In this conversation, we’re taking a good look at Minneapolis. Laura Mitchell is the previous board president of Our Streets, the main advocacy group in the city. She’s now the founder of the Minnesota Cargo Bike Library. And Patrick Stephenson is a long-time Minneapolis bike person. He’s the founder of 30 Days of Biking and the Joyful Riders Club.

Avi Stopper (00:00)

Welcome to Bike Networks Now. I'm Avi Stopper, the founder of Bike Streets. We've now done a bunch of episodes of the podcast in our quest to understand why biking still isn't possible for most people in most cities. So far, they've been fairly high-level conversations about the bike movement broadly. So over a series of episodes, we're going local — trying to learn as much as we can about how the bike movement is doing in cities across America by talking with the folks who know those cities best: the advocates trying to make biking a practical reality.

In this conversation, we're taking a good look at Minneapolis. Laura Mitchell is the previous board president of Our Streets, the main advocacy group in the city, and is now the founder of the Minnesota Cargo Bike Library. Patrick Stephenson is a longtime Minneapolis bike personality — the founder of 30 Days of Biking and the Joyful Riders Club. Welcome.

Laura Mitchell (00:58)

Thanks for having us.

Patrick Stephenson (00:59)

Thank you.

Avi Stopper (01:00)

I'm excited to talk about cargo bikes. I'll just note that I picked my wife up from the train station in the cargo bike yesterday, after she came back from a family trip. I had my dog, she had her suitcase, and we just rolled home from the train station. It was magic. Cargo bikes are amazing, aren't they, Laura?

Laura Mitchell (01:17)

They are. They're incredible. I'm always up for talking about cargo bikes — and all types of bikes.

Avi Stopper (01:22)

What's the craziest load you've ever carried in a cargo bike? This isn't how I was going to start, but I'm curious now.

Laura Mitchell (01:29)

It probably doesn't sound that crazy, but with context it is. Over the winter, we were helping some neighbors who needed help getting their kids to and from school. So I actually had four kids — three first graders and one fourth grader — all in my Bunch bike, the cargo trike. I have a mid-size SUV as my family car, and I cannot legally move that many kids in the SUV because of car seat requirements. But I can move that many kids in my cargo bike.

Avi Stopper (01:53)

Just get those sardines in the sardine can.

Laura Mitchell (01:56)

Yes — their legs were touching. They had to be friends. But it was great, and I got them to and from school safely all winter. That was fantastic.

Avi Stopper (02:03)

Patrick, do you rock a cargo bike from time to time?

Patrick Stephenson (02:06)

I sure do. I have two kids, so we do school pickups on the bike and similar adventures. We go on all kinds of adventures. I've had three kids on the back rack, and I've also attached a Burley trailer to the back, which fits two to three more kids. So my total kid-carrying capacity is about six. They're getting bigger and bigger, though, so who knows — it's going to end eventually.

Laura Mitchell (02:35)

Or we're just going to keep getting bigger bikes.

Patrick Stephenson (02:37)

Yeah — just bigger bikes.

Avi Stopper (02:39)

It's possible. I'll note that I do have this custom box I built on the front of my Larry vs Harry. It's a little preposterous how large it is, but let's park that for the time being. Let's start with the overarching question. From your perspective, do you think biking to any destination in the city of Minneapolis is really possible for folks of all ages and abilities at this point? Are we there? Are we close? How would you describe the situation at the highest level? Patrick, let's start with you.

Patrick Stephenson (03:13)

There's some nuance there. I used to live in Minneapolis and now I live in St. Paul. Minneapolis is doing great. I think of things like the Bryant Avenue bikeway — a fully separated path, raised up from everything else, that you can ride for a long way. Now that I've moved to St. Paul — no offense to my St. Paul friends, but I think you're aware of this too — it's quite a bit behind on infrastructure. Something like Fairview Avenue or Hamline Avenue is terrifying on a bike. And even the much-praised Summit Avenue, which is a beautiful experience if you're a capable rider, can be terrifying for a five-year-old because people speed down it. It's just not the best. So St. Paul has quite a ways to go. Minneapolis offers a nice model for what's possible, and I hope it flows over here — I hope we get more of that good stuff. A lot more of the life you're describing is possible in Minneapolis than in St. Paul.

Avi Stopper (04:14)

Let's get back to that in a sec. But Laura, I'd love your perspective on the same question.

Laura Mitchell (04:19)

I'd say we're making really good progress, and we're not there yet. The experience of biking for transportation — for actual trips, as opposed to recreation — can vary significantly depending on which neighborhood you're in and where you're trying to get to. I think anyone of any age or ability can probably go for a pleasant bike ride in the city if they can say, "I'm going to ride around a lake" or "I'm going to take the Midtown Greenway." But if you're really using bikes for transportation, when we talk about all ages and abilities, there are some pretty significant gaps. When folks have scary experiences with drivers, or it just doesn't feel comfortable, it can turn them away from biking. So we have a ways to go.

PeopleForBikes ranks Minneapolis very highly — right now we're just behind Brooklyn. But that's compared to the rest of the US. When we compare ourselves to the rest of the world, we're certainly not doing great. Compared to similar-size US cities, and even some much bigger ones, we're far and above a lot of them.

