Most of Richfield’s section of Penn Avenue is being rebuilt in 2028, and the street reconstruction is the first tangible chance since the 1950s to rethink this major thoroughfare. Penn Avenue is particularly important to Richfield. It is a central hub for commerce and the home of the Penn Fest open street festival. It connects three grocery stores, two bicycle stores, Sandy’s Tavern, Cadao Express, Richfield Middle School, Best Buy’s headquarters and countless other shops, restaurants and public spaces. As I did for the Nicollet Avenue reconstruction, in the case of Penn Avenue I am advocating for the one-way cycle track configuration and need your support.
I moved to Richfield in 2021 with my wife, Stephanie, and we enjoy riding and walking around town. We moved here in large part for bikeable, pleasant streets, like 66th Street. But so far, Penn Avenue hasn’t had the same appeal. Its sidewalks are barely usable, there are no trees and the only bike space is a discontinuous unprotected shoulder that vacillates between cracked pavement and on street parking. Even worse, it disappears entirely for key stretches.
I like to bike to the Aldi grocery store on Penn and it’s always nerve wracking getting across and along Penn at 64th Street. The stop light’s curb cut is 10 feet from the pedestrian signal. I cut through a Davanni’s parking lot dodging cars coming in and out of the cracked apron. Once I’m on Penn I usually make a gametime decision between riding on the sidewalk and avoiding pedestrians or using the unprotected shoulder and crossing my fingers the drivers around me aren’t scrolling their phones.
We deserve a safe, pleasant street. Join me and others in advocating for safer and sweeter streets. Take the survey here and make your voice heard for more human friendly infrastructure.
Project Background
According to Hennepin County, the goals of this reconstruction project are to create a safe place to travel, increase opportunities for active forms of transportation, and in doing so, provide quality experiences for all forms of transportation. (Fun fact: Introducing bike lanes has been found to reduce car traffic by replacing car trips that would have contributed to delays.)
This project will reconstruct 1.6 miles of Penn Avenue between highway 62 and 75th street. Over the last six months, Hennepin County in partnership with the City of Richfield (“the urban hometown”) has hosted two open house events where the public has had a chance to provide feedback on the street and to weigh in on visions for its future. The county has narrowed the design to three options, as seen in the image below.
Why a One-Way Cycle Track Makes Sense
A one-way bikeway is the safest option for pedestrians and cyclists. This design is already “tested and approved” in Richfield on 66th Street, approved for the Nicollet Avenue reconstruction in Richfield, and in other locations throughout Hennepin County, including Washington Avenue in downtown Minneapolis and Cedar Lake Road in St. Louis Park. This option provides a hard curb and greenery buffer for cyclists, and pedestrians are further offset from the road surface via the bikeway.
As a frequent user of the 66th Street bikeway and sidewalk, I have truly enjoyed this one-way configuration. While 66th Street from Penn to I-35W has two car-travel lanes on each side, the greenery between the hard curb and the raised one-way bikeway provides a buffer and sense of security while biking. It feels so nice to cruise by Monroe Field (my favorite Richfield park) and take in the scenery without worrying about the traffic around me.
Penn will have a single travel lane for cars going each way, and I imagine that the experience as a pedestrian/biker will be even more pleasant under this configuration. Additionally, since the grade of the sidewalk and bikeway is equal, this effectively acts as a larger space for side-by-side biking when the sidewalk is clear of pedestrians. This feature works both ways, too. As a pedestrian I enjoy the additional space the bikeway adds to the sidewalk when walking with friends.
The one-way bikeway provides further benefits beyond physical separation from the road surface. When biking infrastructure is cohesive, clear and well designed, users implicitly make the right (read: safe) choices. If the one-way relationship between 66th Street, Nicollet and now Penn, is maintained with this reconstruction project, Richfield will see this benefit, as the one way bikeway from 66th will flow into existing on-street lanes to the north and south.
A Two-Way Cycle Track Is Second-Best
A two-way bikeway is also under consideration. This proposal would not maintain as clear, cohesive and safe a connection as the one-way facility.
The two-way bikeway would increase the potential for head-on collisions and distractions from bike headlights while leaving only a narrow sidewalk on the other side of the street for pedestrians.
A Shared Path Would Be a Major Loss
The shared-path option is even worse. It has every disadvantage of the two-way bikeway, but also introduces new conflict with pedestrians jockeying for space. This reconstruction project is meant to provide decades of improved connectivity and safety for the residents of Richfield and Hennepin County. We must strive for a solution that does the most for all.
Join Me! Support a Penn Avenue for the Future
The survey is a great opportunity to make your voice heard and have a tangible, positive impact on the community. Among the additional recommendations that I hope you will consider raising:
- Narrow the car travel lanes to the minimum allowed to help lower car speeds.
- Ensure high-quality bike/pedestrian crossing at every block.
- Ask for pedestrian signals to be as responsive as possible and provide sufficient crossing time.
- Reduce the open left turn lane in locations where it is impossible to turn left anyway.
- Ask for a safe and wide link between Oliver Avenue and Penn Avenue south of the water tower at 64th Street, connecting the neighborhoods east of Penn to the Lund’s and Byerly’s and Aldi to the north.
- Remove the right turn slip lane and make the crossing safer for bikes and pedestrians when going north from the trail along 62 and coming south from Minneapolis.
- Make it easier to cross Penn outside of the signalized intersections. For example, 67th street has no crosswalk or medians and requires a careful “frogger” across 4 lanes of high speed traffic.
- Consider coordinating with businesses to remove off street frontage parking where appropriate allowing them to take advantage of the new right of way for events, seating, and general street activation.
Please take the survey here and make your voice heard for more human friendly infrastructure to advocate for a vision that puts safety and accessibility first. Each multi-modal project that we complete has a greater effect than its individual parts as the network expands!
Just as the 66th Street project transformed our east-west corridor in Richfield, we have the unique opportunity to increase this impact north-south with Penn Avenue.
