Sometimes a highway project is so bad you wonder why it
keeps going. Institutional
inertia? Sunk cost fallacy? Inability to think of solutions outside
the covers of the AASHTO Green Book?
(In my old agency, the saying was that no project is dead until it’s
built!)
I am happy to report, as a member of the supporting cast in
the drama, that the proposed widening of I-94 in the East-West Corridor of
Milwaukee has been stopped (story here).
The proximate cause is no funding.
The deeper cause is that it was a project that would have caused far
more damage – at a huge cost – than any benefit it might have brought, and
consequently stirred up a vigorous opposition. Really, folks, crashing a freeway widening through the
middle of a city is no longer considered a responsible way to promote mobility
and accessibility.
Now, I-94 has plenty of physical condition and geometric problems
and Milwaukee’s East-West Corridor is definitely congested. And in fact the team opposing the
widening, led by WISPIRG, proposed a very responsible alternative, based on a
paper I did entitled “The Rehab/Transit Option: A Better Solution for Milwaukee’s
East-West Corridor” (available here).
As the name implies, the recommendation is to fix the physical condition
problems and isolated safety problems on I-94, while beginning to invest
heavily in transit in the corridor.
Milwaukee is one of the largest cities in the U. S. with no rapid
transit. Time to reboot!
FYI, my other reports on the subject addressed the problems
on I-94 (“WisDOT’s East-West Corridor Project: 20th century solutions to 21st century problems”) and the
economic development potential that first-rate transit can unlock at major
activity centers in the corridor (“Milwaukee’s Corridor to the Future: Creating a new paradigm for
transportation and development in the 21st century”).
Congrats to WISPIRG and all the coalition members for
stopping a bad project. Lots more
work to do to get the right solution going!
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