Here we go again.
Park Board President Tom Olsen offered a resolution at the first Park Board meeting on January 7 to fund a “pilot project” to allow the Park Board to more easily and less expensively close parkways to automobiles.
Ironically, he calls it the “Open Parkway” toolkit. This is a word game. “Opening” is actually closing parkways to automobiles. They would be “open” exclusively for people who walk and bike.
No parkways for the rest of you.
Now walkers and bikers already have complete access to the parks. All of these parkways already have bike paths and sidewalks available to bikers and walkers. But that is not enough for Tom Olsen. He wants them to have the streets too.
Now you shouldn’t be surprised. if you have followed Commissioner Olsen, this is what he has said over the last 4 years.
On his 2025 campaign website he says he wants to “Transform our Parkways” by “…temporary openings for pedestrian use on weekends, good weather days, or special events.” Pretty much all the time.
In a campaign podcast, minute 5:05, he says, the reason I’m running and “why I ran 4 years ago is Open Parkways.”
In the same podcast, minute 6:45, Talking about open parkways – “If you go around Lake Harriet right now, or Bde Maka Ska…it’s incredibly congested with pedestrians…there’s clearly a demand for more space…” for pedestrians.
Hard to see how this translates into closing the West River Road.
In the same podcast, minute 11:10, he said “I’m running again…start that pilot again that would be along West River Parkway and maybe go further – there that’s the optimistic part.”
Yup, closing the West River Road.
Now before he became president, and presumably has a majority of Commissioners now supporting him, Olsen tried to close the parkways to cars. The StarTribune reported in 2023 “Commissioners Tom Olsen and Becky Alper voted against seeking parkway funding after arguing vociferously for an amendment to expand the purpose of funding for the “reimagination of the parkway system” to reduce car use.”
To be clear, nothing Olsen is proposing reduces car use. People still need to get their kids to school, go to work (predominantly in the suburbs), go shopping and take care of their family, regardless of whether the parkways are open or closed.
He proposed the same thing in 2022. The StarTribune reported “Olsen said he was frustrated to see the pilot “shot down… For me, it’s a climate issue, and I’ll keep pushing for it.”
Olsen seems to be confused about closing parkways and the climate. Closing the parkways would mean people would drive more, not less, and that would be worse for the environment, increasing pollution and carbon emissions.
When did this idea start? To this author’s knowledge it started in 2019. Park Board staff, supported by a Citizens Advisory Committee stacked with anti-car activists, proposed significantly limiting access to a 2 mile residential section of Minnehaha Parkway. Over the course of more than a year, neighborhood residents led by Preserve the Parkway killed the idea in 2020.
Subsequently, in 2021, then Commissioner Chris Meyer sent an email to then Park Board Secretary Ringold, advocating for a pilot project in support of a staff request. The pilot was to include a
“change in approach to permanent infrastructure rather than temporary cone and barricade rentals… Ideally, I would love for MPRB to set a policy that aims to maximize the use of parkway space by closing vehicle access to the parkways when the demand is high for people who want to walk, bike, or roll, and return to vehicle access when demand for active use is low. My proposal would be to close the parkways to vehicle access to the gated parkway area for
- events
- weekends
- holidays and
- what I would call “emergency sunshine days” based on weather conditions, like say when the forecast is sunny and 70 degrees or higher. “
Yup, you can drive your car through the parks only when it is cold and the weather is bad, if it isn’t a weekend, holiday or an event. The event could be as simple as “No Cars Monday.” Followed by “No Cars Tuesday.” Followed by “No Cars Wednesday.” You get the picture.
So here we go again. These 2019 and 2021 efforts were stopped by concerted resident input. Yet apparently President Olsen has a personal agenda he would like to see override residents’ preference. Being newly elected President, he now controls the agenda. At the first Park Board meeting, he tried to sneak it onto the Park Board agenda at the last minute and then slide it through on a vote with majority of new Park Board members. If he had been successful, this would have completely circumvented any citizen input.
That is not how a democracy is supposed to work.
And let me say this specifically for the people newly elected to the Park Board. That is not how a democracy is supposed to work.
If Olsen is going to bring this up yet again, he and the other Commissioners need to hear from residents yet again. No one wants the parks reserved only for an exclusive group of people. The parks should be open and available to everyone. Parkways were created specifically for people in automobiles, and they should be able to use the parkways just like the bikers and walkers.
