The Minnesota Legislature is well on its way with the 2025 session after a rocky start to the legislative season. As the session progresses, now is a good time to take stock of transportation and land use efforts at the Legislature and examine the variety of bills under consideration.
The Transportation Budget for the Biennium
Senate Transportation leadership released its budget recommendations for 2026 and 2027, proposing $4.8 billion and $3.9 billion, respectively. The plan includes modest transit and active transportation funding, with $18.3 million annually for these initiatives, $1.5 million for Safe Routes to School and $5.7 million for passenger rail. Road and highway allocations receive significantly more, with $2.2 billion in 2026 and $1.2 billion in 2027.
Minnesota’s extensive road system — fourth in the nation for lane miles — exceeds what’s needed for our population and economy, suggesting at a minimum that funds should follow the “fix it first” principle: Prioritize maintenance of existing infrastructure rather than expanding roads or building new ones. In reality, Minnesota’s lawmakers have to prioritize reducing the tax burden that roads create by studying reductions in these infrastructures and investing in solutions like transit and active transportation that reduce congestion and pollution and save Minnesotans money.
Through state aid programs to support local governments, counties will receive about $1.1 billion annually for road programs, while municipalities get roughly $280 million per year. These programs have broader eligibility requirements that allow funding to support bike and pedestrian infrastructure on city and county roads. Beyond that, Senate Transportation Committee Chair Scott Dibble (DFL-Minneapolis) and Vice-Chair Ann Johnson Stewart (DFL-Wayzata) are also leading a much-needed effort to make these programs more flexible, allowing cities to reference other design guidelines to facilitate investments in safe complete streets (a concept that acknowledges roads are for all users, not just drivers of motor vehicles).
The budget also would provide free transit for disabled riders in the seven-county metro area and allow the Metropolitan Council to loan money to the Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) for one transit project, likely the Central Avenue F Line, to facilitate road improvements along with the F Line’s development.
One thing to note: This budget is a starting point for longer-running negotiations that will take place this spring, and Republicans will need to be on board with any proposed budget due to power-sharing in the House. Beyond that, the grim budget forecast released in early March was worse than initially expected, with federal funding and policy shifts adding uncertainty to these projections. This will certainly impact budget creation for transportation and all other parts of the state government. Advocates will continue to track this effort through the rest of the session.
Nation-Leading Reforms to Highway Planning (SF 817| HF 186)
The bill I could speak the most about — mainly due to my day job as the policy manager at Our Streets — grew from grassroots efforts along Interstate 94, Olson Memorial Highway, and Highway 252 in the Twin Cities over the past few years.
The bill, known as the Highway Justice Act and led by Sen. Omar Fateh (DFL-Minneapolis) and Rep. Samantha Sencer-Mura (DFL-Minneapolis), creates a channel for elected officials and the Minnesotans they represent to hold meaningful advisory power at MnDOT rather than merely symbolic consultation. This is accomplished by creating bylaws for MnDOT’s policy advisory committees and an approval process for final project designs.
Additionally, the bill centers on environmental justice and expands cumulative impact analyses to major highway projects, requiring projects to be modified if they overburden communities along the corridor with pollution. The bill also clarifies the definition of “highway purposes” to include transit, bike and pedestrian infrastructure in order to fund these important projects along trunk highways — which take a variety of forms, from interstate highways to state-owned corridors (like Central Avenue in Minneapolis and Snelling Avenue in St. Paul) to Greater Minnesota main streets.
Reforming Outdated Parking Policies (SF 1268 | HF 1309)
Sen. Fateh is also championing a bill to end parking minimums — outdated policies that mandate how much parking must be built for different types of development — which is a no-brainer. Minneapolis and St. Paul’s work to end these requirements was a huge policy win that has enabled more affordable, less car-oriented housing.
