Weigh in Tuesday for transit & against I-94 expansion in Milwaukee

Milwaukeeans and residents statewide can take an action step Tuesday to confront two crises: burgeoning climate change-driven calamities which are flooding media and large swaths of the country, and systematic transportation service deficits in Southeastern Wisconsin which continue to fuel environmental and workforce injustices, too. 

Tuesday's public participation opportunity aims to pressure WisDOT to abandon its billion-dollar boondoggle to widen I-94 across Western Milwaukee residential neighborhoods, and create with those public dollars a project which emphasizes transit needs whose neglect has held back countless individuals, families, businesses and an entire region, as the Brookings Institution noted in a major, 2008 report about the entire Great Lakes region.

These few sentences from the report summed up then what cities like Milwaukee needed and still need now,   and presciently shed light on why the proposed I-94 widening adds only retrograde concrete, pollution, stilted 'planning' and lost opportunities, writ large: 

To strengthen the economies of the region’s metropolitan areas, the Great Lakes states and the federal government should:

• Design and embrace a new competitive vision for transportation policy that includes high speed rail, greater access to ports and freight hubs, and better maintenance and preservation of existing highway and transit systems 

• Rebuild the region’s crumbling water and sewer infrastructure based on a thorough assessment of regional needs and a “fix-it-first” funding strategy that prioritizes existing systems in established communities. 

• Reinvest in cities and older communities by targeting infrastructure and economic development funding toward catalytic urban projects and revamping federal policies that concentrate the poor in decaying urban neighborhoods

A redefined WISDOT project would force historically unresponsive public agencies to broaden their horizons and correct their harmful, neglectful policies in our region which I have repeatedly catalogued and blogged about:

I am adding to this [2019] post about environmental justice and government-enabled discriminatory planning in SE WI the schedule of an important television documentary about the destruction of African-American homes, business and neighborhood cohesion by I-43 construction from Milwaukee to the northern suburbs....

And had addressed earlier in a January, 2015 item, here.

Say "No" to WisDOT's Billion-Dollar -I-94 Boondoggle

And had expanded up several months ago, here:

There is no constituency or true priority for, and zero fit with environmental justice and climate science facts and agendas to justify rebooting the Story Hill-area I-94 expansion which even road-building-boosting Walker had abandoned. 

Why are we still dreaming about adding expensive 'freeway' [sic] lanes? 

  

So please note that on Tuesday, September 14, 2021 a coalition of community organizations will hold a Zoom news conference to release an alternative proposal that would force WisDOT to make investments into long-ignored transit agendas and put the agency's weight into the fight against climate change which its preferred, one-dimensional lane expansion 'option' continues to choke. 

At great short and long-term costs.

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 Media advisory: Groups to unveil alternative to I-94 expansion

In response to the proposed expansion of I-94 East West in Milwaukee, a coalition of environmental, faith and transit advocates will hold a virtual press conference on Tuesday, September 14 at 10 a.m. CT to release an alternative, transit-oriented plan that better meets the transportation, accessibility, equity, economic and environmental needs of the greater Milwaukee region. 

Leaders from the coalition will share their unique perspectives related to the I-94 expansion and why they are calling for a better solution for Milwaukeeans. The report comes out as the Wisconsin Department of Transportation (WisDOT) begins the public input process for a supplemental environmental review of the proposed highway expansion.

The event will include the following speakers:

• Gregg May, Transportation Policy Director, 1000 Friends of Wisconsin

• Caressa Givens, Milwaukee Community Programs Manager, Wisconsin Bike Fed 

• Cheryl Nenn, Riverkeeper, Milwaukee Riverkeeper

• Victoria Gillet, Physician and Member, Wisconsin Health Professionals for Climate Action

When:

Tuesday, September 14, 2021 at 10:00 AM CT

Location:

This event will be held via Zoom. Zoom event login for Tuesday, 9/14 at 10:00 AM CT: Click here to attend and use passcode 611467. 

Or join by phone by dialing: +1 312 626 6799 
Meeting ID: 967 2842 6598 Passcode: 611467

Contact Cassie Steiner, 262 930 3963 or cassandra.steiner@sierraclub.org with any technical questions. 

