Remember that freeway pedestrian bridges are often the least pleasant places. But this is not true for the 40th Street Pedestrian Bridge. It is more than just a simple crossing. It is a vital link for the Kingfield neighborhood.
This bridge connects Kingfield and Bryant neighborhoods. Interstate 35W once divided these communities. The 40th Street Pedestrian Bridge helps bridge that gap. It helps people to get safely across the city.
Sarah Linnes-Robinson is Kingfield’s executive director. She said they have been trying to fix that bridge for over 10 years. The initiative started back in the 90s. It was a citizen idea when they started organizing for that bikeway.
The Riverlake Greenway is an east-west bicycle connection completed in 2011. It is one of the city’s new bicycle boulevards. These boulevards make bicycling safe for people of all ages. People can bike through South Minneapolis without fighting fast-moving car traffic. As bicycling has become more mainstream, pedestrian bridges have started to receive more traffic and attention.
The 40th Street Pedestrian Bridge remains a key point for people. It is a great asset to be able to get across the highway. However, it is subpar for a bikeway. It is hard to fit two bike handles going across from each other. It’s a caged environment. The goal was to connect the other side of the freeway to Martin Luther King Jr. Park. There are lots of ways that the bridge could be expanded and green space could be expanded.
Over the years residents in the Kingfield neighborhood have tried lots of ideas for making the bridge a more welcoming and comfortable connection over the freeway.
In 2022, the city planned to install a new bikeway on 40th St. in southwest Minneapolis. The project replaced the existing directional bike lanes on 40th Street with a two-way protected bikeway on the south side of the street. It included roadway striping and delineator posts with no physical construction. The 40th Street Bikeway was installed during pavement restoration work on 40th Street in the Summer of 2022. Traffic impacts were expected to be minimal.
Today, the state Department of Transportation puts more thought into how it designs pedestrian connections. These are often seen as preferable ways to cross the freeway. This is because the busy street connections are often dangerous because of high-speed car traffic around freeway on-ramps. Modern bridges are at least 12 feet wide. They lack an unsightly overhead cage. They are built to load requirements that can theoretically accommodate crowds of people up to 90 pounds per square foot. At the same time, their connections are required to have ADA-standard curb cuts for people with disabilities.