Minneapolis plan outlines transportation network goals.

Byline: William Morris

The Minneapolis 2040 comprehensive plan laid out a vision for the city's transportation network: a multimodal system that addresses climate change, economic equity and healthy living as well as getting people where they need to go. Now a follow-on plan is filling in the gaps for how the city plans to make that vision a reality.

The city has released a draft of its Transportation Action Plan, building on many months of community engagement and kicking off a 45-day comment period. The proposal, more than 250 pages long, seeks to unify roads, transit, bicycles and other branches of transportation policy in a single effort, superceding plans for individual transportation modes adopted between 2007 and 2011.

Bringing all these topics under one heading allows the city to more effectively address the climate emergency declared last year and other areas where transportation needs intersect and conflict, said Kathleen Mayell, project manager for the plan.

"Out in the real world, in our streets, everything tracks in real time, all of these things are happening together," Mayell said in an interview. "There's competing uses for space, there's competing priorities, so looking at all of this more holistically reflects the way our streets functions and operate."

The plan includes both short- and long-term proposals. In the near term, the city is proposing to add new bus-only lanes to its existing network downtown, including segments of Fourth, Sixth, Seventh and Eighth streets and Fourth and Fifth avenues. Longer five- and 10-year street reconstruction plans include segments of Bryant and Hennepin avenues in south Minneapolis and Plymouth and 37th avenues in north and northeast, with additional county projects planned on Franklin and Lowry avenues, among others.

Future projects will incorporate updated street design standards depending on their designation as pedestrian or transit-priority streets or truck routes, or in some cases multiple competing designation. New standards include incorporating pedestrian lighting on all street projects and reduction of so-called "slip lanes" for turning that create sidewalk islands in the middle of intersections and are considered unsafe for pedestrians.

When it comes to transit, Minneapolis hopes not only to partner with Metro Transit on new routes, but also to improve the efficiency of those already in use with new technologies such as optical detectors that give oncoming buses priority at...

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