Committee advances bill narrowing MnDOT greenhouse-gas impact rules after technical briefing and hours of testimony

The Minnesota House Transportation Committee on March 10 voted 8-7 to advance House File 748, a bill that would revise the statewide greenhouse-gas impact assessment that applies to trunk highway expansion projects, after a daylong presentation by Minnesota Department of Transportation officials and nearly two hours of public testimony.

MnDOT Assistant Commissioner John Solberg and Chris Behrens, MnDOT's greenhouse gas impact assessment program director, described the department's implementation of a 2023 law that requires greenhouse-gas (GHG) and vehicle-miles-traveled (VMT) assessments for certain expansion projects — defined in statute as lane additions of 2,500 feet or more or new grade separations — and the technical advisory committee (TAC) formed to advise the agency.

Solberg said the assessment requirement took effect for projects beginning Feb. 2025, and that MnDOT has identified roughly three to six trunk-highway projects a year that would typically meet the expansion threshold. He told the committee the TAC has drafted assessment procedures and that MnDOT expects to publish the procedure this month. Solberg and Behrens described a multi-step assessment that estimates lifecycle VMT and applies federal emission factors, and they listed nine categories of mitigation allowed by law and said the commissioner has authority to approve additional offsets.

Committee members and witnesses pressed MnDOT on methodology, cost and timing. MnDOT staff and county engineers said mitigation costs vary widely by location and mitigation choice. Solberg told lawmakers that, in simple terms, mitigation generally adds roughly 5% to 30% to project construction cost, noting the lower end is likelier in rural settings. County engineers and local officials cited examples from technical reviews that showed much higher proportional mitigation costs: testimony included an example in Jordan where a TAC estimate indicated the mitigation would require 68 miles of bike trails at a notional cost of $34 million or 2.25 miles of sidewalk at an estimated $22.5 million — roughly 30% to 40% of some project budgets in examples presented to the committee.

Local officials and the Minnesota County Engineers Association urged changes to the law, saying highway capacity and safety projects are already underfunded and that the current assessment/mitigation process is expensive, untested and administratively unclear. Several county and city engineers also urged delaying program implementation to allow more time for developing defendable, repeatable tools; House File 748 as amended extends implementation timelines and narrows the set of projects that would trigger assessments, while removing the VMT metric from required mitigation in some versions favored by proponents.

Safety advocates and active-transportation groups opposed the bill changes. Alyssa Shuffman, interim executive director of Move Minnesota, testified that increased walking, biking and transit options both reduce emissions and prevent crashes, and cited an analysis that a 20% per-capita reduction in driving by 2050 would prevent thousands of deaths and injuries. Sierra Club and Move Minnesota asked lawmakers to leave the original law intact and give MnDOT flexibility to implement it.

After amendments were adopted by the committee, the committee approved advancing the bill to the General Register on a roll-call vote reported in committee as 8 ayes and 7 nays.

Key points in testimony and record: - Implementation timing: MnDOT said the assessment requirement for qualifying projects began Feb. 2025; MnDOT noted that program-level assessment work is slated to begin in 2027 to affect projects entering the program thereafter. - Project volume: MnDOT estimated approximately three to six trunk-highway expansion projects would meet the statutory threshold annually. - Cost estimates: MnDOT staff estimated mitigation could add roughly 5%–30% to project costs depending on location and measures; local examples presented to the committee showed mitigation in some spot analyses that would amount to roughly 20%–40% of a project's cost. - Mitigation examples: Jordan interchange TAC review (example presented by Scott County) — estimated need for 68 miles of bike trails ($34 million) or 2.25 miles of sidewalks ($22.5 million) to offset modeled emissions increases in that example.

The bill now moves to the House General Register for further consideration.