‘Mobility Hubs’ Become Community Anchors in Minneapolis

Source: Next City Published: December 3rd, 2020

In an open field near the major intersection of Penn and Lowry Avenues in North Minneapolis, across the street from a liquor store and near several churches and a school, resides one of the city’s pilot “mobility hubs,” one of 25 spaces designed to increase access to low- or no-carbon transportation options.

These hubs are centralized locations where various forms of transportation come together on one corner, from bike lanes and bus stops to scooter, bike, and car shares. According to a report on the project, they’re designed to make people’s trips as “safe, convenient, and reliable as possible” by eliminating a few of the variables that can keep people from choosing public transportation over personal vehicles.

The idea is that by concentrating various modes of transportation in strategically placed, centralized locations, people will be more likely to use public or shared transportation. City officials hope that the project ultimately reduces the reliance on personal vehicles for those that have them and increases mobility for those that don’t.

While the project is currently under evaluation, early data suggests that roughly 800,000 trips have been made at hubs so far and 64 percent of users surveyed said that the improvements that the hubs bring makes them more likely to use the transportation options there.

The project is at the confluence of several of the city’s action plans and initiatives, from the 2017 Twin Cities Mobility Action Plan to Minneapolis’ involvement in the American Cities Climate Challenge and Transportation for America’s Smart City Collaborative.

Through the Smart City Collaborative, Jasna Hadzic-Stanek, transportation planner with the City of Minneapolis, and others leading the pilot received pro-bono consulting that helped identify the best locations for the hubs. “They looked at equity-based data, like 50 different data sets, to really help narrow down locations in areas of concentrated poverty,” Hadzic-Stanek says. “The goal was that these would be in areas that need these options while also meeting goals for safety and climate and so on.” Ultimately, the city created 12 hubs in 2019, and added 13 in 2020 for a total of 25.

The second phase of the pilot is slated to run through the end of January 2021.

Click here to read more

Photo by Nicole Geri on Unsplash