In a move that will create near-certain chaos as the University of Minnesota gathers for fall classes, Hennepin County and U of M officials have closed the exterior sidewalks on the upper deck of the Washington Avenue bridge to traffic.

The upper deck is solely for the use of pedestrians and cyclists, and is a key connector of the East and West Bank campuses at the U.

Pedestrian traffic will be allowed only on a 14-foot-wide portion of the covered inner section of the bridge. New braces will be installed under the sidewalks on the exterior. Given that pedestrians aren’t precisely heavy (even with the rise in adult obesity rates in Minnesota), how bad is the decking?!

Repairs will reportedly cost about $400,000.

Signage still says bikes are legally unwelcome on the bridge. However, enforcement seems lax - when I’ve been in Winona, I did see some cyclists using the roadway. MN43 is a 4-lane bridge with plenty of room for a bicycle and a car to travel efficiently over the rider alongside one another.

Not that I am advocating illegal behavior. I’m just observing.

This is, of course, false. Two objects moving toward each other at any speed will have a more forceful collision than two objects traveling in the same direction. It is also illegal road use in Minnesota.

Which doesn’t explain why when I saw a dude on a bike going the wrong way in the shoulder of Central Avenue shortly after it crosses under US10 in Blaine the cop he rode by had no reaction. That part of Central is a crapshoot at best, but going against traffic there is like waving a neon sign that says I WANT TO DIE K THX.

LCI training is open to anyone who has passed the League’s popular and useful Road I course. One such course was recently taught in Minnesota, graduating 10.

I’ve found that the city police (both Minneapolis and Saint Paul) are very aware of the traffic rules as they apply to cyclists. When cleaning up an accident on Summit Avenue once, I had a Saint Paul police officer lament the poorly designed bike lane (which was a direct contributor to the injury accident in question; I was not the accident victim but a witness).

If only some of the suburban departments would learn from them. But that’s a different lament for another day.

The optical illusion is described as “a flat piece of blue, white and orange plastic that is designed to look like a 3-D pyramid from afar when applied to the pavement.” There is a claim that they require little maintenance after application, but none of the tests have been run in places like Buffalo or Minneapolis, where winter is rough on roads and road markings.

I have no idea how the illusion varies from different vehicular cockpit positions, or from a bicycle of any kind.

It is also noted that as motorists realize the fake bump is there, the calming effect wears off for regular users of a route. Still, NTHSA are continuing tests, because they require no engineering and are really cheap, thus I have a feeling they really want to see data that justifies using them.

City of Winona has put up some close-up shots of decaying gusset plates in action on the MN43 bridge over the Mississippi River. Closing the sidewalk is clearly justified by these images.

Clickable for detail:

There are several others on the City of Winona web site.

However, bikes STILL don’t belong on sidewalks, so they STILL could easily be allowed in the traffic lane. The bridge was never signed that bicycles could only use the bridge (like on the Mendota Bridge of MN55), and MN43 was never a prohibited route (like most interstate highways). The restriction on cyclists appears to be a categorization failure - those making this rule are classifying bicyclists with pedestrians as sidewalk users, rather than as vehicles making shared use of the road as permitted under Minnesota Statute 169.222.

The personalization is considered a territorial marker. Boundaries between the personal space and the public space occur. As a result, these drivers are more prone to defend their right-of-way, and are far more prone to name-calling, tailgating, getting out of the vehicle to argue or using their car to block or ram another.

The study also says that it doesn’t matter WHAT the personalization is - so even people who have Wellstone stickers or ‘SLOW DOWN - Respect People & Neighborhoods!’ stickers are potential road ragers.

I can’t say I’m surprised by this, given that I’ve experienced having a hybrid with world peace stickers try to run me off the road near the U of M.

Because, remember: Those bikes will be the straw breaking that concrete camel’s gusset plates!