MI issues PFAS-related consumption 'guidelines' for Lake Superior smelt

I'd say this raises more health and environmental justice issues:

When you read yet another story about PFAS chemical contamination in Great Lakes and Midwestern waters - 

Fish advisories impact tribal traditions; Lake Superior smelt the latest species found contaminated

In March, the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services issued a precautionary consumption guideline for rainbow smelt from Lake Superior; the advisory came after natural resources officials in Wisconsin found and reported elevated levels of legacy chemical PFOS — perfluorooctane sulfonate — in samples of that species caught near the Apostle Islands and off of Port Wing, a shoreline city about 50 miles east of Duluth, Minnesota.

Because Indigenous people living near Lake Superior eat multitudes more than average amounts of fish, they face a choice whether to drastically limit how much they eat traditional foods to avoid poisoning — contamination that leaves the community collectively more susceptible to negative health risks associated with PFAS exposure.

- remember that Wisconsin's corporately-obeisant and Republican-led state legislature continues to enable multiple pollutants in Wisconsin waters and to reduce PFAS science, prevention and regulation: 

Republicans are enabling 'forever' toxins now found in Eau Claire city wells 

7/16/21 update from 7/14/21:

But wait, it gets worse, and the dirty hand of Robin Vos is involved. 

Bill Could Reduce DNR’s Regulatory Authority Over PFAS

Drafting files of the bill obtained by Wisconsin Public Radio reveal further details surrounding the intent of lawmakers behind the legislation, as well as the involvement of staff working for Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester. 

The files show that Vos’ staff member Jake Wolf requested language from Evers’ proposed PFAS municipal grant program, including several revisions. Those changes included reducing the area that would be eligible for funding to test for PFAS down from 3 miles to 1 mile from a contaminated site. 

The revisions also included the bill’s proposal to bar local governments from seeking additional payments for PFAS damages if they receive grant money, as well as adding language to explicitly restrict local authority to regulate PFAS. 

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Great Lakes waves on Lake Michigan break on the Milwaukee shoreline. @James Rowen photo.

 

An honest discussion of race & Milwaukee must be regional & state

A piece in today's Milwaukee Journal Sentinel keyed to the Bucks' positive impact on racial harmony leads me to expand that analysis with some data, previous blog posts and commentary.

The story's headline - 

In segregated Milwaukee, the Bucks' playoff run and Deer District offer a glimpse at a more unified city 

- says "Milwaukee" and "a glimpse at a more unified city" without adding the word "area" or "region" to what is segregated and where, or is not unified.

For that I call out editors, not the bylined writers, whom I praise for acknowledging that there is a bigger picture:

And as fans pack the plaza outside the Bucks' arena known as the Deer District, cheering for a common goal in one of the most segregated metro areas in the nation, the team itself has developed a reputation for working to heal the community's racial divide. 

And which is something I have repeatedly blogged about:

I am adding to this [2019] post about environmental justice and government-enabled discriminatory planning in SE WI the schedule of an important television documentary about the destruction of African-American homes, business and neighborhood cohesion by I-43 construction from Milwaukee to the northern suburbs....

[Updated from 1/8/19 - - with news of litigation alleging racial profiling in a traffic stop on a stretch of interstate highway reminiscent of another outburst in Waukesha County which ended in hate crime convictions.]

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There should be widespread dissemination of yet another report focusing on Southeastern Wisconsin's worst-in-the-nation segregation, but let's add some history and information to the discussion - - especially with a new Governor more attuned to the needs of cities and their residents.

As I have noted often on this blog, the disparities have been fueled by multiple actions by multiple layers of government as far back as the 1950's - - and 50 years later - - and often involve transit, such the Robin Vos-led prohibition against regional transit authorities which can move people to jobs and housing across local jurisdictional lines, to repeated threats to the sparse bus connections which do link urban workers with suburban employers.

