The tar and gravel trucks have been out in full force,
strewing excessive amounts of loose rocks on our streets.
This past weekend I heard of three bike crashes due
to sealcoating, which resulted in a fractured arm,
a hamburgered arm/shoulder, and a spinal cord
injury which became a fatality.

I'm not sure whether any of you have had crashes
due to sealcoating, but if you have (or even if you
haven't), I would encourage you to call 311 about it
and complain to the City of Minneapolis. These three
crashes might have been avoided if the proper signage
had been posted.

Please use this thread to alert others about which streets/
areas have been recently sealcoated, so we can all ride safely.

Edit: There is now a map of all the posts in this thread available

here.

It is a public map that anyone with a google account can update, if you can take a minute or two to add a line showing what road section you are talking about, it would be a great benefit to many other cyclists.

Thanks for helping us get the word out about dangerous sections of road!

~hereNT

Ugh. That's horrible. I was thinking about posting something like this last week, but sort of forgot about it. They re-sealed Como Ave between 24th and 22nd (where it goes under the train bridge) last week, and there's still a lot of loose gravel scattered around. Careful on the corners; I've almost biffed it once or twice.

I feel bad for the people that crashed...but, wouldn't it be easy to just not ride down those streets? I don't see a need for signs.

Repost of my message from the "road hazards" thread from Tues:

There is fresh sealcoat (deep pea gravel) on 10th AVE SE between 8th St SE and Como. Watch yourselves.

It's not that hard to ride on this gravel. The problem is when it starts unexpectedly. So yes, they need signs.

Really sad about the injuries.
As already mentioned, the problem with these areas is that they start suddenly, and might happen to occur along a route one is used to taking.
I almost biffed it Tuesday morning turning right from 8th Ave SE to 10th St. I guess maybe I just should have seen it? But I wasn't on the look-out for loose gravel, I was on the look-out for the normal near-campus stuff like cars, pedestrians, idiots on mountain bikes, etc... not so much on the look-out for big changes in pavement in a route I take frequently.

A different part of my route used to be taking Johnson over 35W at a high-traffic time of day, and a couple of weeks ago I rolled up to the stoplight at Broadway, prepared to continue on Johnson, but luckily the stoplight caused me to have enough time to look ahead, see the loose gravel, and see a loose gravel sign -- 50 feet after the loose gravel started. Turned on broadway and avoided it, but that's definitely the kind of place where wiping because the pavement changes radically and unexpectedly could definitely get you run over by the car behind you.

South on Minnehaha after Lake Street for about one block

Was the signage improper?

Here, on 8th St SE, (between E. Hennepin and Central) when the city seal coated/resurfaced the road there were "no parking" signs up for two days prior to the road repair informing anyone who cared to look that the road would be closed to parking for the purpose of resurfacing the roadway. During the few days that the loose gravel was on the road, there were relatively large, orange signs at either end of the road informing traffic of loose gravel. The excess gravel has since been swept up and the signs removed. There is, however, a small amount of loose gravel at the edges of the roadway that could cause a fall when turning onto or off from the road.

The "loose gravel" signs on Johnson, north of Broadway were back from the intersection a fair distance, but when traveling west on Broadway, I could see those signs on Johnson. I could also see the gravel that had worked its way onto Broadway and had plenty of time to adjust my line of travel and body weight distribution. It's fairly dark at 5:30 AM and I am not a slow rider. Plus, I'm usually preparing to move into the left lane there to turn onto Buchanan.

Maybe in the incidents involving injury, the signs were not present or were blown over during a storm and not set upright as yet. Maybe the cyclists were inattentive or distracted. I, personally, have never not noticed the road surface looking loose when there are piles of loose gravel on it. Maybe, I'm just lucky.

20th Ave S in the Cedar/Riverside neighborhood. From Riverside north past 7th street at least. Sealcoated Monday(7-2) afternoon.

Wider tires can help with situations like these.

A fatality, really? I've been with or heard of too many people becoming victims of the gravel, but it resulted in someone's death. That's some terrible news =(



What they're doing to that street has me confused. I could've sworn they had it repainted last week - turning it from a four lane road to a three lane road with two bike lanes. I was stoked. Then, I noticed they decided to resurface it this week. Any idea why they repainted it, only to rip it up the following week?

Bureaucratic foul-up? Bad Planning? In-appropriate influence from Bolivian Yak farmers?? Your guess is as good as mine.

Yes, and his is possibly the best obituary I have EVER read.
Talk about living life to its fullest.

If it's too dark to see the gravel on a street where there
normally wouldn't be 4 inches of it, YES, there need to be signs.

I found out about this kind of thing yesterday;
they paint the new stripes,
they cover the new stripes,
they sealcoat,
they remove the covers from the stripes.

This is supposed to put the painted stripes a bit below the average surface of the road and make the paint last longer.