UPDATE: Bills have been introduced to strengthen climate protections for highway projects. (HF 4988 & SF 5099)

• The good: the bill would require the entire portfolio of trunk highway projects to conform with the state’s climate and vehicles miles traveled (VMT) reduction goals. This would effectively close the loophole in the previous law, which was only required if a highway project added lanes.

• The bad: The bill originally included a provision that would have clarified the definition of highway purpose to allow highway dollars to be spent on mitigation projects like walking, biking and transit infrastructure. However, this was later stripped from the bill via an amendment. This would water down the bill’s effectiveness, punting long-overdue climate reforms to a future session.

Take action to ask legislators to strengthen highway protections for highway projects.

Transportation is the state’s biggest contributor of greenhouse gas emissions and electric cars alone are not an adequate decarbonization solution. Major highway projects perpetuate car dependency and increase both vehicle miles traveled (or “VMT”) and carbon emissions.

The 2023 transportation bill added new regulations that require MnDOT to assess the climate impacts of a highway project and perform mitigation measures. However the law only applies if the project adds lanes. Projects that rebuild highways with the same number of lanes are exempt, even though they would cement climate and environmental harms for decades.

Furthermore, the rule does not take effect until 2025 and applies only to projects that have not yet entered the State Transportation Improvement Program (STIP), which includes planned projects over a four-year period. Many highway expansion projects are already in the STIP and so won’t be impacted by the new law.

Take action today! Your email will be sent to your state senator and representative, as well as Governor Walz.