Avi Stopper (05:15)

That dirty word in biking: gaps. Let us mind the gaps here. Describe one or two of the gaps that are really significant. Is there some semblance of consensus around where the significant deficiencies in the network exist?

Laura Mitchell (05:33)

Our current city council president, Elliott Payne, actually went on a bike ride last year, I think, where they were trying to point out these gaps. For the most part, we do agree on what the gaps are. Your ranking of them is going to vary — a gap I point out is very personal to me because it's one I have to deal with every single day. So we're not necessarily aligned on "this is the biggest gap and it needs to be addressed first." But depending on where you are in the city, anyone riding a bike knows where these gaps are.

A really easy example is the bikeway Patrick mentioned, the Bryant Avenue bikeway. It's a sidewalk-level, two-way separated bikeway next to a sidewalk, with just a one-lane street — totally reconstructed, world-class bike infrastructure, with raised crosswalks along a lot of the route. It's incredible. And it goes right up to the Midtown Greenway — but at Lake Street, which is one of the least safe streets in the entire city for bicyclists and walkers, there's a gap. There's a one-block gap from the end of Bryant until you can get to the Midtown Greenway. You have to cross Lake Street, and then there's a block with zero protection. The city knows about it — it's already on their plan to address, hopefully within the next couple of years.

That one is really painful because I've done a lot of Safe Routes to School work at my kids' school. We're pretty close to Bryant, and we've done fundraiser rides and family-friendly rides. The experience on Bryant is so good, so safe, so pleasant. And then you hit Lake Street and you're on edge, worried about drivers everywhere. You just have to get one block to reach the greenway and have safety again. But if you need to keep going north, it's a bike boulevard — just a stencil on the street saying bikes can be there, but zero infrastructure. So that's another gap: you want to keep going north on Bryant? Too bad — it turns into a street with no infrastructure.

Avi Stopper (07:17)

Do you have a read on how something like Bryant got built with that gap? It seems self-evident — if you're planning this thing out, what happens when you get to this gigantic street? Do you have a sense of how that came to pass?

Patrick Stephenson (07:24)

I remember when it was being built, and there was pushback from the neighborhood about emergency vehicles being able to get through and about the loss of parking. It's a similar battle every time you put something like that in — people push back, worried about all this stuff. So I don't know why that specific gap happened, but I suspect it was pushback from the community or from critics of the project.

Laura Mitchell (07:57)

I can add some context — Bryant went in while I was here. I moved back to Minneapolis in 2019, and Bryant was constructed after that. Everything Patrick said is spot-on for so much of our bike infrastructure. In this case, it was the constant issue of: okay, the parameters of the reconstruction are set to run from point A to point B, and we're not going to expand it even if extending it is the most sensible thing to actually make it connect.

When you cross Lake Street, things get a lot more dense, so parking is in higher demand, and it was trickier to navigate with the businesses along Lake Street. Would they, and would residents, be willing to give up or move the street parking and narrow the street the way we did south of Lake Street? I also heard — and this isn't confirmed, it's just a rumor — that the person working on the project had to leave it, so some things didn't end up getting done. Because for that one-block stretch, we could literally just add some flex posts, move the parking away from the curb, and have a bike lane. We just didn't get that. But again, it's on the city's radar, and I know they're working to solve it.

Patrick Stephenson (08:57)

The theme of the past 15 years of my life is parking. It's always about parking. That's what people are most concerned about.

Avi Stopper (09:03)

It's interesting, because at least in this case it's an instance of a city building a spectacular bike facility — but a facility is only as good as its weakest points. It sounds like there's one substantial Achilles' heel here. And yet, from what you're describing, Laura, the solution isn't that difficult. Do you get the sense there was a lot of community pushback against that gap specifically? Or is this a case of the city just punting on the more controversial or challenging component?

Laura Mitchell (09:36)

I think it was both. As Patrick said, there was a lot of pushback on the entire project when it was going in. Now people love it, for the most part — you don't hear people complaining about Bryant. But there was a lot of pushback to begin with, and advocates had to get involved at multiple points, because the city actually switched up some of the plans based on concerns they were hearing — about fire trucks, and about property owners being able to access driveways, since there are driveways that cross the bike lane and they were too narrow, all sorts of things. So advocates were really focused on making sure the entirety of the corridor was addressed, and weren't focused on that small gap being created. Then, after it was finished, the gap became even more obvious and painful. So there's more attention on it now.

Avi Stopper (10:24)

I'm curious — to pivot quickly to tactical urbanism. This sounds like one of those classic cases where there's a lot of community anxiety about a project before it's done, and then people love it. Have you seen examples, here or elsewhere in the city, where tactical urbanism has been used to bring the temperature down — to get people to chill out and experience how much better the street is actually going to be? There's so much fear of the future and of the unknown when it comes to conventional public meetings, which I'm not much of a fan of for that exact reason. Have you seen techniques from the city to allay those concerns, through tactical urbanism or otherwise? In the end, the Bryant project did get built to the highest specification, at least for the section that got built. How did they ultimately allay those concerns — or did they just say "this is what we're doing" and bring in the bulldozers?

