By Erik Noonan ·
Whether a Minnesota state owned roadway gets a safe place to ride comes down to three things today: whether the pavement is due for repair, whether the town has organized enough to ask for it, and whether the MnDOT project manager happens to care about biking.
That isn’t my read. It’s MnDOT’s. For the new draft Statewide Bicycle+ System Plan, the planning team built six case studies from interviews with staff in three MnDOT districts. They found that the places with the best outcomes for people on bikes had at least a decade of locally led planning behind them before construction started. Communities that had done that work got a good street. Everywhere else, the plan says, the result “seems to hinge on the local or Tribal government and the extent of community buy-in.”
It says a lot that MnDOT put this finding in writing, because the rest of the plan is built to fix it. The draft is open for public comment through Friday, October 23, and it’s the first update to the state’s bike plan since 2016.
What changes from 2016
The 2016 plan drew the State Bicycle Route Network and set a funding split: about 70 percent of MnDOT’s bike dollars for local and regional connections, 30 percent for state routes. In practice, most bike improvements got built only when a road was already due for repaving or reconstruction. A dangerous crossing on a highway with good pavement usually waited.
The Bike+ Plan keeps the 2016 corridors and goes after how MnDOT decides what gets built.
Bike needs get their own reason to build. Action 6.3 calls for funding set aside in MnSHIP, MnDOT’s 20-year highway investment plan, for projects driven by bicycle need instead of pavement and bridge condition. Action 6.2 creates a district-led quick-build program for faster, cheaper improvements that communities can test before anything gets poured in concrete. Action 6.1 calls for MnDOT to set up a way to deliver bikeways off the trunk highway system with local partners, so a safe route can run on a parallel street when that works better.
A statewide map of where it matters most. A new tool called IMPACT scores the whole state in small hexagons on four things: demand, safety, equity and connectivity. Equity is built into the math, with points for low-income households, people of color, households without a car, kids, seniors, people with disabilities and people with limited English. Less than 3 percent of the state lands in the two highest tiers, and those places cluster in cities and small towns.
A clear baseline for what gets built. The plan sets infrastructure expectations by land use and IMPACT tier. On urban and suburban roads carrying more than 7,000 vehicles a day or moving 35 mph and up, the plan calls for separating people on bikes from traffic in most cases. Highways, rail lines and rivers get spacing standards for how far apart safe crossings can be. Medians should be at least 10 feet wide so a cargo bike fits.
Success measured by people, not pavement. The three new performance measures ask whether the network is low-stress, whether people are riding it, and whether someone can get to school, the grocery store or the hospital by bike from where they live. The 2016 plan counted commuters and crashes.
The barriers off the street count, too. A new goal, Low Barrier to Entry, commits MnDOT to building secure parking, charging and theft prevention into its capital projects, and to working with other state agencies on access to bikes for underserved communities and people with disabilities. The “+” in the name brings scooters, adaptive bikes and other devices of similar size and speed into the plan, reflecting who is already out there riding.
What it would cost
The draft also puts a price on MnDOT’s share of a low-stress statewide network. The draft lays out three 20-year scenarios for proactive, bike-driven projects on top of what gets built during regular road reconstruction.
| Scenario | Estimated annual cost | What it buys each year |
| 1: Functional Access | ~$38 million | Targeted bikeways in top-priority areas, rural connections, 8 at-grade and 2 grade-separated crossings |
| 2: Strategic Priorities | ~$101 million | Low-stress bikeways across the highest-priority areas and half of the next tier, 20 rural miles, 16 at-grade and 4 grade-separated crossings |
| 3: Transformative Mode Shift | ~$146 million | Scenario 2’s top-tier work plus 90 percent of the next tier, 40 rural miles, 32 at-grade and 8 grade-separated crossings |
Under Scenario 3, MnDOT’s part of the network would be essentially complete in 20 years, and the job would shift to keeping it in good shape. The plan also says plainly that building bikeways only when roads are rebuilt is too slow to meet MnDOT’s own goal of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
The plan doesn’t choose a scenario. It calls them “a menu of options” for future MnSHIP decisions.
Set those numbers next to the rest of MnDOT’s budget. MnSHIP directs $36.7 billion into the state highway system from 2023 to 2042, roughly $1.8 billion a year. Walking and biking share a single line: $1.2 billion over 20 years, or 3.5 percent, and that also has to cover sidewalks and ADA fixes. Pavement gets $13.5 billion. Bridges get $6 billion.
Even the top scenario, about $2.9 billion over 20 years, works out to roughly 8 percent of MnSHIP. The low option costs about the same per year as the $200 million, five-year freeway conversion of Highway 65 in Blaine, which is a single project.
When the 2016 bike plan was written, MnDOT’s highway investment plan targeted $10 million a year for bike infrastructure, so this is real progress. It still falls short of what Minnesotans told MnDOT they want. In the plan’s own statewide survey, 76 percent of Minnesotans said they bike or roll, and nearly half do it at least monthly. The national research the plan cites puts more than half of people in the “interested but concerned” group, who would ride if it felt safe. And these scenarios only cover state highways. The local streets, sidewalks and transit connections people need to leave the car at home aren’t in the price tag.
Where we want it to go
This is the strongest bike plan MnDOT has written. Here’s what BikeMN will push for next.
Treat Scenario 3 as the floor. A menu doesn’t feed anyone. Scenario 3 is the only option the plan itself ties to finishing the network on the state’s climate timeline. When MnSHIP comes up for update, it should fund at least that much, with more to come as local networks and transit connections catch up.
Make the build expectations the default. The draft says “every effort should be made” to meet them. That leaves room for the old pattern to come back one project at a time. We want separated facilities and crossing spacing in priority areas to be the standard, with any exception documented and published.
Put numbers and dates on the new measures. The three performance measures are the right ones, but none has a target yet. What share of trunk highway miles in priority areas should be low-stress by 2030? By 2036? Report it every year, by district, where anyone can find it.
Don’t make readiness the price of safety. If the best outcomes go to places with a decade of organizing behind them, the communities with the least staff time, money and political pull keep waiting the longest. Those are often lower-income communities and communities of color, the same places our highways have cut through and left behind. The plan already asks which high-priority areas lack strong local partners. The answer should come with dedicated MnDOT staff time and quick-build dollars aimed at exactly those places first.
Turn “encourage” into “commit.” Action 7.2 only asks MnDOT to encourage decision makers to stabilize funding for local partners. Safe Routes to School and Active Transportation grants are how small towns get projects off the ground. MnDOT should be making the case for them, not just hoping someone else does.
Put designers on bikes. The plan suggests that MnDOT staff ride the corridors they’re designing. Make it a required step in scoping for every project in a priority area.
Comment by October 23
Read the draft and leave a comment on MnDOT’s project page, or email project manager Caroline Ketcham at caroline.ketcham@state.mn.us. If there’s a highway crossing in your town that you won’t ride across, or won’t let your kids ride across, name it. BikeMN will submit formal comments too.
The plan’s goals are to make every trip safe and seamless, keep the barriers to riding low, and build partnerships that last. A plan that lays out the problem this clearly should also pay for the fix.
Minnesota is a national leader in forward-thinking transportation policy — and that didn’t happen by chance. For over 18 years, BikeMN has been at the table, fight after fight, shaping a future where biking, walking, and rolling is safe, accessible, and valued. That work is funded by members like you. Join as a sustaining supporter today at bikemn.org/join — $5 or $10 a month helps ensure Minnesota stays ahead. We all move forward together.