As we start the new year, we are taking a moment to reflect on the progress we’ve made in 2024. It has been a year of immense change and, most importantly, progress in our mission to make our streets places where people can easily and comfortably walk, bike, roll, and use public transit.
Growing Footprint
We outgrew our name, expanding our footprint outside the City of Lakes. We officially dropped “Minneapolis” from our name, a slight rebrand that better reflects our urban highway removal efforts that straddle city limits. Despite being a relatively minor change, the Our Streets name signifies our growth and momentum across the river—and beyond.
With a new name came a fresh website redesign, making it easier for supporters to learn the latest updates on our campaigns and get involved.
To further our highway removal efforts, we formed Minnesota Communities over Highways Coalition. Central to the work at Our Streets, the coalition’s primary objective is to repair past and present harms caused by unjust highway transportation infrastructure routing, construction, and decision-making and create opportunities for impacted neighborhoods and communities to be restored, reconnected, and revitalized.
Bring Back 6th
In February 2024, we learned our Bring Back 6th campaign received a $1.6 million federal grant as part of the Reconnecting Communities Program, which aims to reconnect communities that were cut off due to past transportation and infrastructure decisions. This was a massive step towards dismantling a harmful, redundant urban highway that destroyed old 6th Avenue North, a diverse Black and Jewish cultural corridor.
Additionally, we partnered with transportation safety experts from the World Resources Institute (WRI) and New Urban Mobility Alliance (NUMO) to document safety failures and recommend interventions on Olson Memorial Highway corridor.
In 2025, we will work with technical transportation experts to develop a community visioning report. We will continue to advocate for immediate safety improvements while we work toward highway removal.
Twin Cities Boulevard
We worked with technical experts to release a feasibility study of a boulevard conversion of the 7.5-mile stretch of the Rethinking I-94 corridor. This report, Reimagining I-94, made a splash demonstrating the possibility of a better future. It encompassed mobility impacts, land use opportunity, compatibility with a land bridge, and more. The comprehensive report fills gaps in understanding around highway-to-boulevard conversions.
The report compelled Policy Advisory Committee (PAC) members of the Rethinking I-94 project to demand MnDOT to address the following concerns around the flawed traffic modeling as well as the “unnecessarily constrained” project area, poor community engagement, absence of a plan for anti-displacement and community development policies, and biased evaluation criteria. MnDOT did not meet any of these demands.
After a community forum, Minneapolis City Council passed a unanimous resolution supporting highway removal options for the Rethinking I-94 project. Metro Transit also announced an extension of the Gold Line to Downtown Minneapolis thanks to your community feedback on the I-94 corridor.
MnDOT ignored community and elected officials by attempting to quietly take the two boulevard options off the table. In 2025, we will mount public pressure to restore the options for fair evaluation. Additionally, we look forward to finding out whether we receive federal grant funds through the Reconnecting Communities program for this campaign. With match funds from Hennepin County and the City of Minneapolis, we have a strong application and are hopeful that, despite MnDOT’s attempt to squash a boulevard conversion, that the USDOT sees the potential of Twin Cities Boulevard.
Save the Brooklyns
We took on a new freeway fight, opposing MnDOT’s plans to expand Highway 252 and Interstate 94 in North Minneapolis, Brooklyn Center, and Brooklyn Park. If MnDOT moves forward with highway expansion, approximately 210 homes and businesses may be destroyed in Brooklyn Park and Brooklyn Center, two of the Twin Cities’ most racially diverse suburban communities, in the largest highway-driven land acquisition in a generation. We are working to Save the Brooklyns and stop the expansion that would demolish dozens of homes and businesses, increase toxic pollution in communities of color, worsen safety issues, and divide Brooklyn Center and Brooklyn Park from the Mississippi River.
Imagine Event Series
We started a new event series called Imagine, co-creating future street designs that put people first. Imagine Rondo & Frogtown was Our Streets’ first major event in Saint Paul. Hosted in the historic Central Village Park, the event was curated by Saint Paul artist Hawona Sullivan Janzen and featured performers and vendors from the Rondo and Frogtown Neighborhoods, including Atim Opoka, Plant Bar Cafe, Michelle Spaise, Courtney Cochran, and Broderick Poole.
In the words of local partner KJ Starr, Imagine Cedarfest was the “West Bank Party of the Year!” Despite the stunning success of Open Streets Cedar-Riverside in 2023, the City of Minneapolis did not select the neighborhood to participate in the 2024 Open Streets Minneapolis events. Our Streets stepped in to keep street celebrations alive in the West Bank, collaborating with West Bank Business Association and more than 50 local partners to host our first-ever Imagine Cedarfest. At the event, community members learned about the history of highways in Cedar-Riverside through Our Streets’ Concrete River exhibit and were able to share their ideas for the future of the neighborhood and I-94.
Imagine 6th Avenue North featured creative engagement about the future of Olson Memorial Highway and the possibility of a restored 6th Avenue North. Neighbors learned about the history of 6th Avenue North through Our Streets’ mobile history exhibit. Marcus Kar curated performances for the event, showcasing the music of Harrison.
State Legislative Priorities
We successfully advocated for and passed a law that strengthens greenhouse gas protections for major highway projects (SF 5099 | HF 4988). Now, before a major highway project can be added to the Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) funding plan, MnDOT must conduct an analysis to determine if its planned portfolio of projects is in line with the State’s goals to reduce carbon emissions and vehicle miles traveled (VMT).
We successfully advocated for and passed a law (SF 4783 | HF 4168) that includes more progressive guidelines for street design and speed limit implementation. It also requires MnDOT to use the federal guidelines for setting speed limits, resulting in safer speed limits and street design throughout the state.
We made immense progress in advocating for highway justice at the state level, with community and legislator support for the Cumulative Impacts for Transportation, the Community Preferred Alternative Act, and Defining Highway Purpose. For the upcoming 2025 legislative session, these bills will make up the Highway Justice Act, a law that advances the protection of communities harmed by urban highways.
Bicycle Benefits
This year, we were excited to step in to revitalize the Bicycle Benefits program in the Twin Cities. A national program, Bicycle Benefits connects cyclists to bike-friendly businesses by offering a discount when cyclists show their Bicycle Benefits sticker. After more than 5 years of lapsed engagement in the Twin Cities metro, we were excited to bring new life to the program and ended the year with 27 participating business locations, with lots of room to grow!
CityNerd Visited Minneapolis
We partnered with Streets.MN, the Bicycle Alliance of Minnesota, Sierra Club North Star Chapter, Venture Bikes, and others to host a bike ride and discussion with Ray Delahanty, the host of the nationally-recognized CityNerd YouTube channel. Around 150 community members joined to bike, eat, and connect.
Street Smarts Book Club
We started Street Smarts Book Club to delve deeper into the important transportation issues so that we can be better advocates for equitable transportation. We kicked off with Henry Grabar’s Paved Paradise and Minneapolis-local Melody Hoffmann’s Bike Lanes Are White Lanes. Stay tuned for our 2025 book picks!
Twin Cities Transportation Academy
We started the Twin Cities Transportation Academy to help bridge the gap between community advocates and transportation planning entities. Participants learned the fundamentals of transportation planning, heard from guest speakers with local and national expertise, and proposed their own solutions to local transportation problems. We plan to continue the program in 2025 and are grateful for the work and engagement of our first group of participants!
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