The 2026 legislative session has reached its midpoint. Committee deadlines to introduce and hear bills passed on Friday, March 27. The picture of what’s moving—and what isn’t—is coming into focus.
Unsurprisingly, many of the bills advancing are small, uncontroversial, bipartisan efforts that won’t bring transformative change to our transportation system. As we discussed at the start of the session, the honest assessment is that 2026 is a year for continuing important public conversations, defensive work, and building foundations for 2027.
When conditions shift, the framework will be in place to deliver real change in 2027 by passing a transformative DOT reform package for Minnesota—reversing transit cuts, and implementing and building a transportation system that works from small, Greater Minnesota main streets to suburban communities to the Twin Cities.
It has been extraordinarily difficult to move ambitious policy, or any policy, forward in the face of numerous obstacles and tragedies: a divided House, the ongoing impacts of Operation Metro Surge, the Annunciation School shooting, the assassination of Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark, and the attempted assassination of Senator John Hoffman, his wife Yvette, and daughter Hope.
The transportation bills that do have traction include improvements to school bus safety laws, clarifying that cars must stop when the bus lights begin flashing, tweaks to tow-truck signage to keep workers safe, several agency policy bills that amount to housekeeping, and other minor updates.
The Senate Transportation Committee has kept a lower profile this session, with steady leadership from the chair, hearing bipartisan bills and fostering balanced, thoughtful conversations on topics such as connected and automated vehicle (CAV) policies, cost participation for local governments, and other issues.
In the House, hearings have been more tense, as shared leadership and party-line divisions have continued to shape the proceedings. There have also been heated partisan discussions on key issues ahead of 2027, when the 2026 elections will decide the makeup of the legislature and the governor’s office. DLF leadership has worked hard to advance good bills, while GOP priorities have sought to undercut or overturn 2023 wins.
Governor’s Supplemental Budget
Governor Walz, who has a mixed record at best on Transportation, released his supplemental budget in March, which had one line for transit: a cut. This change solidifies the administration’s push to eliminate funding for the metro’s transit operations from the state general fund, building on a $40 million cut in the previous two fiscal years, as reflected in the 2025 budget.
In total, the governor’s cuts this year eliminate an additional $1.7 million in transit funding cuts to the Met Council, operator of Metro Transit services, and $40 million in additional funding in the next biennium, 2028-2029.
Ambitious legislators and advocates have led the push for transportation wins despite the Governor’s pushback. Several Transportation leaders, including Representative Koegel, Representative Tabke, Senator Dibble, and others, fought to keep transit service whole and ensure that cuts don’t fall directly on the backs of transit riders, with a funding deal towards the end of the 2025 session. Republicans and conservative Democrats undercut the deal, which would have provided an additional $50 million a year to support the Bus Rapid Transit buildout. Because most road money is outside of the general fund (coming from the Trunk Highway Fund), road funds were not touched in last year’s budget bills and this year’s supplementary budget, making the cuts fall squarely on how working-class people move across the state.
Fix-it-First, Fix-it-Right
Our Streets’ Fix-it-First, Fix-it-Right, a collaboration with Representative Erin Koegel (DFL, 39A) has moved forward in the House. The “Fix-it-First” bill (HF 3728) would move MnDOT toward real maintenance projects and long-term planning, narrowing our state’s transportation funding gap and household costs for transportation system users. It does this by prioritizing highway maintenance over costly expansion projects, many of which occur in the Metro and do not improve mobility due to induced demand.
The bill was heard in the House Transportation Committee on March 9th and was brought back for a vote on March 23. The bill has broad support from DFL members and several GOP members, though bipartisanship largely hasn’t materialized across the House in 2026.
A fiscal note, an analysis of an agency’s view of how much it would cost to implement a policy, was added to the bill, inflating its costs, leading to the bill being laid over. This fiscal note functionally serves as an admission that MnDOT does very limited long-term planning and has no clear understanding of how it’s spending on projects actually aligns with the agency’s goals, a deeply troubling reality that shows MnDOT is failing to perform one of the most fundamental function of a State DOT in 2026– planning for the long term so our system is maintained most efficiently.
The bill will likely be heard in the Senate the week of April 13th, including the “Fix-It-Right” provisions that build MnDOT’s capacity to study good things when initiating highway projects, including multi-modal alternatives and at least one alternative that reduces road capacity.
Connected and Automated Vehicles (CAVs)
Our Streets has led the forward-thinking transportation advocates at the Capitol on policy for connected and automated vehicles (CAVs), working closely with labor partners and Senate leadership to create the country’s most protective frameworks for CAVs.
Our Streets opposes the introduction of these systems on our streets, but this regulatory framework moves us toward protecting those who bike, walk, roll, and use public transportation, and guarding against the creation of a two-tiered mobility system that continues to put cars over people. As put by NACTO’s policy framework, “when done haphazardly, incorporating AVs and AV testing into our streets will make our cities less safe, less equal, and more congested.”
Our Streets will continue to lead the movement to make transportation governance accountable to the people of Minnesota.
Suburban Transit Opt-Outs
The House Transportation Committee heard a bill from co-chair John Koznick (GOP, 57A) to consolidate the Twin Cities’ suburban transit “opt-out” providers — Minnesota Valley Transit Authority (MVTA), Southwest Transit, Plymouth Metrolink, and Maple Grove Transit — into a unified system operated by Metro Transit.
