05-11-2022 Workshop Packet - Laserfiche WebLink

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Creating and Sustaining Equity through Pedestrian, Bicycle, and Public Transit Connectivity Executive Summary Jacob Berger, Regina Burstein, Frank Koenen, Jarred Paquin Graduate students at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs The City of Little Canada is a first ring suburb of about 10,000 people north of St. Paul. In its 2040 Comprehensive Plan, the City determined that its pedestrian, bicycle, and public transit networks do not adequately meet the equity, safety, and accessibility needs of the community. The City is interested in upgrading these systems to improve the lives of current and future residents, ensuring that “people will be able to enjoy Little Canada as young singles, childless couples, families and empty-nesters and beyond” (Comp Plan Chapter 2: Land Use). The City is especially interested in reimagining its transportation network to serve the needs of a growing population with diverse abilities and changing characteristics due to factors such as aging, retirement, remote work, and child care considerations. To this end, Little Canada seeks recommendations on how to equitably prioritize improvements to its transportation infrastructure to provide safe, accessible, and connected pathways for people walking, rolling, biking, and taking public transit. In conjunction with the City, we drafted the following research questions: 1. How can the city improve and enhance the equity, accessibility, connectivity, and safety of pedestrians, bicyclists, and transit users? 2. What improvement and enhancement strategies can the city use to prioritize improvements to pedestrian, bicyclists, and transit infrastructure? 3. What community engagement strategies can the city use to engage residents in transportation planning, paying particular attention to equity, accessibility, connectivity, and safety? To answer the above questions, we conducted four analyses - demographic, crash risk, connectivity, and economic – and we sought feedback from the community in the form of an online survey and several key informant interviews. Technical Foundations for Increasing Equity in Connectivity The DEMOGRAPHIC analysis involved evaluating whether there is an equitable distribution of bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure in the City based on income, race, car ownership, and tenure. Bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure miles has some level of inequitable distribution when evaluating demographic data (Table 1 and 2). Race and median income were important factors in the distribution of bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure. The small neighborhood northwest of the Interstate 35E and Minnesota Highway 36 interchange has a large amount of multi-family homes with a population diverse in race, income, and vehicle ownership, but low amount of bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure both in total