DOT
to seek expansion study OK soon, SEWRPC boss says DOT's Busalacchi echoes comments
at meeting
Sept.
25, 2004 -- Gov. Doyle and the Wisconsin
Department of Transportation will probably seek
funding in the upcoming state budget to start
the studies that will determine whether area freeways
are expanded, SEWRPC Executive Director Philip
Evenson told a Common Council committee.
Meanwhile,
state Department of Transportation Secretary Frank
Busalacchi said the state was about to decide
what huge freeway project to tackle next, according
to the Waukesha Freeman.
Busalacchi,
speaking Thursday at a Marquette Interchange public
meeting, said the state will decide in the next
30 days which should be done first: the reconstruction
of the Zoo Interchange, or reconstruction of bridges,
frontage roads and interchanges in Racine and
Kenosha counties.
SEWRPC
has recommended an expanded Zoo Interchange that
would require the destruction of 19 homes, a business,
and two government buildings. The recommended
Interchange would consume an additional 53 acres.
Some .7 of an acre of primary environmental corridor
or -- -- the most sensitive environmental land
-- -- would be converted to freeway.
Listen to Ald. Michael Murphy talk about freeway
congestion during a recent meeting of the Common
Council's Zoning, Neighborhoods and Development
Committee. Listen carefully, and you will hear
SEWRPC Executive Director Phil Evenson agree!
Here's Ald. Robert Bauman on the makeup of the
SEWRPC-selected advisory committee that advanced
the recommendation.
Those
razings also would be required under a SEWRPC
alternative proposal for design and safety improvemenmts
without expansion, although the agency has not
been specific about how much the design changes
would improve safety.
Under
SEWRPC's expansion recommendation, reconstructing
the interchange would cost $412 million in 2000
dollars.
SEWRPC
has recommended a $6 billion freeway expansion
plan that calls for lanes lanes be added to 127
miles of area freeway.
Busalacchi,
a former Teamsters union president, was a member
of the SEWRPC freeway advisory committee that
worked on the plan and was strong advocate for
expansion.
In
his appearance before the council's Zoning, Neighborhoods
and Development Committee, Evenson said that preliminary
engineering studies, which would be a precursor
to freeway reconstruction, would allow WisDOT
a chance to revisit SEWRPC's expansion recommendation.
The
Common Council is on record opposing expansion
in Milwaukee.
"Sooner
or later, probably in the next budget bill, I
would expect WisDOT and the secretary and the
governor to announce that they will seek the money
to do what are relatively expensive engineering
studies. I don’t know what the segments
are going to be – It might be Racine-Kenosha,
it might be the Waukesha-Milwaukee, it might be
others," he said.
"When they get to those studies, the issue
of expansion will certainly be revisited,"
he said. "The law requires it if nothing
else. They’ve got to produce an environmental
impact analysis, they’ve got to do EISs,
they've got to look at all the alternatives, so
that issue will definitely be revisited.
Coalition
challenges SEWRPC certification SHNA among them
Sept.
25, 2004 -- A coalition of individuals
and groups is challenging
the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission’s
recertification as the recognized metropolitan planning
organization for the area, organizers of the effort
announced.
The
Story Hill Neighborhood Association is among those
challenging SEWRPC.
“We
believe that SEWRPC hasn’t lived up to either
its ethical or legal obligations to represent the
interests of all residents of our community,”
said Robert Trimmier, co-chair of Citizens Allied
for Sane Highways and a resident of Story Hill.
Every
three years, the federal government has to certify
that a metropolitan planning organization is following
federal laws and requirements, including civil rights
and environmental justice requirements. SEWRPC is
up for recertification this year. The Federal Highway
Administration will hold a public hearing on the
matter Tuesday, Sept. 28 at the Downtown
Transit Center, 909 E. Michigan St. Registration
begins at 6:30 p.m. with testimony starting about
7 p.m.
As
the region’s MPO, SEWRPC makes recommendations
about transportation, land-use and natural resource
issues and sets priorities for federal funding of
projects. The agency, however, often has ignored
the concerns of minority and low-income residents.
When studying expansion of I-94/I-43 and other freeways,
for example, SEWRPC never made meaningful efforts
to comply with federal rules requiring it to involve
low income and minority communities, including residents
who do not speak English, in the planning process.
If
SEWRPC’s exclusionary planning practices lead
to the denial of its certification as MPO, the region
could lose up to 20% of federal transportation funding.
