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Comment by donatj | Hacker News Reader

Minneapolis resident here. Unlike the other Minneapolis resident here, I feel like I see most of the bike lanes entirely disused. A project in my neighborhood turned a major thoroughfare into a one way with a separated bike lane, and I've seen maybe 40 people use it since it's completion a few years ago.

I'm curious what a 69% increase looks like in real numbers - a 20% increase on next to nothing is still next to nothing.

In my honest opinion Minneapolis is 75% of the year too hot or too cold for all but the most keen bikers.

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While the city has been making a lot of improvements with bike infrastructure, I feel like there are still a lot of pain points in the system. Many bike lanes are still only indicated by paint or flex-posts (which do absolutely nothing for safety), there are still many dicey left turns, and bikers get virtually no accommodation during construction (see the Cedar Lake Trail disaster).

This is a big deal, because for inexperienced cyclists, their perception of safety is dictated by the most unsafe portion of the journey, not the average safety.

I don't think the weather has that much to do with it. There are hotter and colder cities out there with higher bike ridership then Minneapolis. Good infrastructure is the number one contributor to bike ridership, and weather is a secondary factor at most.

It's been shown that temperature doesn't necessarily have a correlation with biking activity. It has a lot more to do with infrastructure [1]. I know I live in the tri-state area (MN,ND,SD) and bike year round.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uhx-26GfCBU

I mean I can say without a doubt that I'm not personally going to cycle when it's above 85 or below 40. It's not a pleasant experience.

Minneapolis consistently has one of the top 5 highest percentages of bike commuters in the US and is the most bike friendly city I've ever lived in.

You can also look at data here:

https://www2.minneapolismn.gov/government/departments/public...

> I'm curious what a 69% increase looks like in real numbers - a 20% increase on next to nothing is still next to nothing.

It's a good question. User Cenk just provided a link to the full paper in another comment: https://oa.mg/pdf/10.1016-j.trip.2022.100604.pdf

If my skimming is accurate, the answer seems to be that they surveyed two hours of afternoon commute in September in 39 locations, and saw an average increase from 138 cyclists to 211. So likely a real increase rather than a statistical artifact, but also quite small in terms of absolute numbers given the costs involved.

> A project in my neighborhood turned a major thoroughfare into a one way with a separated bike lane, and I've seen maybe 40 people use it since it's completion a few years ago.

How many cyclists you've personally witnessed using the lane is irrelevant. Look up the stats from a bike count.

> In my honest opinion Minneapolis is 75% of the year too hot or too cold for all but the most keen bikers.

Just goes to show the value of an opinion: 43% of Minneapolis bicyclists ride year-round: https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/36685502.pdf

Also, a few years ago your city had the third highest percentage of bicycle commuters in the country: https://www.startribune.com/bicycle-commuting-at-highest-rat...

> How many cyclists you've personally witnessed using the lane is irrelevant. Look up the stats from a bike count.

I don't think it is, when it comes to the value of the infrastructure. I can undeniably note that the number of humans going by in cars is orders of magnitude higher than bicycle.

> 43% of Minneapolis bicyclists ride year-round

Compared to how many people who don't cycle at all because of the weather? This is meaningless.

I'm a keen biker and I just don't ride in the winter, especially in places like Minnesota. When you mix the snow, ice and darkness together, it's just too much. Summer is better because of the late light, but I can only go to casual, fun events. If I'm supposed to be dry and presentable, a bike doesn't work in the summer.

Some alternate interpretations of your experience:

1. It’s possible your sampling is biased. I.e. you usually pass that street at its lowest usage time, and never at its highest usage time.

2. It’s possible that road is a cycle infrastructure fragment. I.e. it’s great, but unconnected to the rest of the cycling network - so it’s not being used because only people who are going from one place on that strip to another place on that strip can make use of it. Once it’s joined up to the rest of the infrastructure it would start to get heavily used.

As for Minneapolis’ climate - i’ve not been there so i can’t speak firsthand but I have lived and biked in Toronto and Montreal, which have roughly similar climates (very cold + very hot) and SO MANY CYCLISTS - so I think you might be wrong about that

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