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Heads Up: I am about to post a long thread about navigating a certain intersection by bike. This thread will include references to vehicular violence, and to the death of a person riding a bike. If these are not things you wish to read, now would be a good time to put us on mute.
I tend to navigate by landmarks and familiar routes more than street names, especially when I’m riding a bike. After all, my focus is usually on the conditions that more directly affect my health and wellbeing more than street signs.
So it took me a few days to realize the intersection of 12th St N and Linden Ave W — where a person on a bike was killed by driver this week — was one that I’ve cycled through untold thousands of times since I started to commuting by bike.
Note: When I looked at this view of the intersection, I was gobsmacked to see the complete absence of vehicles. In the past 3 decades, I have never once seen that intersection this empty, day or night. It’s almost eerie to look at this way.
If you don’t know the spot, it’s the termination of the bike lane on 1st Ave N — one that runs through the heart of downtown, crisscrossing numerous intersections where drivers begin accelerating for nearby highways, speeding through with little or no regard for traffic signals.
Past bars and restaurants, where delivery trucks park in the bike lane to load and unload at all hours of the day. Past businesses and clubs and the Target Center, where taxi and rideshare drivers swerve and stop unpredictably when picking up or dropping off people.
Past the downtown bus depot where drivers regularly occupy the bike lane with what seems like absolute impunity. If you’re a frequent traveler of this route, you expect that you’ll have to ride in the vehicle lane for up to block to get around them.
The intersection of 12th St N and Linden Ave W itself is a living Venn diagram of all the worst and most cynical ideas in urban transportation infrastructure and planning. A largely unprotected bike lane on a busy city street that suddenly comes to an end? Check.
An intersection that requires pedestrians and cyclists to cross multiple lanes of turning traffic to continue their journeys? Check.
An intersection that includes both an on-ramp and an off-ramp where drivers are accelerating to or decelerating from highways speeds as they enter the intersection? Check.
Cars and semi trucks regularly cutting across or driving in bike lanes to make right turns? Check. Signs and signals that don’t allow foot or bike traffic to cross without contending with turning vehicles? Check.
If you’re riding a bike westbound out of downtown towards south Minneapolis, you hope to catch the traffic signal cycle on the previous block in a way that allows you to move safely from the bike lane across two lanes of traffic into the left turn lane at 12th, then head south.
This is tricky, but it’s safer because you only have to cross two lanes of traffic at the intersection. Even though they’re coming off the highway, it’s a long straightaway that allows you to see them coming (and theoretically allows them to see you).
Of course, during rush hour, there’s a good chance that southbound traffic will be backed up across the intersection in a way that prevents you from reaching the narrow bike lane on 12th. But that’s another story.
If you can’t get through the intersection that way, your other option is to cross to the west side of 12th, stop and sit in the unprotected bike lane, waiting for the light to change so you can continue south.
Sounds safe, right? In reality, said bike lane is usually occupied by drivers turning right to the freeway entrance ramp. And even when they’re not physically in the bike lane, they’re in a hurry to get to the highway and largely indifferent to people trying to cross the street.
Of course, your next challenge is to get through the intersection at Hennepin Ave, the busiest of all downtown streets. Again, drivers turning westbound onto Hennepin will be veering into, traveling in, or simply cutting sharply across the bike lane to complete their turns.
Some of them actually signal their intention to do so, but mostly you’re left to guess at what they’re doing and hope that they’ll take the time to look for you before they turn. Every time I get through this spot, I breathe a sigh of relief.
At this point, I imagine you’re thinking that this is a ridiculous amount of description, detail, cautions, considerations, and decisions necessary to survive passing through a single intersection. And you’re right.
Anyone who rides a bike is regularly asked to explain or defend “all the bikers who run red lights and stop signs and break the law.” *pause for all of us to sigh and shake our heads*
Setting aside for a moment the fact that, statistically speaking, people who ride bikes break the law at roughly the same rate as people who drive cars… https://usa.streetsblog.org/2018/01/03/study-cyclists-dont-break-traffic-laws-any-more-than-drivers-do/
…and in some cases, much less… https://www.forbes.com/sites/carltonreid/2019/05/10/cyclists-break-far-fewer-road-rules-than-motorists-finds-new-video-study/#2d0b83f4bfaa
and also accepting the fact the some people on bikes blow through signals and stop signs for no good reason), here’s what I tell them:
We do it because every day we encounter intersections like this one that are designed and managed in a way that values the speed and convenience of people driving cars above and beyond the safety and survival of literally everyone else — especially people on bikes.
Given the choice, we’d rather pass through these intersections following the law to the letter and arrive safely on the other side to continue our journeys. Like everybody else, we’re just trying to get where we’re going in one piece.
But if traffic conditions give us an opportunity to cross against a sign or signal in a way that makes us less likely to get hit by a vehicle, a way that’s actually safer than “playing by the rules?” Yeah, we’ll do that.
Not every single time, just when it’s actually less dangerous than waiting for a green light that will send two more lanes of traffic straight at us. Because the laws and the roads aren’t designed to protect us, and none of it will mean a damn thing if we end up dead.
Police will assume that we were at fault no matter what actually happened, and file reports written to absolve drivers of responsibility.
Media will focus on whether or not we were wearing helmets, despite the fact that there isn’t a helmet made that’ll keep us safe from what several tons of moving metal will do to our bodies.
Comment trolls will say that we got what we deserved, that streets are for cars, that bikes cause traffic jams and should be banned from downtown. And nothing will change.
I don’t know the person who was killed last week. I don’t know what happened or what they were doing in the moments before their life was ended suddenly, violently and senselessly. I just know how easily it could have been me, tens of thousands of times over.
And that someday, maybe it will. (end)