Patrick Stephenson (11:33)

I can't speak to what the city did to allay those concerns, but I can speak to what the local community has done through tactical urbanism. I see it in the big social rides we do, where you bring cyclists of all experience levels together on this infrastructure, have them experience it, see how amazing it is — and also become aware of the gaps. We use the Bryant Avenue bikeway all the time, and the Hennepin Avenue bikeway all the time.

I think that increases appreciation for it, and creates a kind of public amnesia about the way it used to be. I don't even remember what Bryant used to be like anymore — that's gone. So social rides, just putting people on it, help. The St. Paul comparison is Summit Avenue. We did a social ride here on Summit, which is a great bikeway overall, but it passes through these incredibly busy intersections over and over. Leading hundreds of people through that is a nightmare — it was very difficult for our marshals. But pulling people from the neighborhood through it, maybe they see it needs work, and maybe they see how much nicer it is when we're on a great bike trail. So in terms of tactical urbanism, that's how I see it: put hundreds of people on it and watch how we navigate it as ride leaders, so people can better appreciate how it could improve.

Avi Stopper (12:55)

I'm glad you pivoted back over to Minneapolis a bit, because it strikes me — these are two cities that are really one metropolis. There are lots of multi-jurisdictional cities in the country, and here we have a real point and counterpoint. In some ways it's a helpful control group and experiment group. So how would you characterize what's gone well in Minneapolis, Patrick, and what's the contrast in St. Paul? Why is one so much more advanced than the other?

Patrick Stephenson (13:25)

I want Laura's perspective on this too, but my understanding is that in Minneapolis, when there's a redo of a street, the safe-streets infrastructure is just built in. It's a given that you add a nice bike path. In St. Paul, I feel like we have to push for it case by case. You'd see it on things like the Plymouth Avenue Bridge — when they redid that, they just put a nice bikeway on the side. It's a given. Culturally, that's what we expect now. I want the same thing for St. Paul. What's held it back is that everybody has to work each time for each little improvement, versus it just happening.

Avi Stopper (13:58)

Laura, do you know if there's a safe-streets mandate codified into the way the DOT does its work?

Laura Mitchell (14:05)

Yeah. In Minneapolis we have both a Complete Streets plan — which basically lays out that a complete street is one not built just for cars — and a transportation action plan with goals aligned to that, around the shifts in mode share we want to see. I can't remember the exact stats off the top of my head, but basically it's about shifting more transportation to walking, biking, and transit, and less to driving. So anytime a street reconstruction comes up, the city looks at the options and works to improve safety. We don't always get a bike lane on every street, but it's considered for every street — to figure out if it makes sense, if it could fit, if it aligns with the goals of that specific corridor. That's been huge.

What's been challenging for advocates in Minneapolis, at least since I moved here in 2019, is that now that we have that groundwork in place, some residents have come to think street reconstruction is done for bike lanes — which we very rarely do. For the most part, the bike infrastructure we get is because the street was crumbling and needed fixing, both underground and if the asphalt itself was falling apart. There's a huge battle right now for a really busy corridor called Lyndale, which has a lot of businesses on it and, in some parts, is about 90 years old. All the underground utilities need updating, and the street surface needs updating. So we're likely going to get a protected bike lane on Lyndale — but the people against it are trying to claim that the big bike lobby (I'm wearing my bike lobby shirt from Our Streets) has the funding and is pushing the reconstruction just to get a bike lane. That's not the case at all. The street needs to be reconstructed, period. And while we're doing that and spending the money, we might as well look at ways to improve the experience for all modes throughout that corridor.

So, to your earlier question — I actually don't know that there's a ton of city-led tactical urbanism, because we already have so many of these policies in place. I haven't seen the city do a ton of short-term projects. But I think there's a huge need for education for the general population around why we reconstruct streets, to bust that myth that it's being done just for bike lanes — and more education around the economic, safety, and climate components, so we can all be aligned with the existing city policy. In some ways the culture is really far ahead, and in some ways we need some education to bring folks along with us.

Avi Stopper (16:33)

Is keeping the lead pipes in the ground one of the points of contention? Is any of the pushback "we want the lead pipes to stay in the ground"?

Laura Mitchell (16:40)

It's so wild. Some business owners on Lyndale are fantastic, but some — I don't even know what they want. They're just saying we need to delay it. And it's like, delay it until when? We have the funding right now. Let's go ahead and do it. I totally feel for business owners about the potential impact on their businesses, and I think we should align around grants and low-interest loans, and the city should work to stimulate those areas and ensure business owners get the business they're used to throughout the challenging construction season. But we should not stop, delay, or change construction due to those concerns.

Avi Stopper (17:18)

There's a very provocative study the Chicago DOT did recently about the impact of bike lanes. I think it's one of the key case studies that needs to be propagated so more people come to appreciate this. I was hoping there'd be some overwhelming positive effect on local business. What they found was that there was no detrimental effect on business. So the status quo holds, which is encouraging. But where I think we ultimately want to get — the story advocates have told themselves for years, which logically makes sense but we really need to establish — is that this has a huge lifting effect on businesses. That scenario everyone describes: because you're on your bike, you don't have to deal with parking, you can just lock up real quick, hop in, and buy an ice cream right there, rather than thinking, "Gosh, next time I'll have to circle for parking three times to get to this ice cream shop." If we can find a series of definitive case studies, that would be really compelling. Maybe this is a fishing question — are you aware of any such studies in Minneapolis?

