2025 State Legislative Priorities
Working-class people should not have to take on debt and purchase a car to simply access their daily needs and efficiently move around their communities. We cannot continue to perpetuate infrastructure that sacrifices the health of many for the convenience of the privileged. Let’s ask our representatives to pass legislation that advances a people-first transportation system that prioritizes climate, racial, and economic justice.

Highway Justice Bill
Urban highway projects have a storied history rooted in systemic racism that continues to harm our communities today, dividing and polluting minority and low-income neighborhoods at disproportionate rates. Living near highways increases the risk of severe health impacts, including asthma, dementia, cancer, and stunted lung growth. Transportation is also the largest contributor of greenhouse gas emissions in Minnesota.
Minnesota’s Highway Justice Act would transform transportation decision-making in the state by prioritizing impacts to our communities. The groundbreaking bill would set requirements for the Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) that would give impacted communities more say over major highway projects, strengthen protections in environmental justice communities, and create funding flexibility to improve public transit, biking and pedestrian infrastructure without increasing taxes. This legislation aims to repair generations of harm caused by highway projects in communities of color by ensuring residents have meaningful power in highway projects that impact their lives while funding infrastructure that strengthens rather than divides our communities.

Pass a Community-Preferred Alternative Act
The Community Preferred Alternative Act would make community consent mandatory before major transportation projects can move forward.

Define Highway Purpose to Include All Modes of Transportation
Legislators should clarify the definition of highway purpose to include the many ways that Minnesotans use the trunk highway system, including multimodal infrastructure for walking, biking, and public transit.

Create a Cumulative Impacts Law for Transportation
This law would add long-overdue protections for communities poisoned by transportation infrastructure.
Other Legislative Priorities

Strengthen Minnesota’s New Climate Rule for Highway Projects
The decisions made on how to implement Minnesota’s greenhouse gas impact assessment for highways will have ramifications across the country; lessons learned from implementation will hold even more weight as states craft similar laws of their own.

Regulate Heavy and Oversized Vehicles
Minnesota must address the pedestrian safety crisis by regulating heavy and oversized vehicles.
Previous Legislative Priorities
Check out past legislative accomplishments and progress in putting people first in transportation.