They love building trails because every one is a photo op and gets in the news.
They refuse to do any maintenance because that isn’t news worthy.
Has anyone ever seen a Minneapolis trail that has been sealcoated? For the park board, it is better to let it deteriorate then pay much more to rebuild it after years of neglece and disuse by people.

That is the attitude that finaly killed off their wasteful partner, the library board.

I think that the same thing should happen to the Minneapolis park board, close it down and merge with the Three Rivers Park District. TRPD actually knows how to make parks and trails work for the users.

So, then I checked the link and scoped out the July meeting locations and there are none downtown or near the river where I spend most of my recreational time…sigh.

Basically I agree with your comments and Kyle’s addendum. The W River Road bike lane between Lake and Franklin is bone shatteringly rough (no way would I want to rollerski or skate on that section of trail) and the parkway road itself is so narrow as to be a bike death trap.

Additional concerns I have relate to the bike route street cleanliness lacking, specifically bad is where W River Rd ends and one is dumped onto the industrial 2nd St N. In that section alone, I flatted there last fall, my friend Sean flatted there last week, and I’ve seen two other cyclists fixing flats there in the past 5-6 months…hardly a extensive study of course, but that seems to be a bit much.

Lastly, I have a curiosity about how the overall comprehensive park planning is done. Especially now that the drive is for more trails, so how would all these trails be coordinated so as to be available beyond the Mpls city boundaries. Is this Hennepin County issue, Met Council, and / or some state body that needs to address overall coordination of trail system development and maintenance? Source of that concern comes from last fall’s ride where we encountered about 3-4 separate trail construction areas and detours until we finally were dumped out in Chaska without any signage to direct us back to the trail and we ended up having to cut off our tour early and return home.

Anyhow – I agree that the park has to acknowledge the trends in use. But, I also think it’s important that they build flexible spaces – whether it be fields, trails, etc. These spaces are, I’m sure, not cheap to build. And, given that trends are, by definition, not permanent in nature, I’d rather have something that’s good quality but which, perhaps, sacrifices on being a specific use area. For example, instead of putting in a softball field…put in a nice quality, well draining field that can be used for a variety of sports. It won’t make be exactly what everyone wants, but I think it’ll be better for the whole.

And, I agree with you on trails – those babies need to be better for all wheels, including rollerblades (or skates, if that’s your bag). I’d actually rather see more money go towards a wider paved bike trail that can handle more wheeled traffic, and less paved walking trails. Afterall, most of us runners want crushed limestone anyway – can’t we spare some cost on the ped trails and spend more on better bike trails? This is especially necessary given the ridiculously crazy road-raging drivers that want to run bikers off parkways when they have to “share” the road and sometimes (hold your breath) go 21 in a 25 MPH zone for sometimes up to 3 blocks. Can you believe the audicity of these bikers wanting to use the road with drivers given the smooth “bike” trails on the W. River Road. Geez.