Laura Mitchell (18:20)

There's one that's about 15 years old from Minneapolis, and it did show positive results — I can't remember which corridor it looked at. And then there's the totally anecdotal stuff, because we get all the anecdotal stuff from people who are against bike lanes, so I try to share my anecdotal, not-scientifically-based stuff too. To Patrick's point, I live about half a mile from Bryant. I didn't spend any time on that street before, because it was a basic, overly wide two-lane street with parking on both sides and crumbling sidewalks. Why would I go over there? Once they built the bike lane, I'm on that street almost every single day. I'm buying donuts at Bogart's, going to Gigi's, getting my coffee at Canteen. Things are changing. It's way too complicated to take my one story and say "therefore we need to build bike lanes everywhere," but it's a compelling story to share with a friend: hey, this changed my spending habits, and these businesses are benefiting — and that's before you even look at safety and everything else.

Avi Stopper (19:15)

It'd be interesting to talk to those proprietors about before-and-after conditions. Obviously you're not holding every variable constant — any number of things can happen in a time series — but it'd be interesting to know whether, overall, they feel it's had a lifting effect. Because that anecdote is so compelling. One of the strongest ways to deal with pushback is to have a series of case studies you can share with business owners: "This is going to increase your revenue by 10%. Would you like that? Yes or no?" What they're preoccupied with — and one has to sympathize; if you've spent your entire life building a business — is that the potential for the status quo to change is scary. If the behavior you observe right now at the donut shop is that people drive up, park, and get their donuts, then when that parking spot is gone or moved, or things are slightly less convenient for drivers, how is that going to change the behaviors that, from the business owner's perspective, are just the way people operate?

Laura, I want to get back to one thing you mentioned a moment ago — the city's objectives to create this mode shift. I want to know if either of you is aware of really rigorous ways the city is measuring actual system-wide ridership. It seems to me that in most cities I've encountered, this is a pretty significant miss: we talk a lot about infrastructure, the number of miles built, the form factor of the facilities — but we rarely have rigorous data demonstrating that the investment produced that mode shift, that it reduced the need for vehicular travel, reduced congestion, and so on. Are either of you aware of rigorous efforts to quantify the return on investment for these facilities? Patrick, let's start with you.

Patrick Stephenson (21:21)

I remember there was a bike counter on the Franklin Avenue Bridge. That bridge used to be a nightmare to cross on a bike, and then they installed a separated bikeway where you could go across the entire thing without interacting with any traffic. It's amazing now. When it first came in, they had that bike counter to measure how many people crossed, and the numbers were astounding.

Laura Mitchell (21:44)

I know both the state and the city were previously doing regular bike counting, but it seemed to fall off when the pandemic hit. For Bryant in particular, I know they had counters, because I kept riding over the little strips on the bike lane last year. I've been pestering the city to see if we can get those results, but I haven't seen them yet. That's not perfect — it's not measuring network-wide, just one bike lane. And I have a hunch that a lot of people, myself included, were already biking and changed their routes to go to Bryant. So it would be helpful to have broader studying — to see how many more people increased or started riding as a result of the infrastructure.

I also know that in the city's transportation action plan, they cite a survey done at some point when that last plan was written, which found that 66% of Minneapolis residents ride a bike at least sometimes, for some trips. Again, it's not super quantifiable, but I pull that stat out a lot when people say "no one bikes." It's like, okay, apparently 66% of people bike at least sometimes — and if they're biking at least sometimes, then with more connected, safer infrastructure, those folks might bike more often, creating less traffic.

Avi Stopper (22:54)

We'll talk about winter in a sec, because winter is really just a question of whether you have the right clothing on. But we've been talking a lot about infrastructure — that tends to be the banner in a lot of this. Both of you: your main squeeze right now, the projects you seem most invested in, aren't really directly about infrastructure. Laura, you're leading the Minnesota Cargo Bike Library, and Patrick, you're working on 30 Days of Biking and the Joyful Riders Club. One of the assumptions we make is that if we just had a network in place, we'd get huge mode shift. I'm curious whether you buy that argument — and, more broadly, tell us about the projects you're working on, and why you've chosen to work on what I'd describe as more behavioral-level advocacy, as opposed to pounding on the door of City Hall to get more investment in bikeways.

Patrick Stephenson (23:53)

I've been working on this for 15 years now, and I think a lot about why I wanted to do it in the first place. I'll say, for this interview, I'm just a guy — my job is as a writer, so I don't have that professional background. But I have a lot of enthusiasm for this work, and the enthusiasm has gone into these social rides. I think about people being lonely, needing connection, needing community. Biking is a perfect way to bring people together and give them friends, connection, relationships. I met my wife through a ride I organized — and there have been so many stories like that over the years. So my big motivation is connection. I want to fight the atomization of humanity, where we're all these isolated little pods, and just get people out together doing stuff — because that creates a really amazing life. That's what drives me.

