If you live in the suburbs, trying to find safe streets for bicycling and walking can make you feel like Don Quixote, alone in a sea of opposition.
But in the west metro suburbs, there’s a new hope dawning. Since June 2025, a cadre of advocates called the West Metro Active Transportation Alliance (WMATA – not to be confused with the other WMATA), has been holding monthly meetings and hosting events to build common cause around better sidewalks and bike lanes.
More importantly, they’re starting to talk to city councils and public works engineers in places like St. Louis Park, Edina, Minnetonka, Eden Prairie and Hopkins – Minneapolis suburbs that form the heart of Twin Cities regional politics. The hope is that, given time, they’ll find momentum that leads to change on the ground, like interconnected bike routes that could make a car-free life safe and dignified for thousands of suburban residents.
The group was started by Sylvie Hyman, a teacher who lives in St. Louis Park and bikes to work at nearby Hopkins High School. She’s been a daily cyclist in the west metro for years and has a long list of bad experiences to show for it. For too long, she’s been the only one at community meetings calling for bike lanes and safe intersections, often outnumbered by others complaining about traffic and parking.
That ratio is starting to change.
The goal “is to have a critical mass of advocates in the west metro able to support each other,” said Luke Van Santen, a transportation engineer (and daily cyclist) who has taken on a leadership role with WMATA. “So it doesn’t continue to be like it has been for years, where Sylvie is kind of the lone voice in St. Louis Park, and I’m the lone voice in Minnetonka, and, you know, there’s maybe a couple voices in Hopkins or Eden Prairie.”
WMATA’s core territory comprises a number of populous, wealthy Minneapolis suburbs where nearly all of the streets are uniformly designed for fast car travel. Anyone walking or biking to get somewhere is shunted to fragmented side paths or winding cul-de-sacs.
The recreational trails can be quite nice, thanks to the Three Rivers Park District. But if you try to use your bike to actually get anywhere – say to work, or a friend’s house or the store – it’s another story. Cycling for transportation in the west metro can quickly become a heinous game of Frogger featuring railroads, freeways and fast-moving STROADS (wide, suburban four-lane roads where traffic averages 50 miles an hour).
“In the west metro, many people see biking as nothing more than recreation,” Van Santen said. “So you drive with your bike to the trailhead at the Depot, and you get on one of those beautiful trails, and you ride out to Chaska maybe, and then you come back and get in your car and go home.”
What would be much better, he said, would be to “just hop on your bike at your house.”
Today, that’s a major challenge. Alongside the barriers already mentioned, bikers have to navigate winding streets that don’t connect in all directions (which was a feature, not a bug, of 20th century urban planning). The maze can turn trying to get somewhere into a dangerous circus performance.
That leads to the puzzle that WMATA is trying to solve: How to get disparate suburban cities to build out a shared network of safer streets and connections that can transform suburbia into a safe space for people who don’t or can’t drive a car.
It’s hard work. Most of the group’s efforts have been quixotic so far, but there are signs that coordinated advocacy might be paying off. For example, WMATA failed to convince the Edina City Council to support a bike lane on Wooddale Avenue, but their engagement was a good first step. Similarly, a failure to remove a lane from a dangerous roundabout in St. Louis Park at least led to recognition at the Council.
Elsewhere, there are signs of progress. Van Santen is proud that, thanks to WMATA advocacy, the city of Minnetonka recently added a bike lane on Cedar Lake Road. It’s still too narrow, but as far as he knows, it’s the first time a bike lane symbol has ever appeared on a Minnetonka street.
“You gotta start somewhere,” Van Santen said. “And that’s the really incremental Overton window shift,” he said, referring to the evolution of acceptable public policy.
It’s possible the Green Line Extension, opening next year, will further move the needle toward more balanced streets. The project promises to center transit, walking and biking in a way that has never before happened in the west metro. Even policies like “parking minimum” zoning requirements, which are still on the books across the west metro, might start to wane as the transit system receives needed investment.
“I do think that the bike network is already improving, has improved and will continue to improve as a feeder for Green Line Extension without question,” said Hyman, who is anticipating the line’s opening day in June 2027.
WMATA recently hit a snag in St. Louis Park, where neighbors concerned about tree loss blocked a proposed bike lane on Brookside Avenue, a key north-south connection.
But even as the city postponed the project, city leaders promised to do more engagement with neighbors and safe streets advocates to come up with a solution. That’s a sign that WMATA has actually made progress in cities where bike lanes have long been missing.
WMATA will keep meeting – check out their calendar here – as long as Hyman, Van Santen and others have the energy to organize. While most streets may not look different than they have for years, the conversation is changing. And for anyone trying to find an alternative to suburban driving, that’s a good sign of things to come.
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