Urbanist Spokesman Helps McIlheran Understand Our Freeways

Steve Filmanowicz, communications director for the Congress for the New Urbanism, is trying to talk sense about our freeways to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's Patrick McIlheran.

McIlheran is the paper's in-house conservative columnist who recently said the $1.9 billion price tag projected for the 35-mile improvement along I-94 from Milwaukee to Illinois, at $54 million a mile, seemed like a bargain.

Filmanowicz, a former colleague of mine in former Milwaukee Mayor John Norquist's office (both Norquist and Filmanowicz work at CNU's Chicago office) made his arguments against the wasteful highway plan in a letter to the editor - - and through the miracle of The Internets - - the letter has reappeared on a Franklin, Wisconsin blog, "Sprawled Out."

Check it out.

(I posted an item sometime ago about the relative lack of congestion on Milwaukee's freeways - - but only because Steve wrote it. So kudos to him, again, and to CNU, where he and Norquist, the organization's President and CEO, are setting a national standard for research and action on transit and other urban design components.)