Avi Stopper (24:28)

That's great. With the Joyful Riders Club, where is that initiative now? What structure does it take? For folks listening who think, "I like that idea, I want to do something similar in my city" — what's the alchemy you've created? What combination of factors have you found is the best way to organize and orchestrate these rides?

Patrick Stephenson (25:09)

It's all about communication — communicating the speed you're going to go, the length, and the route, more or less. We allow a little room for improvisation, but we make sure people know up front what they're getting into. We go very slow, very short distances. My idea is to create a complete experience: enough of a ride that it feels right, and then we bring everyone together at the end at a bike shop or taproom, wherever it is, so they can be buddies. So it's about making the most inclusive atmosphere possible, so people feel welcome.

Avi Stopper (25:44)

If someone's new to the ride, how do you make it easy for them to converse with folks? Are they on their own, or are there little games, structures, intros you offer? What's the way to get new people to feel like, "I'm going to come back next week"?

Patrick Stephenson (25:59)

One of the most effective ways is to invite people to raise their hand if it's their first time on one of our rides. That points out that they're new, and it's nonverbal — you just raise your hand, and you're not calling yourself out too much. Then we invite the more regular riders to introduce themselves, make them feel welcome, and talk with them. One thing that's nice about a social ride is that if it's your first one, you can just be silent the whole ride. You don't have to talk to anybody — just ride. That's a sweet thing too. So you can come in and just be yourself, or you can meet people. It's your choice.

Avi Stopper (26:32)

How often do you do these, and do you feel like regularity or consistency is important? One of the hallmarks of modern urban life is that you meet someone, have a nice conversation, and then don't see them again for four months and barely remember what you talked about, let alone their name.

Patrick Stephenson (26:50)

Regularity is everything. You want a steady drumbeat of events, so people don't have to think about it. We always get together on the third Thursday of the month, and we have at least one DJ ride a month — so basically we get together twice a month. We have a calendar people can access, which takes the thought out of it, so they reflexively know when the ride is. The DJ rides are a bit more manual, so we have a flyer that I pin to the top of our Instagram account. People get the full calendar right at the start of summer, so they can get it all on their calendar. That helps a lot. The steady drumbeat of events really helps.

Avi Stopper (27:24)

I remember doing a Critical Mass ride in San Francisco on Halloween — everyone in costumes, some guy with a gigantic speaker blasting very loud EDM. I was just like, wow, this is the peak right here. Laura, over to you. You were the board chair of Our Streets, the main advocacy group in Minneapolis, and you made a choice to work on cargo bikes and to start a cargo bike library. One is pretty traditional, advocacy-focused work — a lot of work with the city, getting people fired up about infrastructure — and you decided to move over to cargo bikes. Why the change, and what have you found most compelling about the cargo bike transition?

Laura Mitchell (28:10)

Our Streets is one of several awesome nonprofits advocating for safe biking, walking, and transit here. That's part of the reason I felt I could step out of that space — I was just getting kind of burnt out. We have Our Streets, and we have Move Minnesota, and our sister organization in housing, because of course you can't separate a lot of this from density and smart zoning.

When I first moved to Minneapolis, I got involved as a volunteer with Our Streets, actively working on campaigns for one of the bike lanes close to my house. I'm so grateful for the opportunity to have done all that work. But selfishly, I was finding joy in this other space, and there are so many smart people around me who can take over. So I decided to step into the space where I feel I can make a difference.

And I want to give a public shout-out to Patrick — I'm partly here because of him. I lived in Colorado, in Denver, back in 2014, and saw people talking online about 30 Days of Biking. I started following along, started riding my bike — which I wasn't using for transportation; it was just my weekend-ride thing. That was a complete game changer for me. The infrastructure in Denver was good enough for me to get around, and it's a similar deal here — the infrastructure in Minneapolis is good enough. We still have a lot of battles to fight, but there are people, often younger than me, who have the energy to fight those battles in a way I don't right now. Once my family was growing, we found the benefit of cargo bikes, and I got so excited about them. I saw the steep learning curve, jumped right in with hours of internet research and help from my wife, who's really smart about bikes too, and thought: I want to help other people through this learning curve and find the joy of cargo bikes.

So the Minnesota Cargo Bike Library is now officially a program of the Bicycle Alliance of Minnesota — BikeMN — which is our statewide bike advocacy organization. It's been such a joy. Through the program, we require folks to take a one-hour in-person orientation that I run, where we cover all the basics: how to ride safely, how to fit a helmet, how to lock up a bike, how to fit a bike to your body — and then the logistics of how e-bikes work, especially cargo bikes, so folks understand the speed, the throttle if it has one, charging, all those considerations. I've found so much joy in that. Just this last week, one of our borrowers said, "We borrowed a bike last week, we're buying two e-bikes this week — can you help me talk through options?" And I'm like — those two! Borrowing one bike, and suddenly there are two more e-bikes on the road, with plans to replace car trips, and we have enough infrastructure to get them going.

