Strategy 1 Develop a Street Design Guide that informs the planning and design of all future street projects.

The Street Design Guide will recognize streets as the city’s largest public space and institutionalize the City’s Complete Streets Policy, Vision Zero commitment, greenhouse gas emission reduction goal, commitment to racial justice and stormwater management requirements through the design of city right of way.

The City of Minneapolis has strong policies that direct resources and set an agenda relative to transportation. Key policies include:

• Complete Streets, which establishes a modal priority framework that prioritizes people as they walk, bicycle, and take transit over people when they drive;
• Vision Zero, which sets a goal of ending traffic related fatalities and life-changing injuries on our streets by 2027;
• Climate-related goal to reduce citywide greenhouse gas emissions by 30% by 2025 and 80% by 2050 (from 2006 emissions levels)
• Commitment to racial justice, detailed in the City's Strategic Racial Equity Action Plan, which seeks to dismantle institutional injustice and close racial disparities in health, housing, public safety and economic opportunities; and
• Stormwater management programs that increase pervious areas and incorporate stormwater quality practices into linear projects to improve the water quality in the city’s lakes, creeks and the Mississippi River.

These policies give clear direction for an approach to how we design our streets. Street design must reflect these policies and translate them into opportunities for increased health and safety outcomes for everyone and improved walking, biking, transit, and green infrastructure.

The Street Design Guide will:

1. Directly support transportation goals and provide the starting point for all designs for street reconstruction projects in the city.
2. Serve as a starting point for street design changes to better meet our goals and provide safer and more convenient options without waiting for a street reconstruction project, through projects that rely primarily on operational changes through street restriping and use of bollards.
3. Inform approaches for all partnership projects on streets owned and operated by other jurisdictions.