Pedestrian 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.

How we talk about pedestrian crashes in the news rarely reflects the facts of how people waking and rolling are injured or die. Without correcting this coverage we will not hold accountable what is truly responsible for the majority of pedestrian deaths: our road system.

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:

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 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.

As the Lutheran Volunteer Corps volunteer, my year with Our Streets Minneapolis is coming to an end. I wanted to write a blog post about my year with Our Streets Minneapolis and what I’ve learned about pedestrian and bicycle advocacy.

Our Streets Minneapolis is actively working to support and improve the Comprehensive Plan, Minneapolis 2040. As someone who supports our work, we ask that YOU provide your comments on the plan, either at a Comprehensive Plan Comment Party, or online.

The deadline is coming up soon, on Sunday, July 22nd, so it’s time to type.

We’ve got detailed instructions on how to comment, tips on what you might want to suggest, and some writing from other progressive groups if you want more context or wonkery.

Parties are scheduled for 6:30-8 on Wednesday, July 18th in Northeast and 4:30-6:15 on Sunday, July 22 in Seward on (more details below). Parties are fun… and sometimes life or introversion gets in the way of attending. Here’s a guide to how to comment from home, or the bus, or while waiting for a friend.

Deadline: Sunday, July 22

Our Streets Minneapolis encourages members and supporters to weigh in on Minneapolis 2040. We are also commenting as an organization. We talked about why the Comprehensive Plan matters to Our Streets here, and we shared how it might affect you here.

People also want to know what our priorities are, so we’re sharing our top five issues here.

One: We support the goals and priorities shaping the plan and feel it needs to go further

The way we build our streets and neighborhoods shapes our days. It determines whether we have a real choice to walk, roll or bike as we run errands, go to work, or visit friends and family. It ups (or eliminates) the odds of bumping into our neighbors, or chatting with passers by.

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

• Are our neighborhoods complete, with access to employment, retail services, healthy food, parks, and other daily needs via walking, biking, and public transit?
• Can all Minneapolis residents afford and have access to a quality home throughout the city?
• Do people of color and indigenous peoples feel safe [re: police and from crime] in every neighborhood? Is the air safe to breathe in every neighborhood so human-powered travel is safe?
• Does a well-designed physical environment in Minneapolis foster positive interactions? Does it promote commerce, pedestrian activity, safety, and health?

These are questions Our Streets Minneapolis works on.