The Federal Transit Administration and FHWA may
also withhold approval for some or all transportation
projects in the region.
“SEWRPC
didn’t do freeways the ‘fair way,’”
said Chris Ahmuty, ACLU of Wisconsin Executive Director.
“Its $6.25 billion highway rebuilding plan
doesn’t deal with the transit needs of poor
families. It hasn’t dealt with the health
and pollution effects that widening highways will
have on central city families.”
SEWRPC
is now offering to do “Smart Growth”
planning for suburban communities, but it does not
appear that SEWRPC’s version of Smart Growth
will seriously consider the need for affordable,
integrated housing in the suburbs, or the needs
of central city residents who must commute to suburban
jobs.
"It's
imperative for SEWRPC to carefully consider the
impact its planning products and processes have
on addressing and ultimately dismantling barriers
to housing choice in Southeastern Wisconsin,”
said Kori Schneider, program manager of the Community
and Economic Development Program of the Metropolitan
Milwaukee Fair Housing Council. “That's something
SEWRPC isn't doing now."
The
FHWA also is accepting written testimony through
Oct. 15.
Comments
can be sent by e-mail to
wisconsin.fhwa@fhwa.dot.gov
or
by snail mail to
Planning
Certification Review
Federal Highway Administration
567 D’Onofrio Dr, Suite 100
Madison, WI 53719
or
by fax to
608-829-7526
SEWRPC
freeway plan rapped in new study
Sept.
19, 2004 -- Adoption of the SEWRPC freeway
expansion plan will put entry-level jobs further
out of reach of poor city residents, according to
a new study.
The
plan also would “significantly compromise
the region’s ability to address shortcomings
with public transit and other non-automobile-related
transportation infrastructure,” the study
says.
The
$6.2 billion freeway expansion plan recommended
by the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning
Commission will “consume a substantial share”
of state and federal transportation funding, leaving
little to support transit, including the Milwaukee
County Transit System, political science and urban
studies Professor Joel Rast wrote in the UWM Center
for Economic Development study.
"We
find SEWRPC's recommendations that more than $700
million be spent for construction of new highway
lanes particularly objectionable," the study
said. Residents would be better served if the SEWRPC
plan were scaled back and the money saved used to
fund mass transit impromvements, the study said.
Milwaukee
residents dependent on public transportation –
the majority of them poor, according to census data
– already face commutes of more than an hour
to get to most companies likely to have entry level
job openings, according to the study.
Rast
If
the SEWRPC plan is adopted and transportation money
flows excessively to highway construction, Rast
wrote, “Ultimately, we will find ourselves
with two transportation systems, separate and unequal--one,
a state-of-the-art highway network whose principal
beneficiaries are white, middle-class suburban residents;
the other, an underfunded public transit system
serving as the transportation of last resort for
the region’s least privileged residents.”
More
on freeways! Listen to Prof. Robert Greenstreet's
comments about the Park East, made last week at
the 1000 Friends of Wisconsin luncheon in Milwaukee.
Greenstreet is dean of the UWM School of Architecture
and Urban Planning and is director of planning and
design for the City of Milwaukee.
There
are 29,386 families living in poverty in the four-county
region, with 81% of those living in Milwaukee and
90% living in Milwaukee County, Rast wrote. Census
data show 42.1% of households in poverty in the
four-county area do not have access to an automobile;
for households above the poverty line, that figure
is 8.8%.
Reliance
on public transportation correlates strongly with
income and race, Rast found. Twenty-six percent
of bus commuters in the region have household incomes
below $20,000, while just 7% of all commuters have
incomes that low; in Milwaukee, 67% of bus commuters
are minorities.
“Public
transportation is likely to play a decisive role
in efforts to connect low-income residents with
job opportunities in the region,” Rast wrote.
He
found, however, that getting to employers most likely
to hire entry-level workers requires long commutes
for many poor residents. For people living in the
city's west side Washington Park / Walnut Hill neighborhood,
“only 40.4 percent of businesses with strong
hiring projections for entry level workers are located
within ¼ mile of bus lines and reachable
within a one-hour commute,” he wrote. For
near South Side residents, he said, the number falls
to to 32.4 percent.
“Many
low-income households do not have access to an automobile,
and public transportation is inadequate to enable
them to reach a large percentage of potential employers,”
Rast wrote.
Rast's
full report is available here.
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