17 Focus regional growth in areas that support multimodal travel
Focus regional growth in areas that support the full range of multimodal travel.
17.1 Community comprehensive plans with multimodal transportation
The Met Council is the regional planning agency charged with planning and coordinating the growth and development of the seven-county metropolitan area. While local governments focus on planning for their communities, the Met Council is responsible for regional services that communities need. The two coordinate their efforts by taking part in a process of plan-making, negotiations, and final review of the local plans by the Met Council.
State law (Minnesota Statutes: Comprehensive Plans; Local Governmental Units 2022) requires the Met Council to create regional plans and policies to guide growth and manage regional systems for transportation, aviation, water resources, and regional parks. The law also requires local governments to update their comprehensive plans.
Under the law, the Met Council reviews local comprehensive plans to ensure they are in accord with the overall framework provided by the regional plans. The review helps determine how a community’s planned actions relate to the interests of the whole region over the long term. It helps ensure that costly public infrastructure, like roads and sewers, are built in an economical and coordinated fashion, so that user fees and tax dollars are spent wisely.
Once the Met Council completes the review process for a comprehensive plan or amendment, the local government can implement it through zoning ordinances, capital budgets for public improvements, and other actions.
In April 2021, Met Council staff conducted an analysis of 66 completed comprehensive plans compiled the resulting transportation related policies, like those that include transit, bike, or pedestrian supportive policies or strategies.
Around half of regional comprehensive plans mention new or expanded roadways. Most communities included counts of Heavy Commercial Annual Average Daily Traffic (HCAADT).
A majority of communities in the Twin Cities account for bicycle travel in one way or another in their comprehensive plans but there is little sense as to how residents are actually using bicycle facilities. Over half of plans have specific bicycle policies and an inventory of on-street bicycle facilities. Approximately one-third of communities have a separate bicycle plan. No communities’ comprehensive plan included a count of bicycle traffic.
A similar pattern is found with pedestrian planning found in the region’s comprehensive plans, with pedestrians being considered by over half of communities, but little knowledge of how residents are actually using pedestrian facilities. Over half of communities have specific pedestrian policies, slightly less than half include sidewalk and sidewalk gap mapping, very few have pedestrian planning zones, none have local pedestrian counts, and less than a quarter incorporate complete streets principles or address American Disability Act (ADA) compliance.
Planning for pedestrians typically occurs in a comprehensive plans’ transportation chapter, less than a quarter of communities plan for pedestrians in the context of their park plans.
Communities vary in the degree to which they considered transit in their comprehensive plans. Slightly less than half of communities pursued opportunities beyond transitways and/or referenced transitways that were included in the increased revenue scenario.
Slightly less than half of communities discuss linkage between transit service and land use within their plans and/or discuss the potential impact of centers of growth on multi-modal transportation.
Roughly half of completed comprehensive plans discuss transportation safety and/or crash data. Connected and autonomous vehicles are an emerging theme, appearing in about one third of comprehensive plans. Drones are considered in few plans.