The future is electric — which is to say, still mostly on four wheels

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In 2018, the city of Minneapolis adopted its long-range plan, the Minneapolis 2040 Plan. The plan assumed 75% growth over the next 20 years. Based on this plan, in 2020, the city adopted the Transportation Action Plan. The core was a 60% reduction in auto travel by 2030, with a presumption that by then, 25% of trips would be taken by walking, bicycling would triple and transit ridership would double. The city is now rebuilding its roads as if this is going to come true.

• Population growth: The population of Minneapolis declined, from 430,710 in 2020 to 425,115 in 2023, about 1.2%. This is most likely because of the declining birthrate. It takes 2.1 babies per woman to have a stable population, and the U.S. is at 1.66.

• Auto travel: Vehicle miles traveled, or VMT, in Minneapolis declined 3% from 2016 to 2020 and another 11% from 2019 to 2023. This decline happened mostly from 2019 to 2020, rebounded from 2020 to 2021, then remained stable. This change is most likely due to a tripling of people working from home and a tripling of the time people spent at home.

• Transit: Regional transit ridership peaked in 2015 and declined 9% from 2015 to 2019. This is most likely because Uber and Lyft debuted in 2014. Transit ridership has fallen about another 40% from 2019 to midyear 2024, for a net decline of about 50% since 2015.

• Walking/bicycling: In the Twin Cities, walking trips declined 47% from 2019 to 2022. Nationally, biking increased 37% from 2019 to 2021, then flatlined in 2022. The Twin Cities ranked 30th in per capita biking in 2019 and 33rd in 2022 despite making heavy investments in bike amenities. Given that biking is such a small percentage of travel, even an increase of 37% would not impact VMT in a meaningful way.