Impact and Programs
Accomplishments
Move Minnesota’s work is designed to cross six core impact areas (build community, champion investment, advance equity, improve infrastructure, shape policy, and change behavior. Major successes and highlights from the year are those that advance multiple impact areas. One of our biggest successes in 2018 was a defensive legislative win, where we stopped a constitutional amendment that would have taken money from the general fund and dedicated it to roads. Not only did it ignore funding options for transportation choices, it would have shifted resources away from needs like education, healthcare, housing, human services, and local government. Early in the session this bill emerged as a huge and viable threat to many Minnesotans. In response, Move Minnesota convened a broad coalition of cross-sector groups to stop it. Another big success was co-convening the Shared Mobility Collaborative, a steering committee of cross-sector transportation leaders working on bringing together different transportation technologies and developing cohesive regional strategies for adapting to shared mobility in the MSP region. The Collaborative fosters collaboration between government, nonprofits, and the private sector while expanding and improving multimodal and shared mobility options. A third major success was influencing the City of Saint Paul’s ordinances that govern how new developments support walking, bicycling, and transit. Move Minnesota developed new guidelines for the Transportation Demand Management ordinance (TDM), ensuring buildings provide sufficient support for customers and tenants who are interested in walking, bicycling, and transit.
Current Goals
Move Minnesota continues alignment work after its 2017 merger, working to ensure that its grassroots programming aligns with strategy and constituent access to grasstops decision-makers. We are currently working with a variety of stakeholders to define our 2019 and 2020 advocacy stances as the legislature: while we have an will continue to push for funding the transit system at the legislature, we also recognize we need to show up for cross-sector partners and issues that impact communities of color, such as racial profiling. Balancing these needs with capacity is critical to our 2019 and 2020 outlook. Another goal is to expand our advocacy and engagement along upcoming corridor construction projects, such as the C Line in Minneapolis, to expand our base and amplify the success of new transit corridors, which in turn make future corridor construction easier. Lastly, we continue to prioritize a strategic goal around flexibility: while we have specific goals, our history of work in this area has shown us that there are always short-term, urgent needs that require our focus that are unanticipated. To be able to effectively address legislative challenges, infrastructure challenges, or policy challenges, we articulate a goal of remaining nimble and flexible with our commitments.
Community or Constituency Served
We engage and elevate communities historically not at the table in transportation: youth, women, people with low incomes, communities of color, people with disabilities, and other transit-dependent populations. Our vision is a transportation system in Minnesota that serves people of all ages, abilities, and backgrounds.
Geographic Area Served
Our focus is around the MSP metro region, with a statewide vision guiding future growth.