Announcement 6-23-09

Cedar Ave United Update

June 22, 2009

In our June 3rd meeting we hosted representatives from the Minneapolis city council, Hennepin County Public Works, Minneapolis Public Works, and the Hennepin County Commissioner’s office.

The discussion was very productive. The chaos that is Cedar Avenue in its most southern stretches was apparent to Jim Grube of Hennepin County Public Works. He offered to restripe Cedar Ave from 46th Street to 38th Street to allow for full-time parking lanes. The preliminary planning and data collection began this Monday morning. The restriping was promised to be completed this year.

The issue of roadway noise was also raised. After the meeting, it was indicated in e-mail discussion that Hennepin County is responsible for maintaining legal noise limits on Cedar Ave as outlined in MN statute 116.07 Subd. 2a. Presently, stretches of Cedar Ave exceed legal noise limits.

For full meeting minutes please visit our website: www.cedaraveunited.org

Our next monthly meeting will be held on Wednesday, July 1st at 6:30pm at the Sibley Park Rec Center. We will not host a guest panel like the June meeting. Rather, CAU volunteers and organizers will focus the agenda on:

- Discussing organizing CAU along lines of the Main Street Four-Point Approach and Eight Guiding Principles put out by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

- Developing a plan for greater representation from all neighborhoods bordering Cedar Avenue South. Presently, stretches from 38th Ave to Minnehaha Parkway are most heavily represented. We are looking for greater participation from residents of neighborhoods north of 38th St and South of Minnehaha Parkway.

Cedar Ave United is a group growing in participation and influence. If you live in one of the 11 neighborhoods bordering Cedar Avenue South, we hope you will consider volunteering with ideas or effort in transforming this vital South Minneapolis corridor.

You can find specifics of the meeting location and past meetings minutes at this link:

http://cedaraveunited.org/meetings.html

hope to see you all next week!

Will Peterson
4500 Cedar

Big News, Happy Friday!

Just a quick note on a note from Mr. Jim Grube from Hennepin County Public Works. Many of you that were at the meeting might remember the discussion about parking safety and speed control on Cedar Ave. Mr Grube offered to investigate and paint in much needed parking lanes for the area between 46th street and 38th street. This falls squarly within our short term goals! So Hurray! Good work everyone! I know many of the folks that I have spoken with since the beginning of this effort have expressed their feelings about this issue in this area. Many business owners suggest that their customers park on side streets because of the danger. Hopefully this will be the first step in making Cedar Ave a better place to shop and live (among other things)!!
Here's the letter:

Next week Hennepin will begin an evaluation of the effects of striping the parking lanes of Cedar Avenue between 46th Street and 38th Street. The first step we will take is to put down counter hoses that will help us capture the speed of traffic along that segment of Cedar Avenue. Once we have the information and we feel it is valid we will stripe the parking lanes. We don't have the striping scheduled yet. I'll let you know when it will happen, but be assured it will happen this summer.

Jim


Maybe it's my inability to leave well enough alone, although I think it's my committment to my neighbors and our nieghborhood businesses, but I sent a response letter to make sure that all of our concerns were clear... at least all of those that can be dealt with in this project.

Hello Mr Grube,

Thanks for the update, I know that there will be many happy residents and business owners watching the process out their windows!

When it comes to line striping, are there standard lane widths or are they determined based on the need. I've seen a few places around town (St. Paul included) that have re-striped with narrower lanes possibly to control speeding. (The most effective seem to be paired with bumpout/crosswalks, or course.) I mention this because one of the concerns that has been raised, secondary to speeding, is that the parking south of Minnehaha parkway (around the park) is too narrow to accommodate parked cars and creates a serious safety issue. It seems, according to many studies and publications, that narrower lanes might help slow traffic to within the limit and improve parking safety thus dealing with both complaints. I Figured that I should mention this before things are painted. I know from my work with historic development in Ramsey County that it's far easier to know about these things before the project rather than after it has been completed.

Also, will the information collected be available to our group/general public? We'd be interested to see what the before and after effects are.

Thanks again for the update and your willingness to look into all of this.

Sincerely

Will Peterson


So there you have it. A first physical step. We will have an event when they finish painting the stripes :)

keep an eye out for changes on Cedar, and keep an eye on the blog for the announcement for the upcoming meeting.

Thanks all,

Will

June Meeting Minutes

Just a quick note to say that THE JUNE MEETING MINUTES ARE UP!! Feel free to head on over to www.cedaraveunited.org and take a look.

One of the best outcomes of the meeting is that Jim Grube from Hennepin County Public Works has promised to paint parking lanes between 38th and 46th streets!! More on this as it happens, but Hooray!

