Despite overwhelming community support for studying at-grade boulevard options—including testimony from over 100 people at the January 2025 PAC meeting, concern from elected officials in Minneapolis and St. Paul, over 3,000 community letter signatures, and backing from over 25 neighborhood groups and community organizations—MnDOT is moving to finalize its scoping project and remove transformative at-grade options from consideration.
The official public comment period for the Rethinking I-94 Scoping Decision Document (the document outlining the recommended project options) runs from January 6 through March 9, 2026. This is a critical moment to make your voice heard and ensure that MnDOT’s environmental review reflects what our communities actually need.
Your public comments create an official record that documents community opposition and holds the agency accountable. Your comment matters—not because MnDOT has earned trust in this process or has demonstrated they want to listen to elected officials and community members, but because silence allows them to claim community consent where none exists.
How to submit your comment
There are three ways to participate during the official comment period:
- Online comment form: Visit the project webpage to fill out the online comment form.
- Attend a public meeting: You can fill out a comment form or speak with a court reporter at the in-person meeting. MnDOT is hosting two public meetings, in-person on January 29 and virtually on February 4.
- Paper comment form: Pick up printed forms at select library locations and MnDOT offices, then mail your completed form to MnDOT.
Learn more about all these options on MnDOT’s project website.
What to say in your comment
Your comment should be personal and specific to your experience. Use this structure to help you write an effective comment.
Start with your story
Describe how I-94 currently impacts you, your family, or your community.
- Health impacts: Air pollution, asthma, respiratory issues, or concerns about your children’s health.
- Noise pollution:Â How traffic noise affects your quality of life, sleep, and ability to enjoy outdoor spaces.
- Safety concerns: Dangerous crossings, high-speed traffic through your neighborhood, or near-misses you’ve witnessed.
- Community division: How the highway separates you from neighbors, schools, businesses, or services.
- Economic barriers: Limited housing, reduced property values, lack of local community-centered development, and small businesses.
Explain why you support the boulevard option
Share your vision for what this corridor could become.
- Climate resilience: Reduced emissions, more green space, better stormwater management.
- Safer neighborhoods: Lower traffic speeds, protected pedestrian crossings and active transportation infrastructures for biking/walking, reduced traffic violence.
- Better transportation options: Quality transit, protected bike lanes, walkable streets.
- Racial justice and repair: Stopping the cycle of harm and addressing the historic damage done to communities like Rondo.
- Economic opportunity: New land for housing and businesses, increased tax base, local jobs.
- Community reconnection: Healing neighborhoods that have been divided for over 60 years.
Raise your concerns about the process
This part is crucial. The comment period is your chance to formally document the problems community members have experienced with MnDOT’s project process.
- The decision to remove at-grade options was political, not technical. Despite overwhelming community support, MnDOT dismissed thousands of residents and 30 organizations as merely “disappointed that their preferred alternative didn’t advance.”
- The traffic models are flawed. Even the Metropolitan Council identified key issues: the models don’t account for mode shift (people switching from driving to transit, biking, or walking), don’t reflect land use changes, and don’t accurately capture traffic diversion.
- Environmental justice protections have been stripped. MnDOT worked with the Trump Administration to remove environmental justice, community health, racial equity, and climate considerations from the formal environmental review process.
- Community engagement has been inadequate. Meetings scheduled with less than a week’s notice, at times conflicting with other public meetings, make meaningful participation nearly impossible.
- The process seems designed to justify a predetermined outcome. Rather than genuinely exploring alternatives, MnDOT appears focused on rebuilding and expanding the highway.
Make a clear ask
End your comment with a specific request.
- Restore the at-grade boulevard options to the environmental review process.
- Fix the flawed traffic models before making decisions.
- Restore environmental justice, health, and equity considerations to the review process.
- Pause the project until meaningful community engagement can occur.
- Align the project with the City of Minneapolis’ unanimous 2024 resolution calling for a broader range of alternatives.
Why your comment matters
Even though MnDOT has not been responsive to community voices, submitting your comment is still critical.
- It becomes part of the official record, just like the community voices who fought the original freeway in the 1960s.
- It demonstrates the breadth of opposition, showing that this isn’t just a vocal minority, but widespread community concern.
- It helps your elected officials by giving them evidence to advocate for transformative solutions on your behalf.
- It creates accountability and documents MnDOT’s failures to address legitimate community concerns.
- Silence allows MnDOT to claim consent. Your comment ensures they cannot claim community support where none exists.
Take action
The communities divided by I-94 have lived with this highway’s har for over 60 years. This public comment period is your opportunity to demand a different future—one that prioritizes health, equity, and community connection over highway expansion.
Mark your calendar
Your voice matters. Make it heard. The public comment period will run for 60 days, from January 6th to March 9th, 2026. RSVP to provide public comment.
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.