Duluth Transportation Infrastructure

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Duluth Transportation Infrastructure

Postby MNdible » September 5th, 2013, 11:16 am

It appears that the Port of Duluth has received by far the state's biggest chunk of the Tiger V grants, $10m to improve ship-to-rail connections.

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Re: Duluth Transportation Infrastructure

Postby woofner » April 13th, 2014, 10:17 pm

Two concept layouts are up at the project page for the Superior Street reconstruction in downtown Duluth:

http://duluthmn.gov/planning/superior-street/

Both are pretty anemic on sidewalks for the main street of Duluth. Is the Zenith City doubling down on Ford Explorers in preparation for its new post-climate change role as mudville? Or is this just more outstate not giving a fuck about pedestrians?
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Re: Duluth Transportation Infrastructure

Postby FISHMANPET » April 13th, 2014, 10:36 pm

Why would you walk outside of canal Park when you can drive?

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Re: Duluth Transportation Infrastructure

Postby MNdible » April 14th, 2014, 9:11 am

It's a little hard to tell, but it appears to my eyes that both plans would at least maintain and in many instances significantly increase the sidewalk space. Stupid outstate hicks.

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Re: Duluth Transportation Infrastructure

Postby woofner » April 14th, 2014, 4:21 pm

I too hate actually looking at plans, because often what I see there derails my preset snarky comments. In this case, if you looked, you'd see that in the majority of blocks the SE sidewalk remain at 10-11'. The NW sidewalk gets lavished with more bump-outs but still regularly gets pinched back to 10-11', and in one egregious instance as narrow as 8 (narrower than today).

I've found the existing sidewalks to be fairly congested in my limited touristic experience with them, so I'd think that if they wanted to improve the user experience, they would consistently expand the pedestrian realm. That they don't doesn't seem to cohere with Duluth's stated goal of attracting creatives with livability improvement such as walkable streetscapes, but I'm just a stupid Cities pedestrian.
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Re: Duluth Transportation Infrastructure

Postby MNdible » April 14th, 2014, 4:38 pm

It just strikes me as a very strange response to plans that empirically devote much more space to pedestrians than the current condition does (which to my experience has seemed quite adequate in most cases), and to the extent that it doesn't, it's because they appear to be providing extra-wide shared lanes for bicycles. Superior Street, as reconstructed in the 80's, was a four lane street with parallel parking on both sides and occasional left turn lanes. There is much less space dedicated to cars in this version.

Sorry, it chaps me when the immediate response to any professionally prepared planning documents is to immediately find fault rather than recognizing a larger benefit. Additionally, the swipe at northwoods yokels driving their big dumb trucks seemed like an unnecessary cheap shot.

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Re: Duluth Transportation Infrastructure

Postby xandrex » April 14th, 2014, 7:58 pm

For what it's worth, I wandered these streets often as a crazy youth growing up in Duluth and never seemed to have any problems with sidewalk width. The current sidewalks are more than adequate 98% of the time, except for a select few summer weekends when it's packed with tourists. Hell, you can normally walk down the middle of Superior Street (especially west of Lake Ave) at night with almost no concern of running into cars. Still nice to see improvements though.

If anywhere needs wider sidewalks, it's Canal Park. I just wonder how it could be pulled off, since the roads there aren't all two lanes, so you'd either need to narrow them further or take out parking (which the city would never do unless Canal got a pretty substantial ramp).

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Re: Duluth Transportation Infrastructure

Postby FISHMANPET » April 14th, 2014, 8:26 pm

Canal park should just be closed to traffic, except for the road to the lift bridge. There's a nice big ramp right at the convention center.

And for what it's worth, I once bar crawled from Canal Park to downtown in February with like no problems. Downtown actually felt pretty walkable to me.

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Re: Duluth Transportation Infrastructure

Postby xandrex » April 14th, 2014, 9:07 pm

Canal park should just be closed to traffic, except for the road to the lift bridge. There's a nice big ramp right at the convention center.

And for what it's worth, I once bar crawled from Canal Park to downtown in February with like no problems. Downtown actually felt pretty walkable to me.
There are four streets total in Canal Park. Lake Avenue, Canal Park Drive, Buchanan Street, and Morse Street. Buchanan and Morse are block-long connectors that help with circulation. You need to keep Lake Avenue for access to Park Point. And the hotels will never, ever, ever let you get rid of Canal Park Drive. All of their lots are accessed that way. Unless you have a solution for replacing all of those spots (again, you'll need structured parking).

I agree that the DECC's parking and structured parking should be better utilized, but it already is quite often full (hockey games, events and conventions, the movie theater, and people who are indeed going into Canal. Unfortunately, the Slip Bridge is often not in working order, meaning people are loath to park and walk (and less pleasant way).

Downtown is indeed pretty walkable. Other than the Lake Ave bridge across I-35, it's generally pleasant.

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Re: Duluth Transportation Infrastructure

Postby FISHMANPET » April 14th, 2014, 9:17 pm

In my dream world, those parking lots would be redeveloped, and there'd be some big structured parking... somewhere else, with shuttle service to the hotels. Plus Northern lights service to the Union Depot, so the shuttle can pick people up there. Then for good measure rebuild the slip bridge so that it doesn't need to be moveable (I'm sure there's enough room on both sides to make something that will do that).

I guess I don't know other people experience Canal Park, but when I'm there for the weekend, I park my car on Friday night and don't touch it again until Sunday afternoon. I'd be fine if it took a few extra to get to the hotel if it meant my hotel room was cheaper and I wouldn't have to fight traffic while walking around. But I don't know how other people spend their time in Canal Park, so maybe I'm in the extreme minority.

