The city of Minneapolis and Metro Transit are currently sorting out how to move buses off of Nicollet Mall. It’s something I wrote about back in 2023, when Mayor Jacob Frey’s Downtown Storefronts Initiative launched. Then, as now, I view the idea as a mixed bag. 

It’s entirely possible to improve transit performance through downtown, while also making Nicollet more attractive and vital. But without more specific plans in place, it’s hard to say whether the change would be an improvement. A lot depends on whether or not you think the city and the Downtown Council will be able to manage the details and create a space that’s welcoming and attractive to existing residents and downtown visitors alike, a tall order. 

One thing is for sure: Whatever the future holds for Nicollet Mall, the street should be attractive and comfortable for bicycling, scooting, wheelchairs and any other slow-moving means of conveyance. Placemaking efforts should center everyday people, because the last thing downtown needs is another too-precious symbolic landscape.

The curious case of transit malls

The idea of “transit malls” has always been strange, sort of like the American version of the futon: not quite one thing, and not quite another. In this case, the big idea was to create a pedestrian street that also has buses, but not ones that go very quickly. It’s a concept that emerged from a turbulent mid-century period when downtown had too much traffic, but was rapidly losing its place as an economic center. Fast forward to the 21st century and transit malls have since boasted a mixed track record.

Minneapolis’ most obvious parallel is Denver’s 16th Street Mall, designed by I. M. Pei in 1982 and roughly inspired by Nicollet. Denver’s downtown boasts a similar size and geographic centrality, and it’s notable that their city planners have completed an expensive $170 million reconstruction effort, involving years of disruptive construction. (That might sound familiar to downtown Minneapolis denizens who remember the 2010s.)

Today, Denver’s plans do not involve removing buses from their transit mall, instead improving the sidewalks and public realm in the hopes of attracting residential development. It’s an easier lift because, on the whole, Denver’s downtown sidewalks are far more vibrant. Without skyways, there’s an abundance of shops and doorways lining the street that make Minneapolis’ mall look almost abandoned. 

Madison’s State Street mall offers an even more successful local parallel, one of the true gems of Midwestern urbanism. With tens of thousands of college students and government workers, there’s hardly a blank wall to be found along the avenue, and the resulting window shopping experience attracts strollers from all across Wisconsin. In both of these cases, the ‘transit mall recipe’ works pretty well, as there are already plenty of attractive destinations along the street to sustain a critical mass.

On the other hand, the streetscape of Nicollet Mall was bleak even before the COVID pandemic decimated downtown crowds. Even under the best of circumstances, something needed to be done to liven the street, and the last five years have been anything but that. Nicollet Mall isn’t going to fix itself without dramatic intervention because its structural problems — especially the skyways — are too fundamental. The lack of doorways, shops, and everyday retail makes it, in all practical purposes, the opposite of Madison’s State Street. 

This is why Downtown leaders need to create use placemaking and programming to attract workers and residents out of the privatized comfort of the struggling skyways, all while bringing people in from the surrounding neighborhoods and suburbs. That will take some serious attraction — the Rochester example springs to mind — and it’s hard to see that happening with the sidewalk status quo.

What the bus removal does accomplish is to make space for something else to happen, and everything depends on what that ‘“something else” turns out to be. You can be sure that whatever success planners and the business community can conjure won’t come naturally to a street that, these days, is nearly devoid of active doorways. 

Bikes needed

This is why Nicollet Mall needs bikes, pedicabs and slow-speed mobility now more than ever. The street should turn into an array of wheeled vehicles and wanderers, a place where kids can run around a bit and you might even find skateboarders hanging out. That was always an awkward marriage with buses and their drivers who, after all, have an important job to do.

I’ve been bicycling in Minneapolis for over 20 years, which makes me old enough to remember when bikes were officially banned on Nicollet. Unofficially, nobody much enforced the rule, and pragmatic cyclists (like myself) routinely biked down the street despite the occasional blasé raised eyebrow from authority figures. The temptation of a car-free street was too appealing, given the alternatives for crossing downtown.

That policy was silly, given the street’s ostensible vibrancy goals, and thankfully the rule was rescinded in  2010. Funnily enough, things have swung in the opposite direction now, and it seems like buses will disappear and bicyclists (and other folks on wheels) will have free reign over the street. This is why it’s such a shame that Nice Ride bike sharing system disappeared. Those stations would have been the perfect amenity for a wide-open, pedestrianized Nicollet.

City leaders would do well to heed the golden rule that urbanist (and now city bicycle and pedestrian coordinator) Alex Schieferdecker laid out last year: First ask, how does this benefit residents? It’s the critical question surrounding any change. I think that it’s possible to thread the needle on Nicollet, moving transit to nearby streets with higher speeds while making Nicollet itself more attractive and engaging, but it won’t be easy.

There are plenty of great ideas that can easily coexist with active transportation. Rochester’s downtown activity menu offers a weekly public stage, farmer’s markets, street vending, and the like, offer a great example. There are plenty of other ideas that might be fun, but whatever they are, leaving room for bikes, skateboards, pedicabs, scooters, and anything else people can contrive is a necessary first step.

I’m cautiously optimistic. If Minneapolis leaders play their cards right, and spend a lot of time and money doing the right kind of placemaking, I think Nicollet might one day compete with the downtown main streets of other midwestern cities like Omaha, Denver, or even Madison. For Nicollet Mall, that would be a welcome change

Bill Lindeke

Bill Lindeke is a lecturer in Urban Studies at the University of Minnesota’s Department of Geography, Environment and Society. He is the author of multiple books on Twin Cities culture and history, most recently St. Paul: an Urban Biography. Follow Bill on Twitter: @BillLindeke.

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