How Transit Advocates Scored a Major Victory in Minnesota

With the adoption earlier this year of an omnibus transportation bill, HF 2887, the Minnesota State Legislature and Governor Tim Waltz achieved a major victory for non-automobile infrastructure, joining a small group of states taking substantial first steps toward rescinding subsidies and policy mandates for automobile use while providing new funding for transit and active modes. Among HF 2887’s accomplishments: creating a new sales tax in the Twin Cities to fund transit, indexing the gas tax to inflation, providing funding necessary to both a major new intercity rail line and an intra-city light rail extension, and requiring future highway projects to account for climate change impacts.

The scope of HF 2887 is owed to a large and diverse coalition of transit advocates, environmentalists, community groups, and the multi-faith community called Transportation Forward, which worked toward HF 2887 over ten years of advocacy, trial runs, and coalition-building.