Downtown Bikeways Work Group January 2019 Update

Kirsten and Andrew kicked off our first meeting of the year with introductions, and conversations about our individual resolutions for the new year. Then Andrew summarized the purpose and history of our workgroup. 

The biggest part of the meeting was some think/pair/share time about what went well last year, what didn’t go well, and what we want to continue doing, then followed by a good, in-depth discussion. 

Some of the things that went well were: our advocacy event at Lakes and Legends, we learned a lot, we created some buzz about our corridors, we identified our priorities and constraints, and our group has a good rapport going now! 

Some of the things that didn’t go as well were: we struggled to know exactly how to create impact, downtown business-owner engagement wasn’t as fruitful as we had hoped, and we weren’t able to keep all of the great volunteers that came to our meetings. 

We want to keep advocating publicly for safer streets for all users, keep telling the stories of the most vulnerable street users. To that we’d like to increase the amount of activity of our group outside of our meetings, educate Minneapolitans about the value of “road diets”, and collaborate with each other more.

We also discussed the possibility of combining the 9th & 10th subgroup with the LaSalle-Blaisdell and 1st subgroup. We decided to revisit this topic at the next meeting.

The tasks to be completed before the next meeting are for Kirsten and Andrew to start a shared knowledge document where group members can add questions, and others can help answer them. Steve and Jess are going to finish up their first draft of a Strategy and Tactics document for the group. 

If you'd like to be involved, we'd love to have you join us! Our next meeting is on Monday, February 4th at the Dunn Brothers at 329 W 15th Street. (Please show up at 5:45 for a quick pre-meeting orientation chat if you’re new.) 

If you can’t make the meeting:

• Show your support by signing this digital postcard.
• Share the postcard, and then ask your friends to sign it, too!

Links to past meeting notes: December and November.