The I-94 Milwaukee freeway widening project has taken another lumbering step forward with the close of the comment period on the latest–and perhaps really final–environmental document.
This awful project has been in an on-and-off mode for years, and I have been involved in the fight throughout. My team and I were pleased to provide technical support to the alliance of environmental, community, and transportation reform groups which submitted extensive comments to the record in opposition (news release with link to the full comments here).
Right now in this space I just want to make a quick note of (1) what is wrong with the Wisconsin DOT widening proposal and (2) what the alternative is.
What’s wrong with the widening proposal? Well, the comments of the anti-widening coalition spell them out in great detail. The defects include disregarding air quality regulatory requirements, failing to consider public transportation options, ignoring the impacts on communities and racial equity, not considering in any detail the changing work and travel patterns initiated by the pandemic, and many others. But what stands out to me is the negligent refusal to see this project in the context of the climate crisis.
It’s amazing to me that any transportation professional could advocate adding through lanes to an urban freeway at this moment in history. We are facing a climate emergency, and those of us in the transportation world should be doing everything possible to find solutions that drive down vehicle miles traveled (VMT) while improving people’s opportunities for accessing desired destinations in safe, modern, sustainable ways. Widening freeways is not one of those solutions. In fact, there is a growing–I would say undeniable–body of evidence that new and expanded freeways induce more VMT, promote sprawl, and discourage transit use, while ultimately failing to move people more rapidly across the landscape.
What is the alternative? As it happens, I was tasked by the anti-widening coalition with putting together a detailed alternative, which was published in 2021 under the title “Fix at Six” (available here). The two main pillars of the alternative are: (1) rehab the existing facility within the current 6-lane footprint (hence “Fix at Six”) and (2) build a robust new east-west transit system, based on Bus Rapid Transit and commuter rail.
The current legacy infrastructure, the I-94 East-West Freeway, is definitely old and worn out, and if we are going to keep it in use it will need work. Wisconsin DOT dismissed the rehab-on-current-alignment approach out of hand, based on its conclusion that it would not get automobiles moving fast enough along the freeway in peak hours in 2050.
Fortunately there are excellent transit opportunities in the east-west corridor, especially for two bus rapid transit lines, which can be located on arterials running parallel to the freeway. One is actually under construction! First-rate bus rapid transit, a possible rail commuter line, bicycle and pedestrian improvements, and better land use will provide real, sustainable mobility on the corridor, without the destructive effects of highway widening.
The highway widening vs. fix-it-first debate has now actually been dragged into national partisan politics, with the new majority in the House of Representatives threatening legislative action to roll back the relatively modest attempt of the Biden administration to establish fix-it-first as national transportation policy (story here). This could lead to an actual, straight-up highway widening vs. fix-it-first vote on the floor of the House!
Meanwhile, Wisconsin policymakers, you need to fix this!