Tom Olsen’s resolution to close the parkways should appear on the January 21 Planning Committee agenda. This should be posted January 15 unless Olsen tries to be underhanded again. Subscribe to get the agenda and updates at agendasuite.org/iip/mprb to see if Olsen tries to sneak changes through at the last minute like he did previously.
If this is approved in the Planning Committee, it will go to a full board vote on February 4.
If you want to testify, the meeting is on January 21 at 5:00 p.m. at Park Board Headquarters, 2117 West River Road. You can speak at Open Time but you need to call first to get on the list. Call 612-230-6400 by 3:00 p.m. to speak in person.
You can submit written comments at OpenTime@minneapolisparks.org by noon January 21.
Or email all the Commissioners at:
- dengelhart@minneapolisparks.org
- crucker@minneapolisparks.org
- kdeshpande@minneapolisparks.org
- jgarcia@minneapolisparks.org
- kmoran@minneapolisparks.org
- cabene@minneapolisparks.org
- mforney@minneapolisparks.org
- afrederick@minneapolisparks.org
- tolsen@minneapolisparks.org
Speak up or watch most people’s access to parks be lost.
Nobody has mentioned so far how badly this would hurt voter turnout!
About 1/4th of our polling places are located along parkways, and many need vehicle access (especially for seniors or disabled voters) during elections in November.
I suppose Mr. Olsen sees a political advantage to making it harder for seniors and disabled people to vote.
There is no comment here about the potential impact of the opening of the Southwest Light Rail line, scheduled for this year, on traffic conditions around the lakes. It appears to me that the new line should reduce the need for residents near the lakes to get to employment either downtown or in the southwest suburbs, thus making it feasible to limit automobile use on the parkways. If people will stop using their cars to commute it will definitely be better for the planet and for the parks.
Woods Halley
sorry, I meant “…the need for residents to USE THEIR CARS to get to employment…”
It might be a good idea too for residents of the neighborhood adjacent to the West River Parkway to get organized against this, because doing this would make their residential streets a living hell, especially during morning commute. This past summer, I was taking my granddaughter to a theater class at the Guthrie, and there was some kind of maintenance going on on the W River Pkwy that necessitated a detour. As is so often done, the marked detour took one quite a ways west to a north-south arterial street (and for some reason, it wasn’t the first one…). Like a nice compliant citizen, I tried to follow the signs… and headed straight into a true traffic mess. THEN, like all the other no-longer-nice-and-compliant citizens, I started looking for a way back west to use a N-S street – ANY N-S street – in between. And because we were all doing that, the farther north one went, the worse those got, especially at the intersections, some of which were literally gridlocked with cars stuck IN the intersections – because none of the traffic lights in the area are timed to keep that kind of traffic flowing – and I’m not even sure they could be. The fact of the matter is, the W. River Pkwy, like the Minnehaha Parkway (which in some places is an actual arterial), is an integral part of the street system – not quite an arterial, but more than a residential side-street. The Park Board unilaterally removing it as a carrier of traffic is just a bad idea unless it is coordinated with all the other road-and-street authorities to prevent congestion and chaos. We all spewed more exhaust into the atmosphere that morning, not less. I don’t think it should be an environmental objective to do that on the regular.
I think that federal approval would be required for closing the Parkways to traffic on a fairly permanent basis. There are significant pieces of federal funds in various segments of the Grand Rounds. I’m posting this to give some direction to those who want to seriously research and challenge President Olson’s Off-The-Wall idea.
Where to Find Specifics:
FHWA Minnesota Division: Publishes reports on federal-aid highway projects and funding allocations.
Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT): Handles federal transportation funds for the state and provides project details.
Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board (MPRB): Records historical grant applications and awards from federal sources for park system improvements.
In essence, federal dollars have been continuously channeled into various parts of the Grand Rounds system since the 1970s, primarily through FHWA for road/trail infrastructure and LWCF for park/recreation aspects, often through state-level grant programs.
A public road cannot be closed without following a statute. But, even if it could, there are consequences. More fuel burned, the elderly transport needs, etc. If it were otherwise, there would be a George Floyd memorial instead of an intersection. Some of us are too old to be cycling so we would be denied access—- raising ADA issues.