Photo credit: Wisconsin Bike Fed
Thirty-five pedestrians and two cyclists were killed on Wisconsin roads in 2017. Six months into 2018, 21 pedestrians and four cyclists had already been killed. A 2017 report shows that a disproportionate amount of these crashes happen in the city of Milwaukee, and a majority of these Milwaukee deaths occur in low-income communities according to a local pedestrian advocacy group.
Milwaukee has been slowly making strides to become a better city for pedestrians and cyclists, but many of these efforts have been concentrated in higher-income areas like Downtown and the East Side. During this time, Milwaukee’s low-income and minority neighborhoods have largely been left behind.
“We have structurally, on the federal level, designed policies and laws that have, without sugar coating it, kept black and brown people segregated from whites,” said Caressa Givens, a projects coordinator with the Wisconsin Bike Federation. “That makes it very challenging for these neighborhoods to have nice things.” Givens is one of a growing number of community organizers and organizations trying to combat this problem.
Complete Streets for All
“Historically, our neighborhoods since the 1940s have been developed on the Robert Moses model,” Givens said, referring to wide streets that prioritize car traffic over other modes of transportation. “It really took down the level of people who want, and are able, to be in the street and socialize to come together.” Givens is working on a citywide Complete Streets policy that, if passed by the Milwaukee Common Council, would seek to ensure that cyclists and pedestrians are considered in all roadway reconstruction projects.
Wisconsin implemented a statewide Complete Streets policy in 2010, but Gov. Scott Walker eliminated it in his 2015 budget. As the governor borrowed $1.3 billion and transferred $200 million from the General Purpose fund in an effort to build more highways, he repealed the policy in an effort to save the $7.4 million it cost to operate. “This type of penny-wise, pound-foolish approach to transportation budgeting has become standard among the GOP’s Tea Party wing,” journalist Angie Schmitt remarked at the time.
In 2017, a group of mobility justice advocates began working on a similar policy for Milwaukee that “includes safer streets for all,” said Tonieh Welland, founder of Black Girls Do Bike Milwaukee and a Complete Streets organizer. “And that means access for all. Not just the usual suspects of the blocks that we think about, but for the blocks that go unnoticed; the 55th and Capitols.”
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Complete Streets organizers surveyed as many people as possible to find out how they get to work, how often they ride their bikes, what prevents them from riding and if they have been hit by a car. Their results were cross-referenced with data gathered on crashes involving cyclists and pedestrians and presented to each member of the Common Council. The policy is expected to go in front of the Council on Wednesday, Sept.12. If passed, this would likely be just the first step.
“I think by and large most council members are supportive of it,” said Common Council President Ashanti Hamilton. “I know that the mayor is supportive of it. The problem, I think, is the implementation phase. It’s probably less about believing in the concept, but there are resources that need to be attached.” He went on to explain that the city has an annual budget for street repaving and maintenance that already goes into the millions of dollars. “There are already neighborhoods that are going to get the attention,” he said. “What we don’t always do, though, is take the kind of Complete Street approach when you have regular repaving projects. It would be nice to implement that into our regular process.”
Path to Platinum, an active transportation advocacy group involved in the Complete Streets initiative, recently received a Changemaker Grant from the Medical College of Wisconsin. The grant program is intended to transform the way the city conducts outreach, planning, design and prioritization of bicycle and pedestrian projects.
While organizers like Givens and Welland are seeking to make the streets that we already have safer, another group is hoping to create a whole new safe biking and walking route for Milwaukee’s Northwest side.
A New Bike Trail for the Northwest Side?
In a 2017 report, Rails-to-Trails Conservancy, a nonprofit bike trail advocacy organization, notes that: “Milwaukee is home to amazing trail facilities, but those trails do not reach residents in the north-central or south-central neighborhoods of the city.” The report goes on to show that just 3% of people living in neighborhoods experiencing inequality live within walking distance of a trail. A Canadian Pacific-owned railroad corridor that runs for 5.2 miles just west of 30th Street could bring better access to thousands.
The 30th Street corridor trail project has been a city initiative for years. The plan is to build a biking and walking trail that runs adjacent to the railroad, which only runs once per day at 25 miles per hour. “In many cities, including Milwaukee, there aren’t a lot of open spaces to create trail systems,” said Willie Karidis, project manager for Rails-to-Trails’ Route of the Badger, of which the 30th Street corridor project is a part. “So, you look at these railroad corridors and utility corridors as natural places that you could potentially build a trail.”
But just having the right space is not enough. For the trail project to go forward, someone would have to buy the railroad from Canadian Pacific and allow someone to operate the one train that goes by per day according to Karidis. He pointed out that the state owns a number of railroads, and that the city or county could also buy it. A private citizen technically could as well, but this is highly unlikely.
Rails-to-Trails specializes in national policy advocacy, research and forming partnerships. Dictating local policy and gathering the community support necessary to put the trail in place is not fully in the organization’s wheelhouse. This is where community organizations like the Northwest Side Community Development Corporation (NWSCDC) come in.
NWSCDC, located at 4201 N. 27th St., got involved with the 30th Street corridor project more than a year ago. “A biking and walking trail really touches a lot of different pieces,” said Sarah Bregant, community development specialist at NWSCDC. She pointed to public health, recreation, the environment, active alternatives to cars, safety and economic development. But for Bregant, the bottom line is equity: “You see different trail networks on the outskirts of the city or near the lake, but you don’t see anything in the heart of the city like the 30th Street corridor.”
The focus is now on building community support for the project. “A lot of people who are living in these neighborhoods and communities don’t even know that this is an option for them,” Karidis said.
For the past two years, NWSCDC has hosted the Promise Zone Bike Ride, a five-mile cruise through neighborhoods on both sides of the rail corridor, to promote cycling in the area. “A lot of the participants on the ride said, ‘We never knew all of this stuff was in the neighborhood. We never knew that you could get from point A to point B that easily,’” said Andrew Haug, resource development manager at NWSCDC.
Right now, the idea of a bike trail along the 30th Street corridor seems distant, but—though the project is likely at least a decade away from being a reality and there’s no guarantee that it will ever happen—the excitement is building. “I feel like it will happen eventually, but there are a lot of logistical questions, and obviously the biggest of those is how we find the money to make it happen,” Haug said. “There is an opportunity cost as well. There is a cost of doing nothing.”