So other folks are going to keep pushing on the infrastructure, and I'm going to stay in the lane I've chosen for myself, at least for now — education and access around cargo bikes. Everyone else, people working in housing, people working on all sorts of things — all our forces combined is what makes it a really good space. Similar to Patrick, running the cargo bike library isn't my day job; it's something I do on the side. So it's nice to pick and choose, given that we're volunteering our time, what brings us the most joy and what can make the most impact on our communities.

Avi Stopper (31:29)

Please tell me you do have 15 awesome cargo bikes in your garage.

Laura Mitchell (31:33)

I don't know if you follow me on social media, but we had a very funny situation where an opossum got into our garage and climbed on two of the Bunch bikes. We have a new logo and a t-shirt with it now — it was hilarious.

Avi Stopper (31:39)

Embrace the possum. I'm curious — so you lend people a cargo bike for a week, they go out, and they come back. Are they transformed? Is it as if they've been on some religious vision quest? What are some of the responses?

Laura Mitchell (31:49)

My favorite response — which makes me sound really mean — is when kids have tantrums at check-in. If it's a parent with kids, and then they have to drop off the bike, the kids get so upset, and those families usually end up buying an e-cargo bike. Then I see them out on the trails and in the bike lanes, and it's fantastic. The program is used not only by folks considering purchasing a cargo bike — which is great, and a use case we're solving for — but also by folks who may not be in a position to want or afford one, but have a specific use case. There was one person whose friend was a paraplegic and couldn't ride a bike because of an accident. She was able to borrow our Bunch bike, put her friend and her son in the front of it together, and they went and had a picnic down by the Stone Arch Bridge — a place they wouldn't have been able to get to with a car, and where his wheelchair had a hard time accessing. But they could be all together and have a joyful day. The folks going on to buy a cargo bike bring me so much joy — but so do the people who just have a really meaningful experience with bikes, with their friends and family.

Avi Stopper (33:06)

It reminds me of an organization called Cycling Without Age. They get these trishaws and take folks from assisted-living facilities out — bundled up in blankets, riding around, feeling the wind on their faces, having that joyful experience of riding a bike despite certain physical limitations.

I have to tell you one hilarious cargo bike story. Last week in Denver was Bike to Work Day. We had our little Bike Streets booth set up, people were coming by and chatting, and a local reporter comes up and says, "I'd like to interview you, and at the end of my live piece, do you mind if I get in your cargo bike and you ride off with me?" And I thought, okay, that sounds like something we can do — maybe a little high-stakes on live TV; you could easily see this showing up on TikTok. So she does her spiel, the cameraman zooms in on the box, she gets in — and she doesn't get in in a balanced way. She just sort of gets in on the side. At that moment I was like: core strength, core strength, core strength. Hold on — do not let this bike go down under any circumstances. We avoided disaster, which is probably why you didn't see us on TikTok. But it was a fun laugh.

Patrick Stephenson (34:18)

Live TV is scary for things like that. There's the runner who slips on the ice — I thought of that immediately.

Avi Stopper (34:25)

Just classic. We've been talking about checking out a cargo bike from the library. What do you tell folks about where to go and how to ride? You're doing this training session for them, and I'd imagine one of the discussions is about how to get to the places they want to go — which, for better or worse, brings us back to the gaps in the infrastructure. What's your advice? How do you tell folks they can indeed get where they want to go, notwithstanding these gigantic gaps?

Laura Mitchell (34:56)

The city just finally released an updated map of our bike infrastructure, so I find that helpful to share — folks can see what the infrastructure is and where it is, to help with routing. But that's a huge mental lift. I don't look at a map when I'm trying to figure out where to go in my car; I pull up my GPS and plug it in. We're very lucky in Minneapolis to have a number of folks who've volunteered their time to make sure our local mapping data — on OpenStreetMap and everywhere — is really well updated. So apps like Transit work really well for finding low-stress routes.

When the library first opened, we had a ton of people who were already very bikey — they just hadn't gotten into e-bikes or cargo bikes yet, so they didn't need much help. But as the months went on last year, and definitely big-time this year, we're getting a number of people who haven't been on bikes in decades. We even had one person who had never ridden a bike before, who borrowed an upright trike we have so he didn't have to worry about balance for his first rides. For those folks, I encourage them to download the Transit app and use it for routing, because it tends to be pretty reliable. I'm not with them the rest of the week while they're out riding, so I'm not giving super-specific directions — but if they ask about an area I know, I'll give recommendations, like "ride on the sidewalk for this half block to get around this terrible spot, and be really mindful of pedestrians and go slow," or "take this side street to get around this gap." Technology like the Transit app can be really helpful in these situations.

Avi Stopper (36:27)

There's a really interesting thing with group rides — the strength-in-numbers phenomenon. People feel comfortable in spaces where they might not otherwise. I find that to be one of the real challenges with Critical Mass-type rides: you're out there thinking, "This is amazing, why can't the world be like this all the time?" And then the moment the ride passes a location, it reverts to its normal state. There tends to be an absence of opportunities for people to learn the ways to get to the places they want to go when they're out by themselves. How do you deal with that tension?

