'Balanced Transportation:' The Same Old Same Old.

Balanced Transportation: You want the details?

Gretchen Schuldt and storyhill.net tell you all you need to know about state transportation plans in the 2007-09 budget that the legislature completed and sent to Gov. Jim Doyle for a signature.

Significant for Milwaukee is a two-year prohibition against expanding I-94 over the national veterans cemetery on the south side of the interstate just west of Miller Park.

The transportation department, as part of the regional planning commission's $6.5 billion freeway reconstruction and expansion proposal, would like to build elevated lanes between Miller Park and the Story Hill neighborhood, where several cemeteries, including Wood National, are hard by the interstate.

The budget also ramps up spending on two more pieces of the I-94 corridor when the Marquette Interchange project is finished in 2008.

This includes money to begin the south segment from the airport to the state line, and also to fast-track reconstruction, lane and ramp expansion in the Zoo Interchange near the Milwaukee/Waukesha County line, where I-894 and State Highway 45 connect with I-94.

Demands to include planning for the Zoo Interchange while the southern leg nearer the Illinois border were included in the budget as a sop to Republican legislators, whose constituents are being sold on the idea that all this freeway reconstruction and expansion will actually knock off about four minutes from their daily commutes to Milwaukee.

WisDOT's website cautions, of course, that no decisions have been made about the design and other elements of the Zoo Interchange project, reminding me of former Milwaukee Mayor John Norquist's observation that there were only two phases to Wisconsin highway projects.

"Too early to know" was phase one.

"Too late to do anything about it" was phase two.

All in all, the highway lobby made out like a bandit in the state budget, while transit got crumbs - - bringing to mind another Norquist observation about 'balanced' transportation policy in Wisconsin.

"Balanced transportation in Wisconsin," he said, "is half concrete, half asphalt."