Advocacy Posts

After almost three years, Minneapolis’ comprehensive planning process is nearing an end.

A couple weeks ago, I compared the current draft with the first draft. Your comments made a difference! Thank you! In this blog, I shared information about the Planning Commission hearing. This hearing happened last week. At the hearing, Sarah Tschida, an Our Streets Minneapolis board member, testified along with many other folks who care about the future of our city.

We’re creating some momentum around making Minneapolis winters walkable and you can help keep it going!

We’ve got some exciting news to report and some advocacy actions for folks to take.

Here’s a little background information and a previous blog post on this topic if you’re just now joining us on our journey to make Minneapolis winters walkable for everyone.

This summer, we worked on the Minneapolis 2040 comprehensive plan. We shared why you might care about the plan. (tl;dr it shapes everything the City of Minneapolis does for the next 20 years). We shared why Our Streets Minneapolis cares about the plan. (tl;dr it guides how we build our communities, which determines whether Minneapolis is a city where biking, walking and rolling are easy and comfortable for everyone). We shared Our Streets’ priorities and asked you to comment on the draft plan.

The City received more than 10,000 comments on Version 1 of the plan, and you provided hundreds of the comments. So, what happened?

All images from https://minneapolis2040.com unless otherwise noted

The Long Range Planning staff at Community Planning and Economic Development (CPED) heard your comments. On four of Our Streets Minneapolis’ five priorities, they strengthened the plan in Version 2. Thank you!

Here are the details of what changed for each of our five priorities:

This post was originally published on streets.mn. 

I’m on a workgroup through Our Streets Minneapolis, and I’m asking you to show your support for safer bikeways through downtown, specifically on 9th and 10th streets. These streets were added to the Bicycle Master Plan back in 2016, but there is currently no plan or schedule for improvement.

The Downtown Bikeways work group is still going strong and excited about upcoming projects! Our September meeting was productive, beginning with introductions and a conversation about what each of us has to offer the group. (Catch up on what we did in August here.) We then divided into our work groups and spent the majority of the time planning. Here's what each group discussed:

At Our Streets Minneapolis we have a new advocacy priority: making our streets walkable in the winter. While summer is just drawing to a close, we know winter will be here before we know it. This year we are committed to making sure people waking and rolling can continue to get around our city in the ways that work best for them. 

This report was drafted by Alyssa Kohn.

Our August 6 meeting was high-energy, not very August at all. 

Reprise: What are we trying to do?

The Downtown Bikeways group goal is to showcase the demand for completing the city's protected bikeway network. We need to connect existing bikeways to one another and to create a fluid network in and out of downtown Minneapolis safe for all types of bike riders. We're focused on two corridors, 9th and 10th Streets going east and west across southern downtown, and LaSalle/Blaisdell and 1st connecting downtown to the heavily car-free neighborhood of Whittier to the south. They are on the city’s bikeway plan. We are demonstrating these are needed sooner than later and to spur action for implementing them.

This map (by Jess) shows the motley bike design that exists on the LaSalle/Blaisdell and 1st today. 

Red=No cyclist accommodation

Orange=Sharrows or a bike lane

Yellow=A buffered bike lane without bollards

Light Green=Bollard-protected bike lane

Dark Green=Off street trail

This post was written by Will Delaney, Associate Director at Hope Community, Inc. Our Streets Minneapolis and Hope Community have been working together to make Franklin Avenue a safer street since 2008.

This June, the rebuilt Franklin Avenue bridge over I-35W re-opened after being closed for more than nine months. Neighbors from Ventura Village/Phillips can finally head back to the Electric Fetus and Mia, and folks in Whittier and Stevens Square can more easily get back to the American Indian Cultural Corridor and Peavey Park.