Racial Equity Impact Analysis (REIA)
The Racial Equity Impact Analysis helps the City consider racial equity outcomes when shaping policies, practices, programs and budgets.
| Public Safety | Yes |
| Housing | No |
| Economic Development | No |
| Public Services | No |
| Environmental Justice | No |
| Built Environment & Transportation | Yes |
| Public Health | No |
| Arts & Culture | No |
| Workforce | No |
| Spending | No |
| Data | Yes |
| Community Engagement | No |
The desired outcome of the Vision Zero Action Plan is to improve traffic safety and make progress towards the City’s goal to get to zero traffic deaths and severe injuries by 2027.
Ethan Fawley, Vision Zero Program Coordinator and Kathleen Mayell, Transportation Planning Manager
--White: 59.7%
--Black or African American: 18.6%
--Asian or Pacific Islander: 5.9%
--Two or more races: 4.5%
--American Indian and Alaskan Native: 1.1%
--Other: 0.6%
--Hispanic or Latino (of any race): 9.6%
Native American residents are 1 percent of the Minneapolis population, but were 4 percent of people killed in vehicle crashes and 5 percent of people killed in pedestrian and bicycle crashes between 2011 and 2019. Black residents are similarly overrepresented in fatal vehicle crashes in Minneapolis (26% of traffic deaths vs. 19% of population) and underrepresented in pedestrian and bicycle deaths (16%). White, Latino, and Asian residents are slightly less likely to die in a vehicle crash.
Traffic crashes and severe and fatal traffic crashes are more concentrated in Transportation Equity Priority areas 1 and 2 identified in the Racial Equity Framework for Transportation (28% of residents live in these areas, which had 43% of severe and fatal crashes).
Racial data are not collected for traffic crashes that do not involve a death. This plan includes an action to work toward including race as part of the Minnesota standard traffic crash report in order to better understand traffic crash trends by race.
| Inform | Yes |
| Consult | Yes |
| Involve | No |
| Collaborate | No |
| Empower | No |
This plan is informed by extensive engagement on the Transportation Action Plan, engagement on the original Vision Zero Action Plan, feedback from the 2022 Vision Zero survey, and feedback on recent street projects and street safety projects.
While there are many different—and sometimes competing—perspectives, we have heard several themes through our engagement:
• strong support for improving traffic safety, especially for people with disabilities and people walking or biking;
• increasing concern about aggressive driving and speeding;
• a desire for the City to rapidly improve street safety; and
• hope that the City can equitably improve traffic enforcement.
Engagement in 2019 that informs this plan included:
--Community dialogues with 7 communities in Minneapolis (in partnership with NCR and Youth Coordinating Board and many co-hosted with staff working on the Strategic and Racial Equity Action Plan): African American, East African, Latino, Native American, Southeast Asian, People with Disabilities, Minneapolis Youth Congress. Key findings and how those findings are here.
--Community contracts: we partnered with 6 community organizations, neighborhood groups and artists to extend our engagement reach. The organizations were: Comunidades Latinas Unidas en Servicio (CLUES), Harrison Neighborhood Association, Minneapolis Highrise Representative Council, Move Minnesota, Seward Redesign and West Bank Community Development Corporation, and Streetcorner Letterpress. Key findings are here.
--On-street surveying in English, Spanish, Somali, and Hmong along High Injury Streets focused in areas where a majority of residents are people of color.
New engagement for this plan update was through the 2022 Vision Zero survey, which was conducted primarily online with in-person collection at a few community events. Note that the survey does not provide a representative sample of Minneapolis: Black, Indigenous, Latino, and Asian residents are underrepresented as are people younger than 35, residents of North and Southeast, and people with household incomes below $50,000. In that survey, we did see strong support across demographics for more measures to help achieve slower and safer traffic speeds on busier streets.
Advancing equity is a key goal for the Vision Zero Action Plan. We are working eliminate racial disparities in traffic crashes. The plan also acknowledges and is working to address racial disparities in traffic stops (Black residents are 19% of Minneapolis population, but 54% of traffic stops involved Black individuals from 2017 to 2020).
The City issues annual Vision Zero reports. Those cover progress on key strategies and report on these performance metrics:
- Change in total combined number of traffic deaths and severe injuries, including breakdown by mode, age, race, and whether it was in a Transportation Equity Priority 1 or 2 area
- Percentage change in drivers exceeding 30 miles per hour and median traffic speeds on select streets
- Percentage of High Injury Streets with new traffic safety treatments
- Miles of four-lane undivided High Injury Streets converted to safer configurations
- Number of total intersections with new traffic safety treatments, listed separately by those with design changes and those with traffic signal-related changes
- Percentage of new street safety treatments in Transportation Equity Priority 1 or 2 areas
- Number of residents reached by Vision Zero engagement work, including breakdown of those reached by City staff-led engagement and engagement led by community- and culturally-based organizations
- Percentage change in traffic stops that are of people of color
- Percentage of traffic stops focused on the top five unsafe behaviors on Minneapolis streets
The City issues annual Vision Zero reports, which are maintained on our website.