ENGAGEMENT PROCESS

WHAT WE HEARD

We hosted a series of engagement activities throughout 2019 and 2020 to inform the Minneapolis Transportation Action Plan. Read more about our community engagement approach in our Community Engagement Plan and find more details on what we heard below.

From the Comprehensive Plan: The Minneapolis Transportation Action Plan will be built on the foundation of the Comprehensive Plan, Minneapolis 2040, which the City Council approved for submittal to the Metropolitan Council. During the Minneapolis 2040 Comprehensive Plan public input process, we received over 2,200 public comments related to transportation, which were critical in developing the transportation policies in the Comprehensive Plan. A summary of the transportation-related comments received during that process are available in our Minneapolis 2040 Transportation Comments Summary.

From our early engagement activities: Preliminary engagement on the Minneapolis Transportation Action Plan began in 2018. Public Works staff talked with thousands of people about transportation at Open Streets and other community events this past summer. We also heard from over 3,000 people through an online survey. You can read more about the early engagement activities in the Phase I Engagement Summary.

Responding to community dialogues in the draft plan: Working with the City’s Neighborhood and Community Relations (NCR) Cultural Engagement Team, Public Works held seven community dialogues to connect with communities of different cultures, languages and abilities through small group discussions in spring of 2019. Key messages from the conversations influenced the draft Transportation Action Plan. Public Works made updates to the community dialogue summaries to highlight proposed strategies and actions which were directly informed by key messages heard from the seven conversations.

You can read the updated summaries below:

• African American Community Dialogue
• East African Community Dialogue (Somali translation)
• Latino Community Dialogue (Spanish translation)
• Minneapolis Youth Congress Community Dialogue
• Native American Community Dialogue
• People with Disabilities Community Dialogue
• Southeast Asian Community Dialogue (Lao translation, Hmong translation)​​​​​​

From the community contracts: In late 2018 Minneapolis Public Works put out an open call for engagement services to artists and community-based organizations to extend the transportation conversation. Contracts were awarded to six organizations and artists, who hosted a series of 30 events in the spring of 2019. A variety of events were held around the city, including focus groups with students, community meetings, resident surveys and pop up art events. For more details read our Community Contracts for Engagement Summary.

From our Phase II engagement events: Phase II engagement began with the launch of our website in early 2019. Throughout the spring and summer of 2019 Public Works staff connected with thousands of residents and visitors of Minneapolis through workshops, Open Streets events, online surveys and a variety of other activities. For an overview of what we heard and more details about the events read our Phase II Engagement Summary.

From our Phase III public comment period: In Phase III Public Works released a draft Minneapolis Transportation Action Plan for public comment between March 9th and May 22nd, 2020. During this time Public Works staff held a series of 4 open houses to solicit feedback from the public. After holding one of these open houses in person, the remaining three events were moved online due to COVID-19. Click here to watch a recording of the first online open house. For an overview of what we heard and more details about the events read our Phase III Engagement Summary. You can also read every comment we received by email, through our website, from our open houses and through social media.

From our August racial equity conversations: The draft Transportation Action Plan was released in March 2020, before COVID impacts and the death of George Floyd while in police custody and the subsequent uprisings were felt throughout the city. In response, during August of 2020, Public Works staff conducted conversations with 9 local community organizations to discuss each one’s work in the community as it relates to racial justice, equity in transportation and best practices for community engagement. These conversations helped better evaluate the approach to racial equity within the draft plan and influenced the Progress section of the plan. Public Works recognizes that these 9 conversations represent a small, but important, continuation of the conversation around racial equity and transportation that will continue to evolve as the plan is implemented. You can find a summary of these conversations here.

Engagement Phases

As we developed the Minneapolis Transportation Action Plan we conducted engagement in three phases.

Once Phase 3 of engagement was complete, final revisions were made and the Minneapolis Transportation Action Plan was presented to City Council and adopted. See below for more detail on the project timeline.