Tuesday, October 6, 2015

Given the potholes, more big-project WI road-building is crazy

How about supporting transit, and fixing what we have before sucking up again to the road-builders and adding more highway lanes?

Millennials are declining car ownership and boomers are moving away from car-dependent 'burbs for walkable, transit-served neighborhoods.

The last thing Wisconsin needs is more debt to pay for unnecessary highway lanes that will soon require their own maintenance, plowing, patrolling - - and eventual expansion.

3 comments:

kjbe said...

It escapes me how they cannot do the math.

Anonymous said...

Wisconsin's existing roads are a mess. Let's fix what we have rather than build new roads. What on earth is Walker thinking? Oh....that's right ....if you give money to counties to fix their roads they don't make any financial contributions back to the Republican candidates like the road builders do!

Bill Sell said...

James, if you didn't see it, there is good news. The Coalition for More Responsible Transportation led a state-wide campaign along these lines, protesting the widening of I94 in Milwaukee and demanding a transit option. We have a temporary victory - an audit of WISDOT traffic projection formulas, which have now been shown to have been wrong ahead of many of WisDOT's successful highway widenings. The majority party could not resolve its own divisions between not raising taxes and not borrowing money. So the state budget stalled some big ticket plans (including I94 in Milwaukee) to wait for the audit. The campaign is not over. But the reprieve has been sweet.