Trail Users
The Midtown Greenway is a 5.5-mile long former railroad corridor in south Minneapolis with bicycling and walking trails. It is owned by the Hennepin County Regional Railroad Authority and the trails are maintained by the City of Minneapolis. The Midtown Greenway Coalition is the grassroots organization that successfully advocated for installation of the Midtown Greenway by public agencies. The Coalition continues to engage our community in protecting, improving, and using the Greenway.
For most of its distance across the city, the corridor is grade-separated from the street grid, either in a gorge passing under bridges carrying streets overhead, or on a levy with traffic passing underneath it. This offers barrier-free bicycling that can make cross-town trips faster than going by car. To the west, the Greenway connects with paths around the Minneapolis Chain of Lakes and the Southwest LRT Trail extending to the western suburbs. To the east the Greenway connects with paths along the Mississippi River. The Greenway serves a very ethnically and economically diverse community. All the way across Minneapolis the Midtown Greenway runs parallel to nearby Lake Street, a commercial strip with hundreds of retailers, restaurants, and other businesses. The Greenway trails are plowed in the winter, lit at night, and open 24/7. Several thousand people use the Greenway each spring, summer, or fall day, and hundreds of hearty cyclists and runners use it each winter day no matter how cold or snowy.
The County’s long term plan for the corridor includes an express rail transit service operating alongside the trails and serving as an important part of a regional rail transit system. The Midtown Greenway Coalition supports this pursuit of rail transit in the Midtown Greenway.
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