Also here: 

TUESDAY, AUGUST 16, 2016

State and regional governments keep Milwaukee, minorities isolated, part II

This blog has covered these issues for nearly ten years. There are hundreds of posts with supporting documentation. Use the index box at the upper left.

If we're going to have a discussion about segregation, let's look at the bigger picture. 

And note that the two-year budget which Republicans just successfully adopted arbitrarily cut transit funding to Milwaukee and Madison by a flat 50% but left all other transit systems statewide without similar reductions. 

This ultra-partisan approach to transit in Wisconsin will continue what reflects suburban/Republican anti-urban animus extensively documented in Waukesha's case, here - 

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 2011

Waukesha Officials To Cut Transit Links, Again - - And Undercut Water Plan, Again

Cutting transit to Milwaukee, again, are we?

Including service from downtown Waukesha to Milwaukee, the Journal Sentinel reports.

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 19, 2010

Waukesha County Considering Fresh Barrier To Milwaukee Job Seekers

Cut a bus route to the New Berlin Industrial Park.

This is getting routine for Waukesha County...

MONDAY, JUNE 21, 2010

Another Milwaukee-Waukesha Bus Route Eliminated

Now it's a line to Quad/Graphics.

Wednesday, March 24, 2010 

Waukesha County Opts Out Of Regional Transit; Milwaukee Should Do The Same With Water

Well, it's official; The Waukesha County Board of Supervisors has decided - - unanimously - - to decline joining a regional transit authority.

- and will keep the City of Milwaukee's minority-majority population intentionally separated from jobs, housing and other opportunities that further deepen the region's many divides.

Again - a reality long recognized by experts and journalists: 

Urban-suburban divide seen in Milwaukee area's employment gains 

The private-employment figures show that Milwaukee County has fared nowhere near as well as its much-more-affluent metro area neighbors since the recession....  

Marquette University economic professor Abdur Chowdhury also noted that the divergence in job creation between Milwaukee County and the metropolitan area's three suburban counties is a long-standing trend.

And with those counties poorly connected to Milwaukee by mass transit, he said in an email, relatively few African-Americans have secured employment in the part of the metropolitan area generating most of the job growth.

Let me add one list of links below - click through to the full charts which do not easily reproduce - or to the summarizing US Census website which shows the racial breakdown - among other information - of the populations of Milwaukee County and the three so-called WOW counties of Waukesha, Ozaukee and Washington which surround Milwaukee.

And you might say, 'Wow! That couldn't have happened by accident.' 

The categories and terminology are the US Census Bureau's language:

* Waukesha County: White alone, 92.5%. Black or African American alone, 27.2%

* Ozaukee County: White alone, 93.8%. Black or African American alone, 1.7%

* Washington County: White alone, 95.5%. Black or African American alone, 1.4%.

* Milwaukee County: White alone, 64.2%. Black or African American alone, 27.2%.

You can dig into the Census web site and the links for expanded, or more granular, comparative numbers, but the data - from race to income to housing and so on - speak to disparities, policies, and intentions which extend beyond just Milwaukee.

Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission. Poor transit connections have long kept City of Milwaukee residents and people of color separated from jobs, housing, schools and recreational opportunities suburban communities which surround the city and county of Milwaukee. 

 

 

Final OK for Waukesha water diversion will whet West's thirst

Western US states now baking in the global warming crisis brought on by science-and-climate change denial could cite Wednesday's anti-climatic announcement - 

DNR ISSUES WAUKESHA DIVERSION APPROVAL, IMPLEMENTING GREAT LAKES COMPACT COUNCIL DECISION 

 - should they ever move to unwind a Great Lake management agreement's weakening diversion restrictions for permission to pipe in water, too, and say:

* Hey, Wisconsin, you gave Waukesha a diversion which rewarded unrestrained annexations as documented in a 2005 report by Midwest Environmental Advocates' attorneys and based on Waukesha records:

Data provided from the City of Waukesha Department of Community Development’s Planning Division demonstrates that the City, over the past 20 years, has increased in size from 15.5 square miles to 23.6 square miles, reflecting a 52% expansion....

