Goals

Our transportation system needs to work for everyone, connecting people to jobs, school, appointments, everyday needs, and social occasions. The Met Council brings together counties, cities, and townships to address these needs and create a shared vision for our transportation system.

The region’s long-range transportation plan lays out six broad aims to reach that vision, and a framework for how to achieve them. Here you will find these transportation goals, their corresponding objectives, and a summary of the strategies to achieve them.

Embedded in these goals are the outcomes and values that Thrive MSP 2040 sets to build a thriving region — stewardship, prosperity, equity, livability, and sustainability.

Stewardship

Taking care of what we have. The region has invested heavily in its transportation system. Its preservation, maintenance, and operation are important to protect this investment for generations to come. System stewardship assesses the performance of the system and the users’ experience and satisfaction with that performance. That assessment leads to changes that will continually improve performance and service.

Safety and security

Having a safe and secure transportation system for all users. Safety and security are at the heart of providing a comfortable, dependable system. Providing a safe and secure transportation system starts with planning and carries through operating the system. The region works together to identify areas that are vulnerable and understand what creates that vulnerability, focus solutions on the greatest risks, and ultimately avoid creating new ones.

Access to destinations

Connecting to regional destinations and beyond. Providing access is transportation’s fundamental purpose. This requires a system that offers a variety of ways to get around that are both practical and affordable. Whether adding bikeways and sidewalks, improving highways, expanding transit, or adding new technologies, the system only works when people get where they need to go.

Competitive economy

Supporting economic competitiveness, vitality, and prosperity. An integrated, multimodal transportation system helps to retain and grow existing businesses and industries and draws in new ones. It also retains and attracts talent in a market where people are increasingly seeking a less car-dependent lifestyle. Building on the region’s well-developed highway system and expanding to better integrate transit, bicycling, and walking supports a more prosperous region.

Healthy and equitable communities

Advancing equity and contributing to livability and sustainability. Transportation has a number of impacts on a healthy environment, from pollutant emissions that affect our air, water, and weather, to the built environments of the neighborhood we live in, and the roads, bridges and buildings we use. These impacts are not experienced the same in all communities. To advance equity, we must minimize and ease the harmful effects on those most vulnerable to environmental impacts from transportation.

Guiding land use

Leveraging transportation investments to guide land use and development patterns. The intersection of land use, urban form, and the transportation system shapes the effectiveness of stewardship of transportation investments.