The Many MYTHS of the Summit Avenue Regional Trail (SART)

There are many myths about the Summit Avenue Regional Trail – that the trail will be safer, that it can be built for a pittance and that it won’t impact our showcase street’s historic character. All Nonsense!

Read on…

MYTH 1 ~ SART is the future.

The future is flexibility. Think nimble buses not fixed rail. The buffered bicycle lanes west of Lexington are especially welcoming at the dawn of a new era of e-vehicles. Above-grade, off-road trails are expensive to build and maintain. The city’s first such trails in downtown have been pricey and poorly received. In Saint Paul over 95% of non-park/parkway bike facilities are on-street lanes. Even in Minneapolis, 80% of their street grid bicycle facilities are on-street bike lanes.

The future is electric bicycles and scooters whose growth knows no limits, and whose speeds of up to 28 mph are unsuitable and dangerous on a narrow path shared with families and folks going far slower. Wide buffered bicycle lanes in urban areas are the future as they allow faster cyclists to easily and safely pass slower cyclists.

For a desirable future with more cyclists, relegating everyone to a narrow 6- to 8-foot trail is not the future, it’s failure.
Saint Paul planned SART using bicycle design manuals from MnDOT, 2021 and the Federal Highway Administration, 2015. Neither document has a single reference to e-bikes or e-scooters, the vehicles of the future.

MYTH 2 ~ Summit Avenue must be completely rebuilt to be safer for biking and walking.

The back page shows that much of the reconstruction is unnecessary. While Summit is already quite safe it can be made even safer for far less money than SART. The bicycle lanes would be more visible and safer if the lanes had high visibility paint. A rumble-strip could be added along the lanes to alert drivers. The bike lanes east of Lexington could be wider and the traffic lanes narrower.

Rebuilding key intersections along Summit with bumpouts shortens the crossing distance for pedestrians and helps slow traffic. Innovative crosswalk designs (see 34th and Portland in Minneapolis) allow bike lanes to flow freely. Slowing cars is a key concern and Minneapolis is seeing large reductions in speeding thanks to a program using cameras to issue tickets.

MYTH 3 ~ SART will be safer.

This may be the biggest myth of all. Removing the bike lanes makes Summit more dangerous for bicyclists, pedestrians and motorists. If the bicycle lanes are removed:

• Everyday cyclists, bike commuters and e-bikers will be riding on a recreational trail designed for slow-moving families and kids. Hazardous for slow riders and frustrating for faster cyclists. Or…
• As city officials readily acknowledge, faster riders will have to bike in a traffic lane with justifiably angry motorists. Plus…
• Pedestrians going to their parked car will be walking in a traffic lane. East of Lexington, parking will be banned on one side of Summit. People will need to cross two traffic lanes to reach their car. And…
• Along all of Summit, motorists will be sharing a traffic lane with people walking to cars, faster bicylists, opening car doors and parked delivery vehicles.

Intersections are where almost every bike-car crash occurs. All 32 crashes documented in the SART plan were at intersections. How does an off-road trail make Summit safer than a bike lane when crashes occur at intersections?

The perceived safety of an off-road trail may even make it more dangerous. Cyclists may be biking behind parked cars, less aware of and less visible to turning vehicles.

Besides all that, it will be difficult and dangerous for bicyclists to turn left from the path as it will be next to the sidewalk.

Without the year-round presence of painted, on-street bike lanes ~ and bikers! ~ bicyclists will no longer be top of mind.Out of sight, out of mind adds to the danger for bicyclists.

MYTH 4 ~ SART will eliminate the danger of bicyclists being “doored.”

When challenged by email, city staff could not produce a single report of a bicyclist being “doored.” When asked the same question, the president of the Saint Paul Bicycle Coalition told me he wasn’t aware of a single case. It can happen, but buffered bike lanes make it much easier to see and avoid open car doors.

MYTH 5 ~ SART will attract more riders.

While e-bike use has surged, overall biking in the Twin Cities has declined. Minneapolis reports that recreational riding remains steady but bike commuting dropped 50% in 2020. Summit was Saint Paul’s busiest commuter route and MnDOT’s counter at Fairview shows about a 27% drop post-COVID.

