Minnesota Must Fix-it-First, Fix-it-Right

Beyond impacts to community health, climate, and fair public processes, the way we invest in transportation across Minnesota has created a fiscal crisis that threatens both household affordability and state fiscal responsibility.

We need to answer three simple questions when investing in transportation infrastructure: 

1. Are we using transportation dollars to make it more affordable for Minnesotans of all geographies, ages, abilities, races, and income levels to get around? 
2. Are we using transportation dollars to make our state budget more sustainable and fiscally responsible? 
3. Are we using transportation dollars to maximize local tax bases and other benefits while minimizing long-term costs? 

Today, the answer to these questions is often no. 

Minnesota faces an unsustainable maintenance crisis. Our state has an over $1 billion maintenance gap in the state highway system, meaning potholes aren’t being filled, roads and transit infrastructure aren’t being maintained, and the transit and active transportation investments Minnesotans want aren’t being built. This shortfall is expected to grow dramatically in the coming years despite MnDOT receiving more money than ever. By the 2030s, we will face a nearly $17 billion shortfall in the trunk highway fund. Now, with federal transportation dollars more uncertain than ever, this fiscal outlook grows even more dire.

Households are bearing an unsustainable cost burden. Transportation is now the second-largest household expense for most Minnesota families. The average cost of car ownership has risen to over $12,000 per year, yet our transportation investments continue to lock Minnesotans into car dependency. For working families, seniors on fixed incomes, and rural residents who must drive long distances, these costs are crushing. 

When we fail to invest in affordable and diverse transportation choices, we create barriers to jobs, healthcare, education, and opportunity—particularly for rural Minnesotans, low-income residents, seniors, youth, immigrants, and disability communities.

Local tax bases are being hollowed out. MnDOT’s highway construction and expansion logic has seized billions of dollars’ worth of land that drives local tax bases. These communities lost homes and commercial corridors, jobs, services, parks, amenities, and other assets that generated local revenue and served Minnesotans who lived there. Bypasses and unsafe state highways that serve as greater Minnesota main streets stripped vibrant main streets that once provided local economic and wealth-building opportunities and much-needed local and county revenue. 

MnDOT’s unsustainable investment approach still puts pavement over people, denying local governments much-needed tax base and economic revenue.

Our current approach makes all of these problems worse. Overinvesting in highway expansions creates a vicious cycle: each new lane mile adds to our already unsustainable maintenance burden, diverting resources from fixing existing infrastructure and building transit and active transportation options that could reduce household costs. At the same time, we’re borrowing from our local tax bases and the vibrancy of communities across our state. We’re literally paving our way into fiscal insolvency while forcing families to spend more on transportation and hollowing out local tax bases. 

Minnesota’s Fix-it-First, Fix-it-Right Law solves these problems, prioritizing transportation affordability for Minnesotans, investing responsibly and holistically in transportation, and strengthening local tax bases and community vibrancy.  We are in a state fiscal crisis, a federal funding crisis, and an affordability crisis for Minnesotans. We need to act now so transportation is driving solutions, not problems, for our communities. 

This bill addresses these issues in two key ways: 

1. The bill requires MnDOT to fix our existing road system before expanding it, and mandates that if they have a maintenance gap in our state highway system, they cannot expand any highway infrastructure. 
2. When new projects are initiated, MnDOT must study a variety of project alternatives that meet project needs and make it more affordable for Minnesotans to get around, including transit and active transportation; as well as study alternatives that right-size infrastructures to maximize local tax base potential and free up land for locally centered development and study alternatives that reduce the long-term tax liability of the infrastructures. MnDOT would also be responsible for studying alternatives that minimize the long-run fiscal burden and for creating a maintenance plan to maintain these infrastructures effectively. 

Minnesota communities and taxpayers are in the back seat when it comes to building a transportation system that works for everyone and does so efficiently and responsibly. It’s time to change that. 

A transportation system built on principles of affordability and fiscal responsibility would give all Minnesotans reliable, affordable options to reach jobs, schools, and healthcare without the high cost of car ownership. Frontline communities living, learning, and playing along highways could enjoy cleaner air and safer streets instead of bearing the burdens of highways. Vibrant main streets and local businesses would thrive as transportation investments strengthen community tax bases and create union jobs, while cities benefit from restored developable land and households spend less on transportation—finally making transportation a tool to build vibrant communities in cities, suburbs, and small towns across Minnesota.

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