Patrick Stephenson (37:05)

One thing we established with the social rides from the start is that we wanted an educational component — we want to teach people about the sneaks. One thing I've noticed is that when people start biking, they automatically default to the biggest thoroughfares, just like they would when driving: get on the busiest road, the most direct route. Something we can teach is that that's not always the best way, and not the way you have to go. You can take a parallel route that's a little quieter, and sometimes there's even better infrastructure. So I want to teach people about those routes — the secret sneaks to get around: the ways that go under the highway bridge, the two-way bikeway parallel to Washington Avenue that'll get you there much easier. We're equipping them to ride alone by teaching them about the environment around them and the alternative ways to get around. And I hope we're also giving them a community they can rely on — people they meet who have a bit more experience.

I remember when I was first bike commuting, what really helped was going to the bike shop and talking to a mechanic. I said, "This is my destination — how the heck should I do this route?" And that mechanic gave me a lot of advice. So by giving people that learning within the community, we're building the opportunity for them to do it on their own.

Avi Stopper (38:20)

It's amazing how universal so many of these trends are. In the early days of my life in Denver, I certainly had those conversations with local mechanics. By the same token, what we're doing with these crowdsourced low-stress bike maps in cities around the country — including Minneapolis, where I just checked, the current version has 523 bidirectional miles in the Twin Cities region — is trying to surface those local hacks and workarounds, the knowledge people carry in their minds about how to navigate the tricky spots. That knowledge isn't self-evident. The intuitive thing is that when you're going from one place to another, you assume the modality of driving, so the big arterial seems to make sense. And yet a street over there might be this chill route that, if you connect a couple of things and make a few extra turns, puts you in a much more comfortable setting. Do your rides, in some cases, avoid the bigger arterials and instead show the chill routes — so rather than riding in a painted bike lane, you're on a quiet residential street a block over?

Patrick Stephenson (39:40)

I think we've had to prioritize the better infrastructure, just from a safety standpoint — we want to maximize the safety of the ride and keep people feeling good. Every time there's a great new one, like Hennepin Avenue, which is amazing now, let's take people down it just to show it off. We have to prioritize that safe infrastructure to keep riders safe.

Avi Stopper (40:00)

To me, a group bike ride is one of the great joys in life — and if it ends with an ice cream shop, even better. There's this description of "interested but concerned" cyclists. So you're giving people ways to actualize their curiosity — to go out and ride in a group, or borrow a cargo bike for a week. Do you find there's a path from someone who rarely rides to someone who comes through this activation, gets into riding, and then becomes an advocate? One of the things I'm always very interested in is how we broaden the movement, so it's not the same 10 people shouting at the mayor over and over. Have you found that this is a path for folks to get more engaged on the policy side? Laura, Our Streets might be an interesting perspective here — is that a way you've seen volunteers cultivated, through curiosity about riding first?

Laura Mitchell (41:00)

Yeah — again, that's why I'm here. I got activated by 30 Days of Biking, and then went down the whole rabbit hole: some of these routes didn't feel so great when I was trying to bike downtown Denver at six months pregnant, and I thought, "Can anything be done about this?" That led me to realize yes, things can be done, and should be done. I started with some advocacy in Denver, and then definitely ramped up once I got here. So for sure, we see that happening at a lot of our local nonprofits.

Just this last weekend, my mother-in-law was in town and we went to Pride events. I saw a number of folks I knew, and she kept asking, "How do you know that person? How do you know that person?" My answer for everything was: bikes. I just know them from bikes. The volunteers become friends with each other, and that amps things up. At the cargo bike library, almost all of our volunteers are folks who came through the program as borrowers, had such a positive experience, loved it, wanted the community aspect, wanted to give back — and now they're volunteers. We also have a Discord, which is another community piece. We have a number of local Discord channels where folks organize around things, talking about bikes and infrastructure and everything under the sun. We have one for the cargo bike library, and many of my volunteers who were newer to biking for transportation are now talking about all the infrastructure stuff and starting to get involved. So there's a pretty natural path. Not everyone — some people just ride their bikes and call it good, and that's great too. But there's certainly a path for a lot of folks to become advocates.

Avi Stopper (42:24)

Patrick, how about on your end — both with that question, and I also want to talk about 30 Days of Biking, since we haven't touched on it. Have you seen people who were kind of nervous come in and really become activated bike folks?

Patrick Stephenson (42:39)

That's the story of the past 15 years. When you give people a safe entry point where they feel welcome and safe, they grow their experience. They learn how to navigate the streets, they get friends who also want bike adventures. I've watched people get this entry point and then go off in all these different directions. There are so many pathways with biking: you could get into the policy area, you could race your bike, you could be a messenger, you could go on long rides or bike camping. It's been amazing to see. It's not just about the connection they get — it's also about how they find their own pathway into the biking life and what comes of it. It's been really cool.

Avi Stopper (43:24)

Okay, so you call your riders' club the Joyful Riders Club, and as we've established, definitively and without question, group bike rides are awesome and filled with joy. Sometimes the bike infrastructure stuff is less joyful — it's more of a grind. Are there specific formal structures in the riders' club? Do you give a presentation, a little pitch at the beginning of each ride, about what's going on, so people have a formal entry point? Or do you find it's simply the act of participating that leads to further curiosity, and people find their own way?

