No crashes (yet), just a little confusion over two-way streets

Jim Gehrz, Star Tribune

How not to do it: It might feel a little strange, but drivers who park on 1st Avenue N. should stay to the left of the double white lines. Several cars, left, didn’t quite get that by Wednesday, making the new curbside bike lane a bit tricky. There is no parking during rush hours or late on Fridays and Saturdays.

On Hennepin and 1st Avs. in Minneapolis, it's a new kind of driver's ed.

By JIM FOTI, Star Tribune

Last update: October 15, 2009 - 8:11 AM

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People flock to Hennepin Avenue and the Warehouse District to be entertained, but the best show right now may be on the streets themselves.

Hennepin and 1st Avenues were converted Sunday to two-way streets with new signs, new rules and an unusual parking set-up, but not everyone got the memo, resulting in ticketed cars, stuck drivers, blocked bike lanes and crunched pylons.

Ian Anderson, a sound technician at the Fine Line Music Cafe, left his truck in one of the new, 6-feet-from-the-curb parking spaces on 1st Avenue N. on Tuesday "just to see how it works out." As vehicle after vehicle came up behind it, then cut over to go around, his car alarm chirped a lot.

"I've pretty much been to every city in the country, and I have never, ever seen anything as crazy as this," he said.

Critiques have been flying around the Internet as well. "Worst. Design. Ever," Barry Clegg, a bicyclist who lives on Nicollet Island, wrote on one forum.

"Obviously, with anything new, there's going to be something of a learning curve," said Lt. Jesse Garcia, Minneapolis police spokesman. He knew of no crashes related to the confusion. Parking tickets were issued starting Tuesday.

The city says that the conversion to two-way streets makes it easier for drivers to go directly to their destination, and that placing the bike lanes between parked cars and the curb offers protection to cyclists.

Jenifer Loritz of the Minneapolis Public Works Department managed the project, which, she noted, isn't entirely done. She said Wednesday that more road markings are planned for Hennepin Avenue, including "sharrows" -- arrows with a symbol of a bicycle that remind drivers to share the right lane on that street. Snow pushed the conversion from Saturday to Sunday, and it's been too cold to paint during the nights since then, she said. (As she spoke, a flashing sign behind her indicated a temperature of 39 degrees.)

Signs on each block tell drivers what the lanes are for and when they're open, but so far, many drivers aren't noticing or, perhaps, comprehending. The large sign over the parking/driving lanes on 1st Avenue lists numerous restrictions -- a driver trying to read it aloud would have to utter nearly 40 syllables.

Clegg was among those who wondered whether changeable overhead signs might clear things up.

Dynamic messaging is "definitely something our traffic department would be interested in," Loritz said, but it wasn't in the original $3 million budget, and the city's signal system doesn't have the technical capabilities.

City staffers are spending time on the streets during busy periods to observe, she said, and she pointed out that "under the one-way system, it was no cakewalk out here when we had large events."

Mia Birk, a bicycle transportation expert visiting from Portland, Ore., toured the Twin Cities by bike on Wednesday, including the new lanes on 1st Avenue. Portland, which is regarded as the nation's bicycle-commuting capital, just opened a similar curb lane for bikes, she said, although there's a buffer zone between the parking and the bikes to allow room for opening car doors.

Such lanes are called cycle tracks, she said. "There are variations of it all over Europe, and a lot of American cities are starting to experiment with them."

Minneapolis' system might need a little tweaking, she said, but "it looks to me like a good start."

Jim Foti • 612-673-4491

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