Moreover, city planners concede that annexations of property bordering the city occur on a regular basis, as developers continue to buy up farmland and then petition the city for annexation. In the last five years alone, over 1,300 total acres have been annexed by the City of Waukesha, with over 4,413 total acres annexed in the past 15 years. 

* And you're willing to spend another billion dollars of  public money to further reward that sprawl with an urban interstate highway widening at the expense of clean air and environmental justice. 

The freeway project borders homes in a predominantly Black neighborhood of Milwaukee, which would be affected by the expansion.

* And you further bent Great Lakes water diversion legal requirements to fuel what has become phantom, politically-inspired non-residential development by Foxconn, a wealthy multi-national corporation, on prime agricultural land in Racine County. 

As Midwest Environmental Advocates argued: 

The Racine diversion violates the Compact and Wisconsin’s implementing legislation because the water diverted outside of the basin will not serve “largely residential customers.”  

In fact, none of the water diverted outside of the basin will go to residential customers. As a result, the Racine diversion does not meet the public water supply purposes requirement in the straddling community exception... 

Thus, DNR’s approval of the Racine diversion establishes a misguided and dangerous precedent with far-reaching implications for the Great Lakes region. This precedent opens the door to diversions throughout the Great Lakes basin—to any customer and for any purpose—as long as the in-basin community supplying and receiving back the returned water does so through a public water system.  

'So rules, shmooles, Wisconsin, we (pick a city, county, state, purpose or business) deserve our share, too.'

Lake Michigan along the Milwaukee shoreline, 2019. James Rowen photo.

And don't think the cross-country diversion idea recently floated again can't happen - or is not feasible - (they are piping oil from Alberta, Canada, Wyoming and Colorado to Wisconsin and the Gulf of Mexico) - especially as the parched UW west dries out and catches fire.

Ten posts which back Barnes' opposition to I-94 widening

Props to Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes for opposing the financially and environmentally-damaging widening of I-94 across Milwaukee's west side - a position he had taken when he was a member of the Legislature, as this story also reminds us.

I do not know if or whether his position has created any political problems within the Evers administration which decided to forge ahead with the nearly $1-billion expansion which even Scott Walker found too expensive.

And though the GOP-legislature has signaled it will keep the proposal in Evers' proposed budget which Republicans will otherwise clobber, the one-year delay in the project announced by WisDOT following an organized pitch to USDOT Secretary Pete Buttigieg gives opponents more time to push local, state and federal authorities to live up to their public commitments to transit, cleaner air and progress against climate change and only rebuild I-94 between 35th St. and the Zoo Interchange at the County line without gobbling up land and adding more noise and air pollution that will devalue neighborhoods in the corridor.

The intrusion of the Interstate Highway system through billions in spending on misnamed 'freeways' in the Milwaukee area led directly to the decline of African-American neighborhoods on the north now split by I-43 principally to service the suburbs to the north which then enjoyed development, housing and other benefits at the expense of the city.

It's time to rein in the Roadbuilding-Industrial-Complex, and tap whatever portion of Biden's infrastructure funding comes our way for things Milwaukee residents need: affordable housing, lead pipe replacements and better rail and bus services which would tie city neighborhoods and the community together, and on an equitable basis to jobs and municipalities beyond.

Below are ten posts from this blog over the last 14 years that help explain why I-94 should not be expanded again in Milwaukee:

1. About taxpayer-paid regional planning in the region that institutionally discriminated against minorities and the City of Milwaukee, from 2017.

2. About the links between SE WI segregation, highway expansion and suburban growth, from 2008.

3. About I-43's economic damage, from 2009.

4. About civil rights litigation over the Zoo Interchange expansion, from 2012.

5. About the willful elimination of regional bus lines, from 2016.

6. About the history of the GOP's hostility to rail and regional transit coordination, from 2017.

7. About multiple governmental decisions which helped segregate the region, from 2019.

8. About Evers' resurrection of the I-94 project and its echoes in his green-light to expanding State Highway 23, from 2020.