This discussion was driven by a recent “high subsidy transit report,” commissioned by the legislature, that identified many routes in suburban communities receiving high subsidies to operate with low ridership. It’s important to note that the change is driven by cost reduction, and we need to have an honest conversation about how much we subsidize driving. Focusing solely on transit subsidies obscures the broader picture and is unfair to transit riders.
Many suburban residents and transit operators testified to the importance of suburban transit for connecting those who don’t drive to their daily needs, a sentiment we share. Transit is an essential service in big cities, suburbs, and small towns alike, and we need a broader discussion on how best to serve these communities and implement land use reforms to further improve walkability and transit access.
Supporters of the bill argued that bringing these providers under a single agency would improve service across the region while reducing duplicative administrative costs, with the Met Council estimating roughly $25 million in annual operating savings that could be reinvested in faster, more frequent, and more reliable service. Other cities, notably the Chicago metro area, implemented a similar change in 2025.
Our Streets believes in the importance of a singular, unified transit system in the Twin Cities, making our transit dollars go further to improve service in communities across the region. The opt-out providers were originally conceived with a similar sentiment of urban exclusion due to racism and classism. Suburban communities sought their own isolated transit solutions that served them while excluding transit riders in the urban core.
That said, transit riders should be centered in this conversation, and policy decisions should ensure that people in all communities across the state have access to safe, frequent, affordable, and fast transit service, and that transit riders are not left isolated from opportunity and daily life wherever they live. These riders should be engaged throughout the process to ensure their transportation needs are met.
The bill advanced with bipartisan support to the Ways and Means Committee for further discussion, though it is unlikely to pass during the 2026 legislative season.
Passenger Rail Studies
All Aboard Minnesota collaborated with Representative Erin Koegel (DFL, 39A) and several other House and Senate authors to advance HF 3176 | SF 2887, a directive for MnDOT to apply for federal funding to study additional passenger rail service to Fargo and St. Louis. The bill was heard in the House Transportation Committee and laid over for possible inclusion in an omnibus bill.
MnDOT has been sluggish in pursuing funding to create a statewide multimodal transportation system, and statewide and regional rail could be an economic catalyst for the state. This comes as Our Streets and other advocates continue to work to protect Northern Lights Express (NLX) funding for a passenger rail service to Duluth, which received nearly $150 million in state funding to begin planning, only to have that amount slashed in half in 2025.
Bicycle Safety and Policy Bills
The Bicycle Alliance of Minnesota has been active this legislative session on several fronts, balancing proactive policy with defense against well-intentioned but counterproductive proposals. The organization successfully pushed back against HF 3774, a bill that would have required bicyclists to come to a complete stop at yellow lights in bike lanes, arguing that holding cyclists stationary in intersection conflict zones longer actually increases danger. BikeMN is also championing e-moto definition bills (HF 3785 | SF 4186), a bipartisan effort to distinguish high-powered e-motos from legal e-bikes and address actual safety concerns without over-regulating everyday e-bike riders.
Beyond these efforts, BikeMN is advancing jaywalking decriminalization (SF 1836 | HF 1509), a reform that would remove crossing mid-block as a primary offense while still allowing citations when someone creates a genuine hazard — a change that matters most for people with disabilities and communities of color who have faced disproportionate enforcement.
Bonding
Discussions continue on a bonding bill that would allow the state to borrow for infrastructure projects, though it is not clear whether one will emerge this session. Many legislators want to bring projects to their districts in an election year, which could motivate progress. We support a bonding bill that is balanced across modes and creates jobs for those who build our transportation system, spending additional money on transit and active transportation projects, including critical investments in the Twin Cities transit system, like the H Line BRT project, where bonding could fill a $75 million funding gap in the project.
What’s next?
The third legislative deadline, which applies to “fiscal bills” that spend state funds, is April 17, so legislators are working to finalize bills and hear them before the deadline. The bills heard by this point could advance into “omnibus bills” that bundle policy and budget components together into a single bill.
Because this is a policy and bonding session, only supplementary items are on the table, along with policy provisions and a bonding bill. The legislature does not need to reach an agreement as it did in 2025, when a special session was needed to finalize the state budget before a government shutdown. This year, if a deal can’t be reached, everyone can walk away.
Given the split House and without urgency to move forward on most issues, it’s likely that not much will move during the end of session. Senate committees may put together such bills, but it is unclear if the House will follow.
We expect several other priorities of Our Streets to be discussed in the second half of the session, including cumulative impacts of transportation, clarifications to highway purposes to allow more flexible state transportation funding, transit and active transportation projects, and additional efforts to improve community engagement on major highway project including I-94 and Highway 252.
At the end of session, we will also focus on preparing for 2027 with transformative legislation to make a transportation system that works for everyone, and hopefully, legislative conditions that make that change possible.
We will also continue to push for accountability in the spending of metro transit sales tax dollars to make sure these new funds have the highest impact to improve the lives of transit riders, defend the Veichle Miles Traveled reduction policy put in place in 2023 and 2024, improve planning of complete streets on state, county and local roads system, and make transportation governance accountable to the people of Minnesota.
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