Advocacy Posts

What's your vision for the future of Minneapolis? At Our Streets Minneapolis local advocacy is one way we're making our city a place where biking, walking, and rolling are easy and comfortable for everyone. Our advocacy work depends on people like you raising your voices to push our city in the direction you'd like it to go. One way you can do this is by meeting with your elected officials.

What's your vision for the future of Minneapolis? At Our Streets Minneapolis local advocacy is one way we're making our city a place where biking, walking, and rolling are easy and comfortable for everyone. Our advocacy work depends on people like you raising your voices to push our city in the direction you'd like it to go. One way you can do this is by calling your elected officials.

What's your vision for the future of Minneapolis? At Our Streets Minneapolis local advocacy is one way we're making our city a place where biking, walking, and rolling are easy and comfortable for everyone. Our advocacy work depends on people like you raising your voices to push our city in the direction you'd like it to go. One way you can do this is by writing to your elected officials. 

The Our Streets Minneapolis Pedestrian Work Group kicked off 2019 with a conversation about this year’s priorities, activities, and pedestrian issues.

Hey, Minneapolis! How are those winter sidewalks treating you these days?

With a whole lot of recent snow and ice, it’s been hard to get around on our sidewalks. Whether we’re walking, rolling, or using transit, we need our sidewalks to be better cleared of snow and ice, and in a much more timely way.

Our systems and norms are still prioritizing the movement of cars and trucks over people. We’re still clearing streets ahead of clearing sidewalks.

Vision Zero is an international effort to eliminate traffic related deaths and serious injuries. Vision Zero was founded in Sweden over 20 years ago and has since spread to cities across the globe.

The City of Minneapolis passed a City Council Resolution committing to reducing traffic related deaths and serious injuries in September 2017. This summer, the City hired a Vision Zero Coordinator* and began to work out the details around how Vision Zero will work in Minneapolis.

At our December meeting, members of the Pedestrian Work Group reflected on 2018 and identified some of our successes over the past year. These included:

Making Minneapolis Winters Walkable!

After adding pedestrian advocacy to our mission in 2017, the Our Streets Minneapolis board chose winter sidewalk maintenance as our first campaign focused on walking and rolling. We’re working to make Minneapolis winters accessible for everyone.

The problem:
Sidewalks and crossing areas are not cleared of snow and ice promptly, and are not maintained in a consistent manner for people who are walking or rolling.

Our goal:
Snow and ice are cleared promptly from sidewalks, corners, and crossing areas so people can get around in the ways that work best for them.

Tim Springer wrote this meeting update, and photos by Chrissy Leitz

The Downtown Bikeways committee met December 3 at 6 p.m. at Dunn Brothers on Loring Park. This committee began meeting monthly in March 2018 with the help of Janne Flisrand as a contractor to Our Streets Minneapolis to bootstrap advocacy work for protected bike lanes in downtown Minneapolis. Janne’s formal role is ending so the group needed to decide whether to continue. Arm wrestling was critical to the decisions, so click through to see what's next...

Here at Our Streets Minneapolis, we continue to advocate for a city where biking, walking, and rolling is easy and comfortable for everyone.

We thought this was a good time for an update on what’s happening with our advocacy work at Our Streets Minneapolis. We’d love for you to get involved with whatever is most motivating to you, so here are some options: