This Week at the Legislature:  Transit Cuts & E-Motos

By CJ Lindor

Our Bills + Bills We’re On

Final Forms Begin to Emerge

This week at the Legislature marked the passing of the third-and-final committee deadline for major legislation to advance this session, so we’re definitely seeing the outlines of what a final legislative package might look like. While it largely conforms with what we anticipated, it’s pretty uninspiring, especially as it perpetuates the harmful and unsustainable emphasis on car-centric design, while neglecting any of the modest and reasonable proposals to make our transportation safer and more effective for the 30% of Minnesotans who do not drive or have access to a motor vehicle.

House Transportation Continues to Resist Any Meaningful Change

The House Transportation committee heard a walkthrough of Governor Walz’s proposed budget, which includes permanent significant structural cuts for public transit services. (As recently covered in Streets.mn.) Highway spending appears to be set to continue its upward trend-line, despite MN law requiring for the DOT to plan for substantially reduced vehicle miles traveled. Meanwhile investments in cleaner, safer, more affordable, and more-efficient alternatives including transit and active mobility continue to face barriers and cuts.

BikeMN and partners continue to work on and support legislation to ensure that “highway” funding is available for investments that support all legitimate highway users, including people walking, biking, rolling, and using transit (HF1630). This legislation would also help MnDOT to avoid continuing to create new maintenance liabilities while neglecting existing needs (HF3728). The committee also heard on Rep Jones’ HF4449 that would establish performance measures for transit to improve service and efficiency.

Unfortunately none of these bills were able to overcome the currently divided committee dynamic, so rather than address these broadly acknowledged challenges, the state will almost certainly continue on a “business as usual” path for another year, digging us further into a hole of car-dependency and all the resultant harms and financial liabilities that come with that.

Senate Largely Ignores its Own E-Bike Safety Study, but Offers a Bone to E-Moto Opponents|

The Senate Transportation Committee picked up where they had left of from last week with discussion focused on a lengthy “omnibus” package with many different components; the most significant of these for Active Mobility advocates are the sections defining and regulating electric motorcycles (ie, “e-motos), and relatedly, a requirement that riders of e-bikes between the ages of 15-17 years old wear helmets. Nearly everyone, including advocates, legislators, law enforcement, and the general public seems to be in agreement that unregulated motor vehicles operating on public roads are problematic. We’ve written about this before, and BikeMN’s bipartisan “Defining E-Motos” legislation (HF3785/SF4186) leads the way on providing the necessary clarifications on how various devices need to be classified and regulated. We are grateful to see that language from this bill has been included in the Senate’s omnibus transportation package (SF3988), and remains on track to become law by the end of the session. While this legislation won’t functionally change how most devices are classified, it should provide the necessary clarity for enforcement and regulators to address the numerous issues these unregulated motor vehicles are causing for other lawful users and roads and trails. The short version is that motor vehicle operators, including for e-motos, need to be licensed and insured.

At the same time, BikeMN was disappointed to see that the language from SF3236, creating new helmet requirements for e-bike riders aged 15-17 as a pretext for investigating a driver’s age and registration, was also included in the omnibus bill. As we’ve previously written, BikeMN supports the goal of increasing helmet usage for all bike riders, but strongly opposes the use of discretionary enforcement targeted at bicyclists as a strategy for increasing road safety. This language was introduced very late in session and has no companion bill in the House. This strategy ignores the State’s own recommendations on improving Youth Rider Safety in favor of a heavy-handed enforcement approach that has always resulted in inequitable outcomes. Though we believe it is well-intentioned, the Mandatory Helmet Law is bad legislation that is unlikely to achieve its stated goals of increasing safety, but very likely to create real harm through punitive enforcement measures and dissuading youth from choosing active mobility.

Looking Ahead

Now that we have passed the Third Committee Deadline for legislation, we won’t be expecting any new legislation to be introduced, so instead the Legislature will be in the process of whittling down all of the potential language that is “on the table for possible inclusion” to either move to the chamber floor for a full-vote on standalone legislation, or else package it into a larger omnibus bill. Either path would require passage by the full chamber to be sent to the other chamber for passage to the governor. For bills where there is a difference in language, a “Conference Committee” with bipartisan representatives from both chambers of House and Senate would attempt to integrate and compromise on mutually agreed language to create a finalized version of the bill. How these processes play out remains to be seen. Given the inability throughout this session for Democrats and Republicans to find common ground on nearly anything, particularly in the House, it would not be surprising if that dynamic carried through to this stage of the legislative process, and very little actually makes it to the governor’s desk for final passage.

That being said, it’s still important for Legislators to hear from advocates about how we expect them to support the needs and interests of their constituents. BikeMN urges supporters to contact their State Representative and ask them to Support language on classifying E-Motos, but to Reject Helmet Requirements.

Minnesota is a national leader in forward-thinking transportation policy — and that didn’t happen by chance. For over 17 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.