traffic on a Thursday afternoon, and saw almost equal parts white & asian/hispanic bike traffic, small sample size notwtihstanding.

Kerry also mentioned that a streetcar/train down the Greenway corridor would cost a mere $50 million. Although he's probably lowballing, compare that to the $700+ for the Hiawatha, or the amount being spent on some of Oberstar's roads to nowhere.