Greater Minnesota Transportation (SF 1545 | HF 184) ( SF 250 | HF 1167)
Several bills seek to address Greater Minnesota transportation, including some attempts by House Republicans to undercut the last two years’ efforts to establish a rail line between the Twin Cities and Duluth. A bill in the House seeks to terminate the $194 million appropriation passed in the 2023 legislative session that established a study for the Northern Lights Express (NLX); it would replace it with a smaller allocation to study intercity bus connectivity instead. A similar effort in the Senate seeks to undermine the NLX by stipulating that if the rail project does not receive federal funding by 2028, any unused funds will be shifted to the state-run Corridors of Commerce program, which generally seeks to widen highways for the sake of freight traffic.
On the positive side, a modest bipartisan effort allocating $10 million toward the capital construction costs of improvements to Greater Minnesota publicly-owned transit is on the table as well (SF 1403).
Rethinking I-94 Shakeups (SF 179 | HF 1822)
House and Senate Republicans are leading an effort to prohibit MnDOT from studying or implementing a boulevard or land bridge along the Rethinking I-94 corridor in St. Paul and Minneapolis. This is unlikely to move anywhere this session, but it adds to the list of Republican bills seeking to undo DFL accomplishments and stymie the priorities of forward-thinking legislators and Twin Cities residents.
Undermining Climate Protections for Transportation (SF 72 | HF 748)
Another such Republican effort — working to undercut the Greenhouse Gas and Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) standard — was heard in the House. The standard, which seeks to reduce the distances we travel by car and offset highway expansion projects by requiring investments in transit and active transportation infrastructure, has met partisan opposition. Move Minnesota, Our Streets, and other organizations are working to safeguard this win.
Transit Cost-Benefit Analysis (SF 252)
In an effort led by Senate Republicans, this bill would require a cost-benefit analysis for proposed guideways (transit corridors) in Minnesota. These analyses are already required for transit projects and often retroactively assess whether the benefits have materialized after a project is completed.
The bill mandates that the analysis must consider multiple project options, including the proposed guideway, arterial bus rapid transit (BRT), regular route bus service and a non-transit road capacity expansion option. In essence, the fine print would make it more difficult to build significant light rail and BRT projects.
If Senate Democrats want to negotiate on this bill, ensuring the process extensively analyzes the benefits and positive externalities of transit would be a good start in facilitating more transit investment.
Attacks on the Northstar Line and Light Rail (SF 2182 | HF 749 )
A House Republican-led bill establishes performance requirements and conditions for the potential termination of the Northstar Commuter Rail line, which runs from Minneapolis to Big Lake and, in all fairness, is the worst-performing commuter rail line in the country. It would be much better to see bipartisan efforts to improve the line’s viability and extend it to St. Cloud. Down the road, I’d love to see a buildout of the region’s commuter rail system, as Streets.mn board member Jesse Cook recently argued, because the benefits of these lines will increase with a broader network.
A variety of efforts to undermine light rail transit in the metro are underway, including changes to governance, prohibition of certain light rail spending until the Green Line extension is finished, and Gov. Tim Walz’s own budget that zeros out light rail operations funding from the state for the next few years.
Other Efforts to Track
Bipartisan momentum is behind creating an inspector general to oversee some state agency operations, including those at MnDOT. Other efforts, led by BikeMN, seek to decriminalize jaywalking and fully adopt the Idaho stop for bicyclists, allowing them to move through a clear intersection when the traffic light is red. (Today in Minnesota, crossing a street between signalized intersections is a primary offense, meaning a police officer could issue a citation, and the Idaho stop law in Minnesota applies only to stop signs.)
Housing reforms, including policies that advance missing-middle housing through a variety of policy fixes, are also still on the table.
We’ll see what pans out over the next few months. Some of these bills will need to be defeated to preserve the policy wins of 2023 and 2024. Others, mainly Republican bills targeting transit, efforts to rethink highways and other forward-looking policies, feel like partisan saber-rattling.
There is certainly narrow room for bipartisan compromises in key areas. With budget constraints and a divided government, legislators will need to find common ground on addressing Minnesota’s transportation needs while balancing fiscal responsibility and spending constraints.
Editor’s note: “Street Views” appears in Streets.mn twice monthly. Respond to columnist and board member Joe Harrington directly at [email protected]. You may also add comments at our Streets.mn pages on Bluesky and Facebook.
