In Minneapolis, the
RiverLake Greenway, which has been in the works for 15 years, recently opened the city's first bicycle boulevard.
RiverLake
is a five-mile east-west-running bike and pedestrian corridor that
connects Lake Harriet to the Mississippi River, according to information
from
Bike Walk Twin Cities, an initiative of
Transit for Livable Communities, which administers the project.
The
bikeway, which got its start in the 1990s after a group of neighborhood
activists pushed for it, was finished after a $400,000 grant came
through this spring from Bike Walk Twin Cities.
Minneapolis is
one of four cities across the country that received $22 million as a
part of a 2005 federal nonmotorized transportation pilot program to
encourage biking and walking infrastructure, according to Hilary Reeves,
a spokesperson for Bike Walk Twin Cities.
The bikeway "creates
a network so people can bike and get across the city," in a way that's
"friendly to cyclists with different skill sets," she says.
It goes through residential areas along parts of 40th and 42nd Streets East, between the Midtown Greenway and Minnehaha Creek.
Features
such as striped bike lanes on its eastern and western ends, and the
bicycle boulevard lining the lengthiest part of the greenway,
help make the bikeway safe and accessible for bicyclists and
pedestrians, according to information from Bike Walk Twin Cities.
It's the first of a handful of bikeways that are planned for the
area in conjunction with the federal pilot program, according to Reeves.
Biking
is a small piece of the local transportation system but it can make a
big difference when it comes to people's health and the environment.
"The boulevard gets people thinking about how they're getting somewhere.
It gives them options to try biking," she says.
Source: Hilary Reeves, Bike Walk Twin Cities
Writer: Anna Pratt