Last week, the Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) announced their virtual Policy Advisory Committee (PAC) meeting on December 9. Open to the public, this meeting will discuss the upcoming public comment period for the Rethinking I-94 project and will have a portion dedicated to public input.
This tight turnaround is not conducive to engaging with the communities impacted most by the highway. Reparative change happens when we elevate and center community voices and desires, focusing on those who have been most harmed by and left out of transportation decisions. The communities that were divided by I-94 deserve the opportunity to create a new future for the corridor.
Attend the PAC Meeting
We encourage Twin Cities Boulevard supporters to register for the meeting and opt-in to speak during the public input period. We suggest asking MnDOT about their flawed project evaluation criteria and sharing why the at-grade boulevard option is the best for reconnecting our neighborhoods.
Talking points to restore the boulevard
- Share a personal testimony of how this piece of infrastructure impacts your life and why you think an at-grade boulevard is the best choice for restoring your community.
- This has been a political, not a technical decision to remove the at-grade boulevard options from further consideration even though there has been an overwhelming interest and support from the community, forward-thinking elected officials, and neighborhood groups.
- The metrics that MnDOT staff are using to justify their decisions are premature, undemocratic, and deeply flawed.
- During the January PAC meeting and in agency comments, the Metropolitan Council called out several key issues with the traffic model used to conduct MnDOT’s analysis. Because of this, the modeling results aren’t useful for decision-making at this stage on safety, traffic, and impacts to other roads near the corridor:
- It doesn’t account for mode shift, where people switch from driving to other modes of transportation, and assume biking, walking, and transit infrastructure stays the same despite widely different outcomes for each alternative.
- It doesn’t account for short-term or long-term land use changes.
- It doesn’t accurately capture how much traffic would be diverted off of the freeway and where it will go.
- MnDOT worked with the Trump Administration to strip environmental justice, community health, racial equity, and other key community priorities from their formal environmental review process, sidelining frontline communities from legal protection.
- We call on Governor Walz to intervene as the ultimate decision maker and restore the at-grade options to be studied and given a fair chance.
About Twin Cities Boulevard
The most responsible option for the future of the Rethinking I-94 project is a multi-modal boulevard that returns the surrounding land to neighborhoods and fulfills calls for reparative justice along the corridor. The Twin Cities Boulevard will create healthier air, much-needed economic opportunity, and accessible, affordable, and sustainable transportation access to places all along the corridor.