The City of Minneapolis is planning to convert Hennepin Avenue from two lanes to one lane each way for automobiles. The remaining space will be used for bus lanes and spacious bike lanes.
Carbon emissions will go up, as cars will either be trapped in congestion on Hennepin Avenue or take much longer routes.
Hennepin Ave. businesses lose.
Businesses have already fled, leaving vacant storefronts along Hennepin and Lake. Families with children travel the most and will be most impacted. Women, the elderly and people of color commute on bikes at much lower rates than young white men (according to the U.S. Census) and will have their mobility diminished.
How did the "bike lobby" do it?
Now maybe you opposed this change. Maybe you wrote a letter or went to a public hearing to talk about how this will negatively impact your personal life or your business or your family. You were no match for the Minneapolis Bicycle Coalition, doing business under the name, “Our Streets Minneapolis.”
Automated email chains
They generated 44,000 emails in support of bus and bike lanes. They sent supporters to confront elected officials and made it look like an overwhelming number of people want bus and bike lanes, despite the fact that less than 4% of trips are by bicycle and that most of those are recreational riders.
Writing one letter or showing up one time meant nothing because of the tactics of this group.
How did this tiny group overwhelm a public process? First, they have 10,000 people on their Twitter feed and 10,000 people on their Facebook feed. They send out hundreds of thousands of emails a year. Their posts are then cross-posted with other groups like Take Action Minnesota, the Sierra Club and MPD150.
National lobby
They are also cross-posted to national groups, which is why there were people from Portland testifying virtually in support of bike and bus lanes, despite knowing little about our community or our climate.
Probably the most effective at overwhelming elected officials is www.actionnetwork.org. A group can write a pre-written email and set it to send to 100 people with one push of a button. There is no check that it is an actual person sending the email, no check the person is an actual resident of Minneapolis, nothing that limits a person from sending thousands of these emails under various names.
Before, it took only a couple of emails to get an elected official’s attention. Now, our elected officials get hundreds and hundreds of emails generated electronically, making it very hard for them to know the actual concerns of their constituents.
Actionnetwork.org also uses surveys, petitions, mobile messaging and other tools. Maybe most insidious, it can be set to automatically contact people, exhorting them without any work from the group. Through these tools, they have overwhelmed our political process and Hennepin Avenue is set to be altered to accommodate their demands despite overwhelming opposition.
Local vocies were drowned out.
Most people don’t want bike lanes on Hennepin Avenue, yet this well-funded group has been able to use social media tools to drown out the voices of those who will be most affected by the changes.
Elected officials need to be aware of the tactics of these groups. They are much less successful when they are understood. The City also needs to change its citizen input processes. In-person meetings, requirements for physical addresses, disclosure of whether people are residents and posting paper notices of meetings are just a start.
It is time our elected officials listen to those they serve, not to electronically generated emails from those they don’t.
