Over the past few years the suburb that I live in, Fridley, MN, has slowly been adding more and more infrastructure for biking. The past three years has seen a large increase in the number of miles of bike paths available to people, and it’s been wonderful to start to see more amenities that don’t require a car.

Just last week the latest addition to this infrastructure was completed connecting Main Street on the west to Central Ave. on the east via 53rd Ave. They also made a few other traffic improvements including a new feature I had never experienced before called a “turnabout”.

This feature eliminates left turns out of the very busy Target parking lot and funnels people into what I can best describe as a 50% roundabout. Everyone leaving Target must turn right, and then follow the traffic circle around to head back up to Central Ave. It’s a really neat traffic feature that I haven’t seen before, and in the couple of weeks that it’s been open it’s shown itself to be intuitive and easy to navigate.

Since the road was being torn up, they used this opportunity to put the bike path along 53rd, and since it just opened up I decided to try it out with a quick lunch time bike ride down to Target the other day. To make it interesting I strapped a GoPro to my chest and the result is a fun little video of the journey. You can check it out below of go directly there: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_T4HbioO8gY