SART’s plan for growth starts by endangering and impeding bicyclists who comfortably use Summit daily. The city says cyclists prefer off-road trails, but these cyclists are likely thinking of paths along lakes and rivers, not along Summit with its traffic, driveways and busy streets to cross.

One thing is certain. Everyday bicycling will never grow if cyclists are only comfortable on trails.

MYTH 6 ~ SART won’t cost much as it’s part of a much larger reconstruction project.

For starters, most of Summit does not need a $100 million total reconstruction according to the city’s own data. See The Myth of Reconstruction (link)

The 2023 SART plan estimated a cost of $11.2 to $12.4 million for building the bike trail. The city says the “incremental cost of the trail is less with street reconstruction,” though there’s every reason to believe the cost will be far higher.

Costs are listed with hardly a hint as to what the intersection designs will be. The plan lists major construction works along Summit that are “being considered” but clearly aren’t part of the three-year-old estimate. Substantial reconstruction of 40 often unique intersections includes building tabled bike/ped crossings, curb extensions and bump outs at corners.

The replacement costs for replanting hundreds of trees (estimates vary) is not included. And how do you replace a 150-year-old oak? Replacing the historic granite curbs is not included, nor is rebuilding up to a dozen medians.

SART says the estimate, “does not include costs for lighting, utility relocation or trail amenities.” It doesn’t include inflation, tariffs, worker shortages and other unknowns over the next several years. No one will be surprised if the cost doubles.

Couldn’t this money be better spent anywhere other than in the wealthiest neighborhoods? Places it is truly needed?

Saint Paul should focus on other projects ~ like rebuilding the hazardous combined trail along Mississippi River Boulevard to provide separated space for biking and walking. And focusing on neighborhoods where car ownership is lowest.

MYTH 7 ~ Building SART is an environmental win.

The greenest building is the one that’s already built.

This maxim in the historic preservation world is another dagger in the SART argument. The less new construction the better. A licensed, professional, independent engineer needs to examine the whole project. The city’s own data shows much of it is unnecessary. Today’s horizontal directional drilling installs underground infrastructure without digging trenches, without removing curbs and without massive reconstruction.

Less is more because road construction is a major source of greenhouse gases. One estimate links 10% of global emissions to materials like concrete and asphalt. SART requires over 10 miles of new paving for trails, 10 miles of new curbing, building 40 new intersections and extending all storm sewers.

SART is bad news for the environment without even considering the forest of life-giving trees that will be lost.

MYTH 8 ~ SART won’t impact Summit Avenue’s nationally treasured historic status.

Bolton & Menk, the city’s historical consultant was clear: “Additions to Summit Avenue should be as simple as possible and not change the existing curbline.”

Ignoring their consultant’s recommendations, the city is plowing ahead with a massive displacement of over ten miles of curbline, dramatically narrowing the road and degrading the historic streetscape.

The balanced symmetry of Summit will disappear east of Lexington with street parking banned on one side.

The bitterest irony is the threatened loss of the state’s oldest bicycle lanes. Striped in August 1992, these were the first in Minnesota with straight-through European-style design.

Summit Avenue is America’s last standing “Grand American Avenue” as noted in the 400-page book by the same name. A dozen contenders are described, from Fifth Avenue in New York to Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles. The book’s subtitle gives it away, “1850 to 1920.” A century ago most major cities could proudly point to a showcase street like Summit but they’re all gone. Summit stands alone, its stately homes, majestic churches and leafy parkways intact.

All of Summit Avenue is on the National Register of Historic Places, but the 200-foot-wide boulevard west of Lexington is especially important as it was designed by the visionary landscape architect Horace Cleveland without whom many of the parks and parkways in both Minneapolis and Saint Paul would likely not exist. It is his most important remaining work, its expansive width made possible by the largesse of adjacent homeowners in the 1880s.

The beauty of Cleveland’s design is the flexibility it has provided over all these generations; carriages, bikes and horses in the 1890s, cars as they came into vogue in the 1920s, four lanes of traffic for a while in the 1980s (Yikes!), huge events like the Twin Cities Marathon, and buffered bicycle lanes today. Horace Cleveland’s signature street is a historic and functional gem that can serve us well, far into the foreseeable future.

Produced by Richard Fred Arey
Founder of the Saint Paul Classic Bike Tour
Author of Twin Cities Bicycling