State elected officials representing communities in the Twin Cities joined together to formally ask the Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) and Governor Walz to pause the Rethinking I-94 and Trunk Highway 252/I-94 projects in a letter, citing concern around disrupted community engagement due to Operation Metro Surge and “federal directives prohibiting consideration of climate impacts, public health, and equity in transportation decision-making fundamentally conflict with Minnesota law and values.”
Our Streets is advocating for a pause to the Rethinking I-94 project and will soon do the same for the 252/94 project, echoing State leaders while adding concerns that the agency has ignored the feedback from its own engagement process for both projects.
The following Minnesota legislators signed the letter:
- Representative Samantha Vang, District 38B
- Representative XP Lee, District 34B
- Representative Samantha Sencer-Mura, District 63A
- Representative Larry Kraft, District 46A
- Senator Omar Fateh, District 62
- Senator Zaynab Mohamed, District 63
- Senator Erin Murphy, District 64
- Senator John Hoffman, District 34
- Senator Susan Pha, District 38
- Senator Bobby Joe Champion, Senate President, District 56
- Senator Scott Dibble, Transportation Chair, District 61
- Senator Doron Clark, District 60
- Senator Clare Verbeten, District 66
- Senator Foung Hawj, District 67
- Senator Ann Johnson Stewart, District 45
Legislators sent the letter a day before the latest Rethinking I-94 Policy Advisory Committee (PAC) meeting—of which many of the signatories are members—held virtually on June 3. The PAC meeting went much like so many before, with the MnDOT project team dismissing the justified frustration from the PAC and the public.
Senator Scott Dibble, who serves as the Transportation Chair for the Senate, read the letter during the meeting. He also spent time listing countless other transformative transportation projects across the country that have had federal funding cuts since the second Trump administration, highlighting the justified concern that Minnesota state values “in our laws and all of our guidance documents” are vulnerable if the project continues to the next stage.
Prior to opening up to PAC feedback and public comment, the MnDOT project team presented a summary of the required “industry standard” traffic modeling, something the agency is heavily relying on despite the inability to account for traffic evaporation and land use changes, amongst other critical variables, in a project of this scale. The team emphasized that they will evaluate “environmental topics” in the next phase as part of the EIS (Environmental Impact Statement), notably after the elimination of the transformative at-grade options.
Also, unsurprisingly, MnDOT used the temporary construction closure of I-94 last summer to further justify the traffic modeling, despite the short timeline and the lack of transit data capture. As Tuomas Sivula points out in a summary for Streets.mn, an additional “confounding factor [was that] there were only a few weeks during which I-94 was the only major east-west road closed in the Twin Cities.”
The public comment period was filled with exasperated people echoing what the community has been saying since the project started: a better future is possible. MnDOT is standing in the way, offering only the status quo.
Take Action
Join the legislators in asking for a pause.
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.