The Minneapolis City Council is urging state transportation officials to consider replacing portions of Interstate 94 in the city with a smaller roadway that dedicates space to new housing, transit lanes, pedestrians and bicycles.
The City Council unanimously approved a resolution Thursday announcing that it strongly opposes any expansion of Interstate 94 in Minneapolis. City leaders said they support designs embracing highway removal and lane reductions as the Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) weighs the future of the urban interstate.
The resolution is aimed at influencing MnDOT’s Rethinking I-94 project, a long-term effort to reconstruct the highway between Hiawatha Avenue in Minneapolis and Marion Street in St. Paul. Construction is likely years away, and has no official funding source at this point. But MnDOT has been working on Rethinking I-94 since 2016, and holds semi-regular meetings with local elected officials.
City governments have a say in the state project, which will likely require municipal consent from Minneapolis and St. Paul before a final design is approved, according to MnDOT spokesperson Ricardo Lopez.
Council Member Jamal Osman, whose district includes neighborhoods along the highway like Cedar-Riverside and Ventura Village, said the state should respect the desires of diverse communities that have been broken apart and environmentally harmed by urban interstates.
“We have a say in what comes through our neighborhoods. We’re talking to MnDOT, and we want to make sure that they respect peoples’ voices,” Jamal said.
State transportation officials released 10 preliminary design options in July 2023 for the project, proposing options that included expanding the highway and converting it to an at-grade roadway. Those designs are expected to be narrowed down in early 2025 to a smaller group that will go through an environmental review process.
MnDOT said Monday that it appreciates stakeholders’ and community members’ interest in Rethinking I-94.
“We are working with partners from federal, state and local agencies to evaluate the various alternatives released to the public in July 2023. We will continue to work with the community, elected officials, public safety officials, businesses and other key stakeholders to improve conditions along the corridor for all users,” Lopez said in a statement.
Construction of Interstate 94 in the 1950s and ’60s tore through Black neighborhoods in a pattern common across the Twin Cities and United States. State officials apologized for this destruction at the start of the Rethinking I-94 process.
The Minneapolis resolution supports elements of a vision for I-94 laid out by Our Streets, a pedestrian advocacy group pushing a vision of highway removal known as the Twin Cities Boulevard. They call for replacing the highway with a smaller, at-grade roadway with dedicated transit lanes and large pedestrian and bicycle spaces. The plan also calls for adding new housing, commercial property and parkland along the roadway.
The resolution specifically requests that MnDOT review Our Streets’ report on the Twin Cities Boulevard, and consider their consultants’ position on highway alternatives that repair historical harms.
Melissa Barnes, MnDOT’s project manager, told Sahan Journal this summer that agency staff have read the report, but consider it equal in importance to all other public comments. She said MnDOT has engaged in thousands of conversations with residents at various community events in recent years.
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The City Council resolution asks the state to address many of Our Streets’ grievances with the project, including calls for a more robust community engagement plan, using new methods of traffic projections and halting new work on bridges in the project area until a final design is selected.
“We’re feeling great,” Our Streets Transportation Policy Coordinator Joe Harrington said Thursday.
A unanimous vote sends a huge message, Harrington said, adding that the group is hoping to work with the St. Paul City Council to pass a similar resolution.
“All we really are saying is that we should slow the process down,” said Yasmin Hirsi, Our Streets’ advocacy coordinator.
Although the project has been ongoing for years and has no clear end in sight, organizers from Our Streets say that important decisions are being made today that will impact what is on the table when construction begins, such as the narrowing of design options that will undergo environmental review in 2025. The group is lobbying local governments to pressure MnDOT into taking their suggestion of highway removal seriously.
Our Streets has engaged in its own community outreach efforts, knocking on doors in Minneapolis and St. Paul near the project. In Minneapolis, their campaign focuses on the history of the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood. The area was redlined, and one of the few parts of Minneapolis that welcomed Black and Jewish homebuyers in the early 20th century. It has since been a hub of immigrant life, and today is home to a large East African population.
People living near highways are exposed to air and noise pollution that can result in negative health impacts such as respiratory and cardiovascular issues, as well as increased stress levels.
In Minneapolis, 42% of people living within a half-mile radius of the interstate are people of color and 38% of households are considered low-income, according to a city racial equity impact analysis.
Most of the 7.5-mile Rethinking I-94 corridor is in St. Paul. The capital city passed its own Rethinking I-94 priorities resolution in 2021 that also called for no expansion of the existing highway. The resolution also advocated for improving air quality and pedestrian accessibility, and supported restorative justice for Rondo, a historically Black neighborhood devastated by highway construction.
The nonprofit group, ReConnect Rondo, is proposing a land bridge over I-94 in the neighborhood. The project has received state and federal funding, including a $2 million Reconnecting Communities Grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation.
