Tell MnDOT to Stop Repeating Past Harms of Highway Projects

For so long, highway projects like I-94 and Highway 252 have divided neighborhoods, displaced families, increased pollution impacts, and prioritized vehicle speed over community well-being. Across the Twin Cities, residents continue to speak out and organize against this legacy of harm. Communities are demanding something different than the continuation of the status quo.

The Minnesota Department of Transportation is currently advancing plans to expand Highway 252 through Brooklyn Center, Brooklyn Park, and North Minneapolis. As part of the environmental review process, MnDOT developed a series of freeway conversion options and highway expansion concepts with access combinations to replace existing signalized intersections, adding lanes, interchanges, new highway access points, and managed toll lanes along the project corridor. The proposed project would impact dozens of homes and businesses, increase toxic air pollution and traffic deaths, and further isolate communities from surrounding neighborhoods and the Mississippi River corridor.

The alternatives range from maintaining the highway largely as it exists today to multiple freeway expansion options with varying interchange locations at 66th Ave, Brookdale Drive, 73rd Ave, and 85th Ave. MnDOT says these alternatives will improve traffic flow and reduce crashes, but as community knows, these alternatives will deepen displacement, increase pollution impacts and deaths as a result, and further divide communities who are already disproportionately impacted.

Residents, advocates, and local leaders like Mayor April Graves have spent years raising concerns about the impacts these plans would have on predominantly Black, immigrant, and working-class neighborhoods. Yet MnDOT continues to prioritize highway expansion and increased traffic capacity over community health, safety, and connectivity. This pattern mirrors MnDOT’s own shadows of being the Highway Department. Currently, MnDOT’s project website includes a section for property acquisitions, including using eminent domain. The same tool that was used to displace thriving Black and immigrant residents in North Minneapolis from 6th Ave, Rondo, the Old Southside, and now potentially the Brooklyns.

Communities across the metro repeatedly call for transportation solutions that prioritize:
  • Safe and accessible local streets
  • Public transit and multimodal transportation
  • Cleaner air and reduced noise pollution
  • Reconnecting neighborhoods harmed by past highway construction
  • Affordable housing and preserving community institutions
  • Investments that improve quality of life instead of increasing harms

MnDOT’s own Equity and Health Assessment for Highway 252 raised serious concerns about the proposed alternatives and recommended studying additional non-highway options focused on equity and environmental justice. Despite this, the agency continues to advance expansion plans that would lock in another generation of community division, pollution, and displacement.

As public frustration with highway-first planning continues to grow and we witness federal encroachments on the well-being of our communities, now more than ever is the time to demand a different approach to the planning process so that transformative alternatives are meaningfully studied rather than repeating past harms.

Take Action

Now is the time to demand a different future for Highway 252 and transportation planning in Minnesota.

Tell MnDOT, as decision makers:
  • Demolition and property acquisition for highway expansion are unacceptable.
  • Communities of color should not continue bearing the burden of increased pollution and displacement.
  • MnDOT must seriously study non-highway alternatives that prioritize equity, health, and connectivity.
  • Transportation investments should reconnect communities, not divide them further.
  • Public processes must meaningfully center the voices of impacted residents.
Your voice matters. Public pressure has already forced conversations about alternatives that don’t just maintain the status quo. Minnesota has an opportunity to choose a different path, one rooted in racial and climate justice for communities that bear the brunt of harm, community repair, and people-first transportation. Continued organizing and public engagement are essential to stopping harmful expansion projects like Highway 252. We cannot afford to repeat the past.
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