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Zoo Interchange area expanded.

WisDOT:No invasives control this year.

Zoo Interchange work to delay work on part of Hank Aaron Trail.

WisDOT ducked on global warming issues, records show

June 16, 2008 - A key member of the Governor's Task Force on Global Warming is ripping the Wisconsin Department of Transportation for its deliberate refusal to provide requested feedback on recommendations and the agency's contradictory assertions about its level of involvement in task force deliberations.

WisDOT "clamped down and said, 'Don't cooperate with anybody,' " said Steve Hiniker, co-chair of the task force's Transportation Work Group. "They decided to duck under their desks."

WisDOT, seeking approval to expand North-South I-94 and thus add to greenhouse gases, told federal officials that the agency was an "active partner" on the task force, "providing input as part of the Transportation Work Group."

WisDOT made the assertion in the final environmental impact statement for the project.

Five days before WisDOT signed off on the document, however, agency Executive Assistant Christopher Klein told Hiniker that "we didn't have a seat at the table" during work group deliberations.

"We were provided an opportunity to attend in the room and listen," Klein said.

Documents obtained through an open records request also show that WisDOT did its best to avoid providing requested feedback to the work group.

"See me on Monday," wrote Rory Rhinesmith, WisDOT statewide bureaus operations director to WisDOT staffer Patricia Trainer on March 6. "Chris wants to take a low-key approach to this right now."

Trainer is section chief of WisDOT's
Bureau of Equity and Environmental Services.

On March 17, Rhinesmith wrote to Klein: "I have told Pat to take a low key approach and stay away from commenting on the Global Warming Task Force policy templates. Are we still comfortable with that approach?"

On March 19, WisDOT policy analyst John Glaze wrote to Trainer: "It appears...that Steve Hiniker is placing the lack of WisDOT response on the two of us. It's my understanding that Kris Klein (sic) has directed us not to respond....How are we faring in this exchange between Steve and Kris?"

Privately, a WisDOT official blasted the work recommendations from the group.

"I have some difficulty commenting on this paper as there is virtually nothing in it that would be usable in a professionally developed report on this topic," wrote Rod Clark, WisDOT's Bureau of Transit, Local Roads, Railroads and Harbors, in an internal email. "My detailed comments would amount to a complete re-write of this paper, which is what is needed....The issues are so badly defined and the programmatic context so inaccurately described, that the recommendations will have no credibility when released publicly."

Hiniker described Clark as "a bureaucrat who has presided over the decline of transit over the past several decades."

Hiniker, in an interview, said WisDOT never shared the analysis or provided the requested feedback.

"They have not been active partners," he said. "DOT's response has been entirely inadequate. They just sit back in their cubicles and do nothing."

WisDOT must become more than an agency that lets contracts, Hiniker said.

"Nothing was cheaper than gas when we built our tranportation system," Hiniker said. "We live in a different world. We need to completely reinvent the Department of Transportation."

"I never got any feedback from DOT," he said. "It's probably just as well. We still have a very good product and I'm looking forward to moving forward."

Zoo Interchange project area expanded

May 28, 2008 -- The Zoo Interchange reconstruction area has been significantly expanded, bringing it further into Milwaukee and closer to Story Hill, according to the Wisconsin Department of Transportation.

The project area now extends from N. 70th St. on the east to N. 124th St. on the west, and from W. Burleigh St. on the north to W. Lincoln Ave. on the south.

Originally, project boundaries were 76th St. on the east, 116th St. on the west, the Union Pacific Railroad south of Greenfield Ave. on the south, and Center St. on the north.

No cost estimates for the project yet are available.

The boundary changes follow a pattern set with the North-South I-94 reconstruction area, which WisDOT expanded after the first wave of public attention to the project faded.

Enlarging the Zoo Interchange area is a safety issue, according to the consulting team working on the project -- auxiliary lanes can be built from on-ramps at Greenfield Ave., 84th St., and North Ave. to the next exit ramps at Lincoln Ave., 70th St., and Burleigh St., respectively.

Constructing the auxiliary lanes -- which are designed to improve the operations of the freeway rather than add traffic capacity -- will cut down on weaving and speed changes by some drivers getting on and off the freeway, according to the consultants.

Lengthening the western leg will allow drivers more distance to get up to freeway speeds before having to merge, with other traffic lanes.

The Department of Transportation last week presented seven design alternatives for the Zoo Interchange project. Four of them, though, likely are not under serious consideration because they do not change left-hand exit and entrance ramps to right-hand ramps, as WisDOT prefers to do.

The remaining three alternatives do not call for additional traffic lanes along the freeway, but would make room to add lanes in the future, if studies call for them.

The three most likely alternatives have varying degrees of negative impacts, ranging from the potential razing of the Boy Scout headquarters and a fire station on S. 84th St., to reducing the size of the Honey Creek Corporate Center near State Fair Park, to relocation of major We Energies infrastructure, to destroying a varying number of homes.

Ald. Michael Murphy, who represents the Zoo Interchange areas, said the most damaging of the alternatives could remove millions of dollars from the city's property tax rolls.

WisDOT will hold another public meeting May 29 to present the alternatives. The meeting will be from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. at Wauwatosa West High School 11400 W. Center St., Wauwatosa.

WisDOT: No invasives control this year

May 19, 2008 -- The Wisconsin Department of Transportation will not make efforts to control invasive species along its rights of way this year, again electing to shift significant costs to local governments and private property owners.

"Available funds are being used to meet critical needs," WisDOT spokeswoman Peg Schmitt said in an email. "We do not anticipate funding being available for invasive plant control in 2008."

The $24 million increase that WisDOT got for highway maintenance for the biennium during the regular budget process is not enough to resume invasive species control, she said. Highway maintenance and operations funding was set at $44.3 million.

"It is still far less than what the department and Governor Doyle identified as the level
needed to meet the costs of caring for the state highway system," she said.

The budget repair bill Doyle signed last week adds another $24.8 million for county highway maintenance to deal with the effects of the harsh winter.

WisDOT dropped invasive plant control efforts -- even for those invasives the law mandates be eradicated -- iin 2004. Both the Milwaukee Common Council and the Milwaukee County Board have adopted resolutions requesting WisDOT to resume invasives control.

WisDOT, in its Final Draft Environmental Impact Statement for the North-South I-94 project, acknowledged that transportation corridors can aggravate the spread of invasives.

"Linear corridors, such as highways, can foster the movement of invasive plant species," WisDOT said. "WisDOT will work with DNR (Department of Natural Resources) during the design phase to develop and assess the feasibility of measures to minimize spread of invasive species.

About $137 billion is spent annually in the United States to control invasive species, according to the Department of Natural Resources. That amount is increasing. Control of buckthorn -- an invasive that thrives on WisDOT property --costs $500-$2,000 per acre over several years.

"About 42% of the species on the federal Threatened or Endangered species lists are at risk primarily because of invasive species," according to the DNR.

Zoo Interchange work to delay Hank Aaron trail extension

(For more video on the Hank Aaron Trail and the Menomonee Valley, click here.)