How to Bike to the State Fair

Apparently, some people dislike the Minnesota State Fair. I’m willing to bet that those people drove to and from the fair.

Don’t drive to the fair! It’s the worst way to experience it. Driving to the fair will allow you to be impressed by the cottage industry of residents who, for 12 days a year, run highly lucrative parking services from their yards. But that’s the only thing driving will do for you.

Taking a bus to the fair is a great way to arrive. There are free park & ride lots all over, as well as regular bus service (like the A Line Bus Rapid Transit on Snelling or Route 3 on Como) that leads straight to the main entrance.

Biking to the fair — which opens today and runs through Labor Day — is also an excellent way to travel! The free bike corrals near the entrances are staffed full time, and arriving by bike offers the simplicity of traveling straight to and from your destination with no extra steps or waiting.

However, one big catch might make your trip a lot less fun: the “last mile” infrastructure is not so great. High traffic levels and road closures and reconfigurations take place during the fair, which means some routes that normally work well for biking are unpleasant or impossible to use. The State Fair organization often seems indifferent to the needs of cyclists, and the resources they offer are virtually useless.

There are good bike routes into the fair that will drop you right at a bike corral, safe and happy, but it’s hard to find those routes without some trial and error. I want to help you have the best experience biking to the fair, so I will lay out a recommended route to the fairgrounds from each direction that keeps you (to the extent that it is possible) on safe and uncongested roads or paths.

Think one of these routes could be improved? Email [email protected]. This is a crowdsourced effort and I hope to continuously improve these recommendations.

Even though the South Bike Lot appears closest, reaching it means dealing with heavy vehicle and pedestrian traffic on Como. Not worth it! Entering via the West Bike Lot up by Buford is a much nicer ride and less crowded than the South Lot.

The usually pleasant University of Minnesota Transitway becomes less nice during the fair as it receives heavy bus traffic, including many charter buses whose drivers are less courteous to cyclists than the regular Metro Transit buses. For this reason, I recommend skipping the last elevated leg of the Transitway and heading to the West Bike Lot instead of following the Transitway in to the South Bike Lot.

Your options from this direction are, sadly, very limited. Avoid Snelling Avenue at all costs. Lexington Avenue is only slightly better. The most comfortable route is going to be a little longer, but will keep you mostly on separated paths and off streets designed like freeways.

This one feels like a toss-up. Entering via the North Bike Lot gives you a less busy gate and better chances of biking all the way into your lot, but you’ll be riding mostly in the road. Entering via the South Bike Lot lets you stay on separated paths, but the last quarter mile will have a lot of congestion.

To the North Bike Lot:

To the South Bike Lot:

You’ll probably want to stay off Snelling and Larpenteur. Beyond that, there are no obvious routes to prefer or avoid here, so you’re largely free to follow a direct route on side streets.

If you have a bike that can handle gravel and want a quieter ride, you can improvise a route through the farm area of the U of M’s St. Paul campus. For simplicity, though, we’re describing a more direct route here.

Feel free to improvise on this one. Most of the streets on this side of the fairgrounds are rideable and safe.

Feedback welcome! The comments have been disabled at Streets.mn, so email [email protected] with any feedback or suggestions: what you liked, what didn’t work, what could be better. Enjoy the fair!

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