Milwaukee Again Wants Commuter Rail Added To Highway-Only Transportation Plan

Milwaukee city leaders have again asked highway planners to shift $200 million in state I-94 expansion funding to launch the pending Kenosha-Racine-Milwaukee commuter rail line.

That would leave $1.7 billion intact to repair and rebuild I-94 from Milwaukee to the Illinois, but would begin to balance somewhat the one-sided transportation spending formula in southeastern Wisconsin with some rail investment.

And would focus on bringing people into these cities, instead of emphasizing driving through and past them.

Do not expect the state to comply with the city's request: the state and the regional planning commission (SEWRPC) remain wedded to a 50-year, highway-only transportation template.

These agencies, serving the road-building industry, will not change even as gasoline approaches the $4-per-gallon barrier, close to double the price used in the planners' projections when the overall $6.5 billion freeway expansion and rebuilding scheme was conceived a few year ago.

The state is forging ahead with these expenditures even as state budgets are shrinking, but the politics of incumbency are so strong, and so self-interested, that most elected officials, regardless of party, will keep handing the road-builders what they want.

And these days, the road-builders are telling us the sky will fall if full highway funding isn't approved at the Capitol - - in just eight days!

And as this is an election year, don't look for office-holders at the State Capitol to come out in favor of transit.

2008 could easily go down as the Year Of The Missed Opportunity, when gasoline prices spiked, but politicians - - other than Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett and his aldermanic allies - - still didn't have the courage to tell their constituents the truth about energy costs, putting off the tough decisions to yet another year, and another election cycle.