9. About Walker era spending on new roads, not on repairs, or transit, from 2021.

10. Delaying the I-94 expansion plan is a good idea, from 2021: 

There is no constituency or true priority for, and zero fit with environmental justice and climate science facts and agendas to justify rebooting the Story Hill-area I-94 expansion which even road-building-boosting Walker had abandoned. 

Why are we still dreaming about adding expensive 'freeway' [sic] lanes 

 

while the potholes ('Scottholes') and crumbled pavement statewide which helped drive Walker out of office remain unrepaired.

Does Tiffany understand that enslaved people built his workplace?

Does he know that enslaved people built - along with the US Capitol - Wall Street, the White House, Georgetown University, Boston's Faneuil Hall and other historic American institutions?

Does Tiffany know - or care - 

that the underpinnings of the economy which stabilized the nation and set it on a course of unprecedented expansion was underwritten by the labor of enslaved people, as an expert has noted:

It is inconceivable that European colonists could have settled and developed North and South America and the Caribbean without slave labor. Moreover, slave labor did produce the major consumer goods that were the basis of world trade during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries: coffee, cotton, rum, sugar, and tobacco.

In the pre-Civil War United States, a stronger case can be made that slavery played a critical role in economic development. 

One crop, slave-grown cotton, provided over half of all US export earnings. 

By 1840, the South grew 60 percent of the world's cotton and provided some 70 percent of the cotton consumed by the British textile industry. Thus slavery paid for a substantial share of the capital, iron, and manufactured goods that laid the basis for American economic growth. 

In addition, precisely because the South specialized in cotton production, the North developed a variety of businesses that provided services for the slave South, including textile factories, a meat processing industry, insurance companies, shippers, and cotton brokers. 

Moreover, Tiffany failed to grasp the impacts of institutional governmental racism which stripped land and resources from freed enslaved people and their descendants - so it is not surprising that Wisconsin's Northwoods Member of Congress is again shoveling  ignorant, resentment-fueling slop about fairness and race to his heavily-white constituency through his taxpayer-paid newsletter.

Democrats also renewed their effort to further divide and balkanize America along racial lines, pushing forward with a plan that would pave the way for “reparations.” The House Judiciary Committee voted along party lines to head down that dangerous road this week, seeking to effectuate a massive, race-based wealth transfer. Americans of all political stripes oppose this divisive and destructive idea, which some experts estimate would cost a whopping $12 trillion .

Americans know that forcing people who never owned slaves to pay people who were never enslaved is unfair. It is also unconstitutional. Americans of all races, colors and creeds gave their lives in the Civil War and the years that followed to build a more perfect union, end government-sponsored racism, and ensure that all Americans are treated fairly, with dignity and respect, as individuals – not faceless, nameless components of a race or ethnic group.

I am deeply opposed to this dangerous and immoral plan, and I am committed to defeating it.

Note that Tiffany's pious invocation of a mythical, cooperative post-Civil War American that created a 'more perfect union' overlooks decades of Jim Crow legalized discrimination that continues to spread and embed inequity to this day through environmental racism and fresh voting restrictions - and a consciously-created Black-white wealth gap:

The persistent Black-white wealth gap is not an accident but rather the result of centuries of federal and state policies that have systematically facilitated the deprivation of Black Americans. 

From the brutal exploitation of Africans during slavery, to systematic oppression in the Jim Crow South, to today’s institutionalized racism—apparent in disparate access to and outcomes in education, health care, jobs, housing, and criminal justice—government policy has created or maintained hurdles for African Americans who attempt to build, maintain, and pass on wealth.

So, Congressman, you were saying something about it being  'immoral' and 'unfair' and even 'dangerous' to address this? 

(You can subscribe to his newsletter with the appropriate, 19th-century title "Tiffany Telegram" at his office website. Apparently 'Buggy Whip Bulletin' has been spoken for. )

Delaying billion-$ I-94 boondoggle good for Milwaukee & beyond

Proponents of clean air, rational spending and city living just won another year to convince state and federal officials that repairing-without-expanding I-94 west in Milwaukee past residential neighborhoods, several cemeteries and the baseball stadium is in the total public's interest:

A disputed plan to expand I-94 to 8 lanes on Milwaukee's west side will undergo more review. That's a win for project opponents.