Patrick Stephenson (44:00)

I think that comes to life through our partnerships. On the DJ rides, we partner with Perennial Cycle. They have an awesome network of marshals they've trained, who go through a program on how to do it in the specific Perennial Cycle approach to marshalling. That's been really helpful. We've also partnered with Bone Saw Cycling Collective [name unverified — please check against audio], who also have an awesome way of marshalling. So it's partnering with organizations that do such a good job controlling the pace of the ride. And I think it's all about just going on the ride, seeing how it works, seeing how the marshals keep us safe. That really helps.

Avi Stopper (44:34)

All right — tell us about 30 Days of Biking. What's the vision behind it? How does it work?

Patrick Stephenson (44:39)

Usually this comes at the start — that's nice. So, 30 Days of Biking. It started in 2010, because I was biking all through that winter. I started bike commuting in the winter, which is weird in retrospect — I really got passionate about it in the winter. Coming out of the winter of 2010, I had my hashtag, #WinterViking, that I was recording all my adventures under, and I put it out to the community on Twitter — now called X — asking what hashtag I should use next. I was brainstorming out loud, and somebody was naturally doing 30 days of yoga, and I said: how about 30 days of biking? We'll do it in April — April's a week away, it's coming right up, let's do it. Hundreds of people just jumped on and started doing it with me.

As someone in their late twenties who was just discovering themselves, it was terrifying to suddenly have this much exposure — and to do that first social ride. I remember the first one was about 70 people, and I was like, "What the heck is this? All these people are here to bike together? I don't know how to lead a ride." So that was brand new — there was a lot of learning involved. But that's what it's all about: this pledge to ride your bike every day in April and share your adventures online. You get this shared narrative around the whole month — photos, tweets, videos now that people are doing — all this content. It's a big story that we're all participating in.

And I want people to know they can jump in anytime. You can jump in at day 15 — it doesn't matter. You don't need to do all 30 days. Just join our big party and celebrate bikes for the month. The fact that it's in April is also really important, because here in Minnesota especially, we get pummeled by all kinds of weather — rain, snow, sunny days. It's that big lift out of winter, where it's brand new, so it's an exciting experience versus something like June, which might be a bit simpler.

Avi Stopper (46:33)

One last question to wrap up. Both of you get to be — for at least a moment — the director of your local DOT. Laura, you're in Minneapolis; Patrick, you're in St. Paul. What are the two or three things you'd do in your city that you think would have the biggest lift on making biking more accessible for more folks?

Laura Mitchell (46:55)

I'd continue to make progress on our bike network, and continue to push that we don't need to prioritize car parking over safety in the areas where we've done that. So: keep building out the network, make it connected, make it as protected as possible. I'm a huge fan of the sidewalk-level bike lanes — I'd love to see more of those — but whatever the protection is, we need more of it. And the second piece is hopefully already in the works: we had a really great bike share called Nice Ride, and it died. I want it to come back, and ideally I want it to include cargo bikes, because the cargo bike library isn't able to meet all the need. The demand is way, way higher than we'll ever be able to meet with our setup. So I'd love to see the city, or Met Council, or the county provide more actual bike share, including bikes of all types — not just regular bikes and e-bikes, but cargo bikes.

Avi Stopper (47:47)

Can you imagine, given their size, if the ubiquitous scooter- and bike-share operations had cargo bikes as well — or instead? That would be incredible. Do they really?

Laura Mitchell (47:56)

I think Lime actually does. I've seen some photos. One of our volunteers is in Italy right now for his honeymoon — from the Cargo Bike Library — and he shared a photo of a Lime bike with a passenger setup on the back for kids. So they apparently exist, but here in the US, with all our lawsuits and everything, who knows if we could get something like that. But that would be my dream.

Avi Stopper (48:12)

Coming soon, I hope. Patrick, over to you — the last word.

Patrick Stephenson (48:21)

I've got thoughts. I would extend the Midtown Greenway from Minneapolis into St. Paul, because having that nice separated, rails-to-trails atmosphere in St. Paul would improve everything around it — it would flow this beautiful bike infrastructure out into all the other streets. And I would make Summit Avenue a Bryant Avenue-type bikeway, with that raised sidewalk-level situation Laura is talking about, because Summit goes from the river all the way to downtown St. Paul. That would have a nice flow-out effect too — once you get more people biking on it, including kids and families, everything else is impacted. So those would be my top two: the Greenway and Summit. Let's make it happen.

Avi Stopper (48:59)

With my magic wand, we'll get it done. Thank you both so much for your time. Really appreciate it. Keep fighting the good fight.

Patrick Stephenson (49:01)

Thank you.

Laura Mitchell (49:06)

Thanks so much.

Avi Stopper (49:08)

Thanks for listening. If you have questions, comments, or suggestions for guests you'd like to hear from, drop us a line at [email protected]. Bike Networks Now is a production of Bike Streets. Anyone should be able to ride a bike to any destination in their city today. You can learn more about our work at bikestreets.com.