Peter Lindstrom is one of 16 council members on the Met Council and represents District 10 which covers Falcon Heights, southern Roseville, Blaine, Circle Pines, northern Lexington and Anoka County. The Met Council is a regional policy-making body and a provider of essential services for the seven-county metro area. Our Executive Director Dana Healy spoke with Lindstrom on our Cites Speak podcast in early July about his work on the Met Council. 

Lindstrom has a lot of past experience working with cities. He previously served as mayor for Falcon Heights for 11 years and prior to that, eight years as City Council member. In addition, he’s a manager with Clean Energy Resource Teams at the University of Minnesota and has served on the boards of the Roseville Area School Foundation, Family Housing Fund, Falcon Heights, Lauderdale Lions Club, and North East Youth and Family Services.

The Met Council works on a variety of policies in the area. The most well-known area of the Met Council is Metro Transit where they create more accessible and convenient bus/light rail routes. However, they also do work with water-waste treatment, housing, and economic growth within cities. “We want to make sure that we are a region that fosters prosperity and equity,” said Lindstrom.

The Met Council works closely with local and state officials in the legislature to get policies written and adopted. Every ten years, cities and counties create comprehensive plans which are blueprints for how they want their cities to look in the future. “There’s a lot of working with our city partners to help envision what their city or what their county looks like in the next 10 years,” said Lindstrom. They also provide cities with community grants which are grants that go toward community development such as affordable housing and transportation expansion. “Those funds are funneled to important projects in our cities for roads, bridges, pedestrian friendly infrastructure, bike friendly infrastructure,” said Lindstrom. 

For Lindstrom, equity means more opportunities, and this is what the Met Council tries to provide to their communities. “We cannot, as a region, reach our full potential without equity being a core component to it,” said Lindstrom. Lindstrom acknowledges there is a wide range of disparities in the Twin Cities area, and that the government played a key role in this. “Government has played a huge role in creating these inequities and therefore, government should play a huge role in solving these inequities,” said Lindstrom. 

Investments in transit are investments in equity, according to Lindstrom. “Roughly about half of our riders are people of color, roughly about half are young people, 35 years old or younger, about 40% are low income folks that make $35,000 a year or less,” said Lindstrom. One transit project that was a huge success was the A-line Bus Rapid Transit. “The number of riders on the A-line from the previous route, which is the 84, that’s gone up 30% since we put in Bus Rapid Transit,” said Lindstorm. The new route runs off of Northwestern, Bethel, Boston Scientific, and more places that help provide more opportunities for transit users. There are plans to expand the route further to provide even more opportunities. 

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a dramatic impact on transit. “When March rolled around, it just plummeted like a rock and, and we have seen our ridership numbers drop 70%, 80%,” said Lindstrom. However, there was less of a drop on populations of people of color which, according to Lindstrom, is because the majority of essential workers are also people of color who depend on transit to get to work. 

If the readers are interested in learning more about the Met Council, you can head over to their website where you can not only view meetings and ask questions to the council, but also look into advisory committees within the Met Council and potentially apply if you’re interested.