Let's make good use of the time, and props to the truth-tellers with perspective, such as former Mayor (and my former boss) John Norquist writing recently for Urban Milwaukee:

In 1941, Norman bel Geddes, the designer often credited with conceiving of America’s Interstates, warned that the revolutionary highway system he envisioned could harm cities. After contemplating his freeway centric 1939 Worlds Fair exhibit he wrote a book, Magic Motorways, in which he expressed his doubts. 

“If the purpose of the motorway as now conceived is that of being a high-speed, non-stop thoroughfare, the motorway would only bungle the job if it got caught up with the city. A great motorway has no business cutting a wide swath right through a town or city and destroying the values there; its place is in the country....”

Adding the lanes will increase Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) not just in the corridor, but metro wide as it will induce longer and more frequent motor vehicle trips with attendant air pollution and increasing asthma and other respiratory diseases. 

It will increase greenhouse gas emissions and degrade the neighborhoods along its path. 

WisDOT’s cost estimate in 2016 was $1.1 Billion for a 3.1 mile project. This is money that could otherwise be spent on transit, street repair, bridge repair, bicycle facilities or to pay down the debt WisDOT has piled up in recent years. Spending over a billion dollars on another expressway widening project will force postponement or cancellation of other smaller projects throughout the state. 

According to a report by the American Road and Transportation Builders Association (ARTBA), there are 1,026 structurally deficient Wisconsin bridges. Structurally deficient means the bridge needs repair or it might fall down; functionally deficient usually means the DOT wants to make the facility bigger. The problems WisDOT has identified on the three mile segment of I-94 fit in the functional category. They want to widen I-94 to eight lanes and replace the left side exit ramps with right side ramps on the 175 interchange at the Brewers baseball park. The I-94 road bed is at a point where its age requires regrading and resurfacing which could be considered in the structural deficiency category. 

Addressing this structural deficiency while cancelling the expansions would cut the $billion+ cost substantially and leave money for other transportation needs. 

More history here, here - and here.

There is no constituency or true priority for, and zero fit with environmental justice and climate science facts and agendas to justify rebooting the Story Hill-area I-94 expansion which even road-building-boosting Walker had abandoned. 

Why are we still dreaming about adding expensive 'freeway' [sic] lanes 

 

while the potholes ('Scottholes') and crumbled pavement statewide which helped drive Walker out of office remain unrepaired.

USDOT's urbanist Mayor Pete should nix I-94 widening through Milwaukee

You have have read that despite it being too expensive for Scott Walker - and also a looming setback for environmental justice across the west side of Milwaukee - the Evers administration has revived a billion-dollar plan to shoe-horn two more lanes onto the I-94 corridor between the Marquette Interchange and 70th St.

While transit in Wisconsin is continually short-changed, and bridges and roads go un-repaired.

And while no one knows if pre-COVID traffic volumes will increase.

I've posted - for years - information about our expensive and misnamed 'freeway' system - here, for example - and said this in July when Team Evers began embracing the West side expansion:

There is no constituency or true priority for, and zero fit with environmental justice and climate science facts and agendas to justify rebooting the Story Hill-area I-94 expansion which even road-building-boosting Walker had abandoned.

Why are we still dreaming about adding expensive 'freeway' [sic] lanes while the potholes ('Scottholes') and crumbled pavement statewide which helped drive Walker out of office remain unrepaired?

More recently, former Milwaukee Mayor John Norquist recently wrote extensively about it for Urban Milwaukee:

Evers Is Wrong on I-94 Expansion

...WisDOT and the Highway Lobby have never let up. They keep pushing to widen the freeways already built. They’ve included the I-94 widening in the state budget despite the elected officials that represent the people in the corridor opposing it. US Congresswoman Gwen Moore (D-Milwaukee) opposes it. Both aldermen Bob Bauman and Michael Murphy oppose it. State Reps Daniel Riemer and Evan Goyke oppose it. Regardless of the opposition of these locally elected officials, WisDOT is trying to get the Federal Highway Administration to break past precedent and go along with using a 5 year old Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) to speed up a project that Milwaukee isn’t asking for. In a recent phone conversation Mayor Tom Barrett indicated that Governor Tony Evers gave him no heads up before including the I-94 project in his state budget. 

