#WeWalkMpls is back for the second year! Join Our Streets Minneapolis and the City of Minneapolis as we work together to highlight folks who walk as a primary way to get around our city.

What is #WeWalkMpls?

The #WeWalkMpls project is a collaboration between Our Streets Minneapolis and the City of Minneapolis. Our goal is to celebrate walking in our city and encourage more folks to try walking for transportation.

Open Streets Minneapolis 

Open Streets Lyndale had a record turnout at 58k people, with 45k being the previous record. The Our Streets Minneapolis booth was busy and collected over 100 postcards for winter maintenance. The next Open Streets Minneapolis event is Open Streets Lake + Minnehaha on Sunday, July 21st.

This Thursday the City of Minneapolis is hosting a hearing where folks can provide feedback on the Capital Long-Range Improvement Committee (CLIC) recommendations for how the City should spend capital improvement funding from 2020 - 2024.

Here’s when the hearing will be:

CLIC Public Hearing
Thursday, May 16th | 6:00 PM
City Hall Room 319
350 S 5th St, Minneapolis, MN 55415

There’s also an opportunity to give feedback at the Phillips Community Center from 6:30 - 8 PM on Wednesday, May 15th. There was an opportunity at UROC last week, but unfortunately we missed that one.

This April, the Pedestrian Work Group (PWG) met up once again at the Central Library to discuss all things walking and rolling and to start planning engagement efforts for Our Streets. Several new volunteers shared a lot of knowledge and expertise from careers in transit and car-free lives. Thank you so much!

As a follow up to Minneapolis 2040, the City’s comprehensive plan, a Transportation Action Plan is being drafted to guide the planning and implementation of transportation projects over the next ten years. Our Streets Minneapolis supports many parts of Minneapolis 2040 and we welcome the emphasis on building a transportation system that puts people first.

The upcoming action plan is an opportunity to design a new transportation system—one that is cleaner, more comfortable and allows people to get around our city in a variety of ways.

The Our Streets Pedestrian Work Group (PWG) had a cozy meeting on March 18 at the Hennepin Central Library. Cozy as in our original room was taken, although we all fit in nicely in a smaller, nearby room. The library staff even provided some extra chairs.

A mid-February evening—in all of its snowy, frozen winter glory—found the Our Streets Pedestrian Work Group (PWG) once again at the Lakes and Legends Brewery in Loring Park. After kicking off 2019 with a rousing discussion of our new top priorities, group members built on that momentum with a meeting that centered around winter sidewalk maintenance.

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.

Making Minneapolis Winters Walkable

At Our Streets Minneapolis, our volunteers, board, and staff have been hard at work making Minneapolis winters walkable.

In September we announced our top three advocacy priorities to improve winter sidewalk maintenance in Minneapolis. At that time, our priorities were:   

• Implementation of the City’s planned winter sidewalk maintenance pilot
• Demonstrated improvement in corner clearing during this winter season
• Increased assistance for folks who aren’t able to clear their walks & further education on what the sidewalk clearance rules are

The next month our advocacy led to the Minneapolis City Council Transportation and Public Works Committee discussing winter sidewalk maintenance for 90 minutes--an unprecedented focus on this issue.