Bike lane construction by the Washington Avenue Bridge, the #1 spot for bikes in the whole city.

And the podcast is back after a long hiatus. Today I have a special conversation with University of Minnesota student (and streets.mn contributor) Tyler Schow and Steve Sanders, the alternative transportation manager for the University of Minnesota.

Tyler, Steve, and I chatted about how much the University of Minnesota campus has changed for bikes in the last few years, with the advent of the Green Line and a bunch of new bike projects through the heart of the East Bank. Tyler grilled Steve on a few things, like how the U uses video observations to track conflict, the “big platoon” pattern of bikes and pedestrians at busy intersections, and I even got a question in about the overbuilt Washington avenue mall signals. The U has changed a lot in the last few years, and I hope you enjoy the conversation.

Here’s a quote from Steve Sanders taken from the conversation:

Car and bike interactions? Well, when you have a bigger vehicle moving faster you feel more vulnerable as a cyclist. But the same is true for bike and pedestrian interactions. People who ride bikes don’t realize that pedestrians feel scare d of things that are larger and moving faster than them, it can really be intimidating so the same feeling is engendered in cyclists versus a car, as for pedestrians versus a bike. But the ability to do damage is different in those interactions…

But there’s a quantitative difference too. Because there’s a lot more bike versus pedestrian interactions than car versus bike interactions. So there’s a difference of quantity and a difference of kind. Bikes are really maneuverable and can get close to people in a way that cars can’t get close to people, so the possibility exists on a bigger scale for people to be afraid of bikes, than for cars.

Link to the audio is here. As always, thanks for listening, and please become a streets.mn member!