winter Posts

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.

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.

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:

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.

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. 

You may be blocking out memories of our six months of winter, but winter time in Minneapolis too often means navigating snowy or icy sidewalks, snow-blocked curb ramps, and disappearing bike lanes. Thankfully, the City of Minneapolis is looking to improve the winter experience for people who bike, walk, and roll. Public Works recently released a Pedestrian and Bicycle Winter Maintenance Study and Supplemental Report on Sidewalks. Here are some takeaways:

As Minnesota transitions from winter to spring accumulated snow melts. For Minneapolis residents and visitors using our sidewalks, which have no drainage system, this can create a bad experience.

Photo via Fairfax Alliance for Better Bicycling

Whether walking to the bus or light rail stop or walking all the way to work or the grocery store, walk commuting is a great way to get around in a city such as Minneapolis. Now that we’ve hit the middle of winter, walk commuting requires a bit more forethought to stay safe and warm. Here are some tips on how to have a safe and warm commute this winter.

The snow is falling here in Minnesota and I don’t know if you’ve noticed but there are still cyclists on the road. If you are new to Minneapolis, like me, you might not have expected the winter biking community to be as large here as it is.  A lot of Minneapolis residents bike commute but many switch from their bike commute to public transportation or to jump in their car when the snow falls.

Photo by Matt Frank.

Yesterday we asked on Facebook and Twitter for folks to share their winter biking gear photos with us, and boy did you deliver! Below are some of the photos our supporters submitted; with a low of -3F in the morning and a high of just 10F during the day, it’s inspiring to see so many people feeling comfortable on their bikes with just regular clothes. It goes to show that you don’t necessarily need specialized gear to ride in the cold!