By engaging local communities in our advocacy work, we make Minneapolis a better place for folks to bike, walk, and roll. With projects across the city, there are plenty of opportunities to lend your voice and get involved.

Our Current Advocacy Projects

Bring Back 6th

The Bring Back 6th campaign is a joint effort with Harrison Neighborhood Association and other community partners to tell the history of 6th Avenue N and repair the historic and ongoing harms of Olson Memorial Highway. Olson Memorial Highway has a uniquely devastating history, as the construction of the highway was at the expense of a thriving Black and Jewish cultural corridor along 6th Avenue N that was home to dozens of homes, shops, businesses, and music venues. Today, Olson Memorial Highway has one of the highest crash rates in the City of Minneapolis.

We are asking the Minnesota Department of Transportation to address long-ignored safety issues by installing immediate improvements on the highway this year. Longer term, we are organizing to replace the highway with a restored 6th Avenue N to return highway land to the community and restore a walkable, locally owned commercial district. The campaign demands also include the implementation of policies and protections to prevent displacement and ensure that benefits are prioritized for existing community members and people who have historically been impacted by the highway.

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Twin Cities Boulevard

The pavement and bridges in the 7.5-mile stretch of I-94 between downtown Minneapolis and downtown Saint Paul are nearing the end of their useful life and are due to be reconstructed. The Minnesota Department of Transportation’s Rethinking I-94 project will determine the future of the corridor and is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to repair the highway’s harms and invest in benefits for surrounding neighborhoods.

Our Streets Minneapolis is leading the Twin Cities Boulevard campaign, which is a grassroots movement that aims to repair the highway’s historic and ongoing harms and reconnect the entire 7.5-mile project corridor. To achieve this, we are advocating for a highway-to-boulevard conversion, which would remove the highway and replace it with a multi-modal boulevard. It would also repurpose the highway land by returning it to surrounding communities for new affordable housing, commercial space, and parks. The campaign includes a set of reparative justice benchmarks that call for large-scale public investments and policies to prevent gentrification and displacement and prioritize the project’s benefits for those who have been disproportionately impacted throughout the highway’s history.

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Municipal Sidewalk Plowing

Minneapolis experiences snow and ice throughout much of the year. The current system of relying on property owners to shovel the sidewalks in front of their homes or businesses is not working. In the last six winters alone, there have been over 30,000 submitted complaints of uncleared sidewalks. This broken system has severe consequences for people with disabilities and people using mobility devices. If just one property owner fails to clear their sidewalk, it means that an entire city block becomes inaccessible for some. The ability to walk and roll in our communities shouldn’t be seasonal; it is a basic right.

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County Streets for People

Over 40 miles of streets in Minneapolis are owned by Hennepin County. These streets, like Lake, W Broadway and Franklin do not prioritize the safety and well-being of those who live alongside them. The auto-centric design of these streets has made them unsafe for people walking, rolling, biking and driving. As a result, a disproportionate amount of severe and fatal traffic crashes in Minneapolis occur on County streets. County streets often run through communities of color, contributing to significant racial disparities in traffic deaths & severe injuries.

The County Streets for People campaign aims to support community momentum to transform County streets into corridors that are accessible, comfortable and sustainable for those who use them.

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Advocate for changes on a street near you

At Our Streets Minneapolis, we work with our community to select strategic advocacy priorities where we are best suited to make the biggest impact. While we don’t have the capacity to advocate for improvements on every street in the city, we work hard to get local policies in place that will help ensure city streets are better places to bike, walk, and roll.

If there is a street you’d like to change, we recommend getting started by taking these steps:

Figure out who owns the street. Most streets in Minneapolis are owned by the City. Yet some of the larger streets are owned by Hennepin County or the Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT). Use this map to locate the street you are interested in and find out who owns it. Blue streets are owned by Hennepin County. Streets marked with a number inside a white box are owned by MnDOT. All other streets are owned by the City.
See if there is an existing project planned for the street. If there is a current or future project planned for the street, you may be able to influence this project by providing feedback to the staff working on it, attending community meetings, or by contacting your elected officials. Follow these links to find City of Minneapolis street projects, Hennepin County projects, and MnDOT projects.
Contact your elected officials. Tell your elected officials about the problem you are having with the street, and how you would like it to change. Use these links to identify City Council Members and Hennepin County Commissioners. Check out these resources for tips on calling, writing, and setting up a meeting with your elected official. We also have a guide for social media advocacy you can use.
Tell your friends and neighbors. The more people who raise their voice about a street, the better. Share what you know with your friends and neighbors and encourage them to join you in your advocacy.