So I was interested see this piece posted today by CNN which draws attention to the more progressive urbanist views of newly-confirmed US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg; perhaps a new Secretary serving an Amtrak booster in the White House might prevent Wisconsin from yet another widening of Interstate Highway lanes 

 

that were supposed to connect cities, not bisect and devalue them:

Secretary Pete, going 'big' on road projects won't fix America's cities. This is what will.

While the theme coming from Secretary Buttigieg seems to be "go big," the projects most likely to meet all of the administration's goals will need to be small, incremental and city-focused. They would repair damage from past grand initiatives instead of launching new ones....

For small and mid-sized cities, the administration need only look to Buttigieg's hometown of South Bend where, as mayor, the secretary dramatically changed the city's approach to transportation and community investment.

Focusing on the struggling downtown, Mayor Pete made investments to shift traffic patterns from high-speed, one-way corridors to two-way streets with much slower speeds. This shift in emphasis allowed public biking and walking projects to pay off through increased private investment. As a result, South Bend has significantly grown housing, jobs, businesses and its overall tax base while improving safety and reducing its long-term liabilities.

Much of this renaissance happened by fixing highway corridors built decades ago through the center of the city. Those highways did great damage to South Bend's economy while denuding the community's wealth. Today, they present the greatest opportunity for revitalization. 

There are many American cities with the same challenge. Federal leadership and resources can shift state departments of transportation to support efforts to undo the damage of past highway building, restoring local communities and reducing long-term maintenance costs in the process.

I'm happy to see intelligent, non-partisan commentary coming to the fore. We need to amplify it, stop making the same mistakes over and over again and match policy and spending with more care for people, clean air and the environment.

Having ignored COVID, WI GOP pivots to bashing transgender children

The Republican Party under the leadership of Failed 45 and local wannabes continues to rebranded itself into something of a partisan packing house, packaging policy offal and other rancid bits into a putrid potpourri these days.

This is nothing new.

Republicans nationally have moved over the decades from a Jim Crow embrace to Commie-hunting.

Then to welfare queens to death panels to demonizing migrants and caging their kids - always in search of a self-gratifying ego-boost at the expense of less-powerful people - only to lose control in 2020 of the House, Senate and White House for their trouble.

Does this losing streak due to losing issues deter what remains of the Republican Party?

Nope, says its reliably wretched Wisconsin legislative outpost.

Which houses taxpayer-supported partisans led by Assembly Speaker and surgeon-costumed Robin Vos who spent most of 2020 on vacation while the COVID19 pandemic killed Wisconsinites by the thousands.

The same Wisconsin Republicans whom we're learning have settled on this year's culture war counterfeit concern cynically designed to keep the most-base of its base voters distracted from real problems which the GOP-led-Legislature is pleased to ignore.

And their 'issue' is:

Protecting high school girls on sports teams from boy opponents and others whom the GOP legislators fear may slip into the girls' locker rooms:

Wisconsin Republicans push to bar transgender athletes from playing women's sports

Rep. Barb Dittrich, the lead Assembly author of the measures, said they would bolster fairness for women and girls in athletics and support Title IX, a decades-old federal law that bans discrimination on the basis of sex at any institution that receives federal aid.

"Now in a fractured, well meaning attempt at inclusion, women's achievements have once again been put at great risk of loss," the Oconomowoc Republican said at a Capitol news conference Tuesday. "Biological females are losing opportunities at titles, records, scholarships and even participation at times."  

(Dietrich replaced Joel Kleefisch in the Assembly.) 

Just another day in the life of a family values party that always finds a way to manipulate and victimize families and their kids in a minority.

The next thing you know, we'll be seeing Republicans standing up for the Voting Rights Act, 100% pay equivalency for women, fair redistricting maps, economic and environmental justice, open housing and hiring....

Just kidding.