Midtown Greenway

The Midtown Greenway is a 5.5-mile paved trail running through a below-grade corridor in south Minneapolis, connecting the Mississippi River to the Chain of Lakes. Built on a former Milwaukee Road rail trench, it opened in phases between 2000 and 2007 and has become one of the busiest bike commuter routes in Minnesota.

The railroad corridor dates to the late nineteenth century, when freight lines cut through what would become dense residential neighborhoods. When rail use declined, the trench sat largely dormant until community advocates and the city began converting it to a public trail in the late 1990s. The Midtown Greenway Coalition, a nonprofit, took on stewardship of the corridor and continues to maintain it year-round. The Martin Olav Sabo Bridge, a dedicated pedestrian and bicycle suspension span over Hiawatha Avenue, opened in 2007 and completed the grade-separated route across one of the trail's most difficult crossings.

The corridor runs directly through the part of south Minneapolis most affected by the unrest that followed the murder of George Floyd in May 2020. The Midtown Sheraton, which sits immediately adjacent to the trail, was used as a homeless shelter during that period and was subsequently boarded by police. A large encampment was cleared from the Greenway itself in December of that year, and the city installed new signage prohibiting camping along the route. Graffiti, murals, and posted flyers addressing policing, housing, and immigration have appeared along the retaining walls and bridge supports throughout the years since.

Infrastructure work along the corridor is ongoing. Aging street bridges are replaced on a rolling schedule, and the Southwest Light Rail Green Line Extension introduced a new station at Lake Street that is set to open in 2027. The reopening of Nicollet Avenue after the demolition of a former K-Mart building is also reshaping the streetscape at one of the Greenway's key crossings. Murals painted beneath bridges — some responding directly to the 2020 uprising, others addressing housing affordability and immigration — continue to accumulate along the route, making the retaining walls a running record of the neighborhoods the trail passes through.