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Re: Duluth Transportation Infrastructure

Postby xandrex » April 14th, 2014, 9:45 pm

Pretty much all of the lots in Duluth are directly in front of hotels. Perhaps in a dream world you could squeeze in some retail in front and create a sort of alley where people could access the hotels, but I don't foresee hotels giving up their visibility. And Canal Park Drive is actually great for when the bridge is up (though the situation has improved since they started changing how and when they lift the bridge).

I know that several people in Duluth are potentially interested in moving the William A. Irvin and filling in that whole area because of all of the issues with the Slip Bridge. That could help with connectivity issues.

I can't really speak about being a tourist in Duluth. I grew up there. My family owns a business in Canal Park. So I've spent an awful lot of time in many different seasons. And the fact is that while this is a tourist area, it's also a pretty big chunk of Duluth's entertainment district for locals too. People go to hockey games at the DECC, get food at Grandma's, get wasted at the Sports Garden (I really can't go there because I feel like I see half of my high school graduating class), etc.

Tourists get to see Duluth when it's comfortably in the 60s and 70s, wonderfully green, and vibrant. Walking everywhere is ideal because it's just pleasant. In winter, it can be a hellscape of snow and wicked winds coming off the lake. And during the winter, the locals are the lifeline for Canal businesses (most meters and lots aren't even enforced from Labor Day to Memorial Day). For a region where a car is all but a requirement (in an order of magnitude so many times greater than the MSP area), you're just not going to convince people that in the middle of winter they should be parking their car in a ramp and walking any distance. They'll just stay up on the hill and go to a restaurant near the mall. I know far too many people whose idea of walkability extends about as far as their spot in the Target parking lot.

Not that I don't wish for a better Canal Park experience. My particular are of concern would be improving the connections to downtown and adding greenery, especially now that East Superior Street really is improving from Lake Avenue all the way over to Fitgers.

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Re: Duluth Transportation Infrastructure

Postby FISHMANPET » April 14th, 2014, 9:57 pm

That's a good perspective. I did go there in February one year, and it was quite the frozen hell scape, but we made do. We'd also ended up there during UMD's spring break, so we assumed that everything was slightly more deserted because of that.

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Re: Duluth Transportation Infrastructure

Postby mattaudio » April 15th, 2014, 7:42 am

I know 35W north of the 194 split is considered to be an urban freeway achievement. But the SPUI at Lake/Superior still creates a huge disconnect between the southern part of Downtown and the Park Point area.

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Re: Duluth Transportation Infrastructure

Postby woofner » April 15th, 2014, 10:29 am

It just strikes me as a very strange response to plans that empirically devote much more space to pedestrians than the current condition does
No it doesn't. It provides the same amount or less space to pedestrians, and makes it seem like more by emphasizing the one or two very large bump-outs. It's a classic watch this hand maneuver.

I admit that I only experience the sidewalks a few times a year as a tourist, and that my constant pardon me experiences may be the luck of the draw (although in my defense it's happened to me year-round, not just July). My general experience, though, is that the main street of cities around 100k should have sidewalks wider than 10'.
Sorry, it chaps me when the immediate response to any professionally prepared planning documents is to immediately find fault rather than recognizing a larger benefit. Additionally, the swipe at northwoods yokels driving their big dumb trucks seemed like an unnecessary cheap shot.
Well it chaps me when the immediate response to textbook flimflammery is to ooh and aah and say well it's no worse than today. And the cheap shot was aimed well and hit its target.
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Re: Duluth Transportation Infrastructure

Postby MNdible » February 4th, 2015, 1:37 pm

Wow, we were apparently having a great time in this thread last spring.

Anyway, some transportation news from Duluth, featuring fancy new rapid charging electric buses.

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Re: Duluth Transportation Infrastructure

Postby Mdcastle » February 25th, 2015, 5:30 pm

Original proposal for an elevated I-35
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Re: Duluth Transportation Infrastructure

Postby Mikey » February 26th, 2015, 4:02 pm

Didn't that plan include a full cloverleaf at Lake Ave?

thank god that never happened

(and, too bad 35E through St Paul didn't compromise in this manner rather than the "parkway" it did. Cut-and Cover would have been sooo much better for everyone)
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Re: Duluth Transportation Infrastructure

Postby RailBaronYarr » June 24th, 2015, 7:35 am

Sounds like they changed the plan for Superior Street and bumped bike lanes to Michigan Street in favor of angled parking.

http://www.duluthnewstribune.com/news/3 ... nstruction

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Re: Duluth Transportation Infrastructure

Postby mattaudio » June 24th, 2015, 8:20 am

Lamesauce. People will still need/want to bicycle along the destination-rich Superior Street corridor. And angled parking is extremely dangerous on such a corridor. If they need angled parking, it should be back-in angled parking (I have yet to see this anywhere in MN). But parallel parking is also much more civil to the sidewalk, since it avoids bumpers going over the curb in a threatening manner.

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Re: Duluth Transportation Infrastructure

Postby t_streets » June 24th, 2015, 11:40 am

Agreed. I attended the meeting last night and was disappointed that they didn't acknowledge that the diagonal parking was kept in only for political reasons since they're certainly not there for planning or safety reasons.

The streetscape design itself is pretty similar to what already exists (minus the brick and plus ped/art space) and is a farcry from the innovative and unique design many were hoping to see at the beginning of the planning process.


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