with any luck Hennepin county can do the same or better than they did with Park and Portland.

http://www.hennepin.us/portal/site/HennepinUS/menuitem.b1ab75471750e40fa01dfb47ccf06498/?vgnextoid=488e2e058f408310VgnVCM10000099fe4689RCRD

I'd really like to see a meaningful, separated cycletrack. Remember, this project will only fully reconstruct Hennepin to S 5th, though I imagine the portion south/east of 5th might be restriped to provide a somewhat consistent facility.

In the meantime, here's some inspiration --Straße des 17. Juni, a six-lane street in Berlin that still has an excellent, unintimidating cycle track.

Your pictures don't include intersections. Do you know how they handle them on this cycletrack?

This particular cycletrack had the luxury of basically no major intersections. The minor ones were handled basically like a driveway cut -- the sharp corner and grade change makes the car almost completely stop before making a turn.

But they do have a good standard intersection design for bike left turns -- the cycletrack crosses the street as a marked lane in the intersection, and there's a small left-turn waiting area:



There are then bicycle-specific left-turn lights that have a brief green between light cycles:



So, that is, a biker is on Street A and wants to turn left onto Street B. While Street A has a green light, biker proceeds to the left-turn area. Street B goes yellow, then red, and the biker gets a green arrow before Street B gets a green light. Pedestrian crossing on Street B can begin at the point of the green arrow. It seemed pretty well-thought-out to me.

Remember, of course, that this left turn setup pretty much requires prohibiting right turn on red for the street intersecting the cycle track. Not that I think that would be a huge loss, especially downtown...

I see that the cycletrack / bikelane is to the right of the right turn lane. Do motorists have a "protected" right turn phase where cyclist have to stop?

I do not recall seeing that in Berlin. But there also were not so many bikes that it really impeded the autos to have to yield to the relatively few bikes.

I did see that in Copenhagen, however, at certain larger or more suburban intersections, like this one at Bellahøj.

IMHO, we're a lot closer in bike situation to Berlin than Copenhagen at the moment. It would be a glorious problem to have to have so many bikes that cars couldn't make a right turn -- and then, perhaps we'd need dedicated signals.

I didn't like being to the right of right-turning cars at first, but in six months of riding every day in CPH, I saw a "right-hook" once, and it was low-speed, and everyone walked away with not even really a scrape. I think three things really help, in that regard:

1. No right turn on red from the street with the cycle track
2. Stop lines adjusted so a bicycle stops well ahead of a car at a red light
3. Continuing the bike lane markings across the intersection, so it's very clear where the car is crossing the bicycle's right of way. (I noticed they've experimented with this on Port/Park, in the tight three-lane areas.)

This paper has more details on how Copenhagen's handling of right turns at major intersections has changed (beginning on printed page 34). Their approach has changed somewhat, formerly being a shared bike/right space, now with more separation, and greater use of the adjusted stop lines.

At minor intersections, like Berlin, they use a driveway-style crossing. I like that a lot, since it visually says the car is crossing the bicycle and pedestrian space, rather than the peds and bikes crossing the car's space.

http://mplsbike.org/blog/posts/big-momentum-on-washington-avenue/