I would also like to encourage people from the northern part of the corridor to become active in our group if possible. at the moment the attendance is heavily weighted to the southern half of Cedar Ave. The only way to make sure that your area is served right is to involve yourself!

Much more to post later, a hard drive failure has taken me out of the loop for a while.

Thanks for your patience,

Will

quick meeting note

Thank you all for the productive meeting!! I think that we managed to get some questions answered (although I know many remain).

we now have a good starting point for assessing what we can do on Cedar. I will be in contact with both Jim (County) and John (City) to follow up with segment designations. From there we can start to form a task force to deal with issues.

For those of you that missed the meeting, stay tuned to the meeting page at Cedar Ave United dot Org. Our minutes will be posted soon.

Hope to see you all again next month so we can start to actively improve out collective neighborhood!

Will

Meeting Announcement:

Big meeting on it's way! Wednesday June 3rd (this Wednesday).

I have a couple of things to put out there. One of them is a draft of the Agenda:



Welcome/Introduction (Start 6:30pm, Sibley Park Community Center, 1900 East 40th Street -Multipurpose room)

-Will – quick history of the group

-Anyone else from CAU?

(10-15 min?)

-Introduction of quests – Hen. County Public Works, Commissioners Office, City Council Members – Each introduce themselves and give their interest in meeting (?)

(5 min?)

-Hennepin County Public Works – description of the roadway and a rundown of what has been done/is being done on the roadway.

(10-15 min)

-Hennepin County and City council - response to pre-submitted questions.

(30 min?)

-Open question, dialogue etc.

-Projected end time 8:00 pm



AND here is a list of the submitted questions, in no particular order:

Questions for June 3rd meeting:
-Which Hennepin county roads in Mpls are rated for the same traffic load as Cedar Ave?

-How does the traffic volume on Cedar compare to these same-rated roads?

-Might any of these same-rated roads provide a model for how a Cedar Ave road and business
corridor might look?

-Does the county consider Cedar Ave’s highest purpose to move traffic through Mpls or move traffic into and out of adjoining neighborhoods? Put another way, should Cedar Ave look and perform more like 35W or more like stretches of either Nicollet or Lyndale in So Mpls?

-What type of a road is Cedar Ave; what are the defining features of that grade of road (arterial, collector etc)?

-What is the current timeline for maintenance on Cedar Ave.?

-Does this take into consideration the changing conditions created by over capacity traffic and heavy MNdot traffic?

-Are there are any significant plans to improve safety on Cedar Ave – structural, enforcement, cameras, otherwise?

-What sorts of things have been done to Cedar to control traffic?

-What sorts of things can be done about vehicle safety?

-What sorts of things can be done about vehicle noise (leq 71+)?

-Can improvements be made in the name of the newly adopted complete streets policy?

-What sorts of devices (speed tables, bump/bulb-outs etc) are being used elsewhere in Hennepin County?

-Where does the county stand on using roundabouts?

-Could temporary solutions be used until permanent work can be done (i.e. temporary rubber curb bumpouts, etc)?

-Can studies be done to determine the environmental impact of overcapacity traffic on Cedar Ave?

-Who does environmental studies in this situation? (Noise, etc)

-Who does traffic studies in this situation?

-How do we get these studies underway?

-Who enforces state roadway noise standards on county roads?

-Can the dedicated parking lane be delineated between Minnehaha Parkway and 42nd Street?

-How can pedestrian crossings be made safer for neighborhoods?

-Why is the speed limit by the park 35 when all other roads on park are 25?

-Who enforces speed laws on county roads?

-Are there any restrictions on Heavy industrial traffic and 18 wheelers in residential areas? (time restrictions etc.)

-Can we increase enforcement?

-Do we know of any plans for a left turn arrow at 42nd & Cedar with the addition of a left turn lane on Cedar?

-What can we do/what will it take to make the same changes on Cedar Ave as were made on Lyndale Ave.

- Can paint be used as a traffic calming technique?

- Additional speed limit signs?

- Can trash cans be added to make the street more pedestrian friendly?

-Can a dedicated left turn lane (or roundabout) be put in at Fat Lorenzo’s in the northbound Cedar Ave?

-Would the county/city reconsider a prior proposal to redesign the Cedar/Edgewater intersection?

- Cedar does not seem to be an adequate thoroughfare for four lanes of traffic north of Lake Street. Can the street be reconfigured similar to 50th Street in SW Minneapolis and Lexington Ave in Saint Paul?



Sorry for the long post... Just wanted to make certain that all of this info was available prior to the meeting. If you have any additions feel free to bring them up in the open questions period of the meeting. At this point I don't expect all the questions to be answered, as many of them may be important questions for a later date. This material may change between now and Wednesday, but not too much.

I expect this to be a very useful conversation and hope that all of you will attend! Thanks!!

Will