Milwaukee Talk Radio Helped Kill Rail Options, Now Complaining About Road Congestion

Jeff Wagner is AM 620 WTMJ talk radio's second-banana, but that doesn't mean he can't create a laughingly large contradiction that veers into genre self-parody.

On his Monday program, Wagner was belly-aching about the year-long closing of the I-94 airport connecting spur due to regional freeway reconstruction and expansion - - a project that he and the other conservative talkers have  long-supported.

Yet he complained and he whined just like the kids in the back seat on a long road trip to Grandma's house: "Are we there yet, are we there yet?"

"A year...a year," Wagner whinnied, as if he didn't know the basics of highway construction.

And a reality he helped make concrete.

Jeepers, Jeff - - imagine that: Highway reconstruction bollixes things up and inconveniences motorists, especially those without alternatives, such as light rail, that are routinely available in many other cities.

Digression: then-Milwaukee Mayor John Norquist and I called Charlie Sykes morning program, live, from a light rail train as we rode into downtown St. Louis from that city's airport, just to report that we were safe and that there were no stranger attacks. This was sometime between 1996-'98, as I recall it. Good times.

But here's the truth:

Wagner has no one else but himself to blame, other than fellow talkers Sykes and Mark Belling, and legislators and governors of both parties, all of whom helped to shovel $6.5 billion of highway money to their road-builder friends, and into a one-dimensional regional transportation system, without a fresh nickel for rail alternatives.

They attacked the proposed commuter rail line - - killed by the new Republican majority in the legislature - - that would have connected Milwaukee, Kenosha and Racine, offering yet another alternative for these lakefront counties commuters planned to parallel the I-94 corridor under reconstruction all the way to the Illinois line, of which the airport connection and congestion is a piece.

And for the talkers, there was the self-serving ratings' bonus  - - ginning up suburban fears of urbanites riding trains to do bad things in your neighborhoods - - and righty talkers went out of their way to demolish even the planning for light rail.

So, lo all these years later, Milwaukee is light-rail free, which means you can't get to the airport on an urban train and could get caught in a traffic jam when your flight is being called.

Moreover, and with Wagner's enthusiastic blessing, Gov. Walker this year killed the federally-funded Milwaukee Amtrak extension to and from Madison, which could have funneled Dane County travelers directly to Mitchell International airport.

A lot of Dane County fliers come to Milwaukee because there are many more flights out of the big city. 

Now they'll have to get on I-94, where there's more road construction ahead.

Righty talk radio was all for the $1.7 billion, four-years-maybe-more-tie-up that is coming for the Zoo Interchange between Madison and Milwaukee that Scott Walker put on the fast track this year at the behest of Waukesha legislators.

The Zoo Interchange is where three major highways in a high-growth area create the state's busiest interchange, so that vital collection piece of the I-94 corridor west of Milwaukee is going to be a parking lot every morning and evening. 

And after that project comes the widening of I-94 west of the Zoo Interchange, all the way across Waukesha County to the Jefferson County line.

So own the congestion, brother Jeff, and stop whimpering about it.

One more suggestion:

Stop using "stuff" as an all-purpose noun.

The station should fine him $100 every time he says "stuff" when describing specific situations, facts, events, and realities.

Unless he wants to say that for the next decade, "stuff" is going to happen up and down I-94, and traffic stuffed behind orange barrels and into lane shifts was all directed there by talk radio and its political friends.