After seeing his now infamous promise to create 250,000 private-sector jobs in his first term in office fall flat on its face, Republican Gov. Scott Walker was no doubt happy to be able to check off a different priority from his to-do list. Speaking at a ribbon-cutting ceremony at Milwaukee’s Zoo Interchange on Monday, Aug. 27, Walker declared that the long-planned reconstruction of the massive interchange had been “completed on time and on budget.”
But rather than being greeted with a chorus of celebratory voices, Walker’s announcement was mostly damned with faint praise—if it was given any credit at all. Yes, more than one observer acknowledged, a major milestone had been reached. But if the governor was claiming the project had been “completed on time and on budget,” he and they were getting their definitions out of different dictionaries.
Typical was an official statement released by Pat Goss, executive director of the Wisconsin Transportation Builders Association. Goss said it was indeed an accomplishment to have gotten the Zoo Interchange to where it is today. Then came the disclaimer: “The vital reconstruction of the north leg of the Zoo Interchange sits idle, and the east-west [I-94] corridor, which links the Marquette and Zoo Interchanges, has been abandoned.”
The “north leg” mentioned by Goss is a section of I-41 running from Swan Boulevard to Burleigh Street. Plans had originally called for adding a fourth lane to that stretch, in part to eliminate a dangerous bottle neck that forces drivers coming from I-94 and heading north on I-41 to go from a roadway with five lanes to one with only three. State transportation officials have abandoned plans for those additional lanes, at least temporarily. Beyond that, they’ve separated the north leg from the rest of the Zoo Interchange work and pushed back its completion date. Rather than wrapping up this year, the north leg now won’t be done until 2020 at the earliest, and that’s only if lawmakers find money for the work in the state’s next budget.
Time Slips By, Costs Keep Rising
The longer the project takes, the more time inflation will have to push up its cost. In 2017, state officials had estimated the work could be done for $202.6 million. Now they think $232.6 million is more likely. Of course, the final cost won’t be known until the state awards a contract. But the rising estimate is enough by itself to raise questions about Walker’s claim that the Zoo Interchange will be completed “on budget.”
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As for the project being completed “on time,” work on the north leg was originally supposed to be wrapped up at the same time as the rest of the Zoo Interchange. It was only during the debates about the state’s current budget—when Walker was tussling with his fellow Republicans about how much debt the state should take on for road construction—that the north leg was separated from the rest of the project and given a separate completion date.
That sleight of hand let Walker save face in two ways: He could claim he was sticking to the original schedule for finishing up the “core” phases of the Zoo Interchange, and he could do that work without getting crossways with GOP lawmakers who were anxious about the state’s increasing debt burden. But people close to the project were not deceived.
Craig Thompson, executive director of the Transportation Development Association of Wisconsin, said before the most recent budget debate, nobody had really considered the north leg as something distinct from the “core” of the Zoo Interchange project. “There was no such thing as the ‘core’ of the Zoo and the ‘north leg,’” Thompson said. “That’s been purely a political construct.”
For many observers, the postponement of the north leg is doubly embarrassing for Walker because delays to the Zoo Interchange were the cause of much of the criticism he had once lobbed at former Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle. “It is amazing that Gov. Doyle and [Milwaukee] Mayor [Tom] Barrett can advocate $810 million on a new ‘high-speed’ rail line while the state government cannot even fix one of the busiest interchanges in Wisconsin,” Walker said in a statement released in 2010, during his first campaign for governor.
Walker’s criticism of Doyle was not unfair. At one point, the former governor had the project scheduled for completion by 2012. But those plans were abandoned after Doyle decided instead to shift state resources toward rebuilding the section of I-94 running north and south between Milwaukee and the Illinois border. If anything, Thompson said, Walker should get credit for making the Zoo Interchange a priority again. “He did move money over from I-94 north-south and get the project moving,” he said. But Walker (who couldn’t be reached for this article) evidently thinks he deserves a lot more than that.
After the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel ran an article questioning his claims about the Zoo Interchange, Walker’s Twitter account appeared with a message calling the paper out for what he deemed “media bias.” Why, the governor wondered, were only critics of the project being interviewed?
For Thompson and others, though, the debate over the Zoo Interchange is merely a symptom of a much deeper-lying disorder. For years now, they say, the state has been without a true long-term plan for its transportation system. Yes, they concede, Walker was largely able in his first two terms to keep major projects on schedule by increasing the state’s debt obligations. That approach allowed him to stick to his road-building promises while avoiding any need to make an unpopular decision to raise the state’s gas tax.
Highway Budge Debacle
But it eventually put Walker at loggerheads with people in his own party. Many fiscal conservatives pointed out the state was fast reaching a point at which 25 cents of every dollar flowing in the state’s transportation fund would be going to pay off debt. Forced to trim his borrowing in his latest budget, Walker simply chose to put less money toward certain types of projects. The state, for instance, now has nearly $246 million less set aside in its current budget for its highway-improvement program than it had in its previous plan from two years ago.
One of the first casualties of the slimmed-down transportation budget have been plans to widen I-94 between Milwaukee’s Zoo and Marquette interchanges, work many say is needed to prevent yet another traffic bottleneck. A federal approval of that project was rescinded after it became evident the state wouldn’t be setting aside money for the expansion anytime soon. The I-94 north-south project, at one point, had also seemed headed for endless delays. It became a priority again only after state officials decided the work was needed to accommodate the massive factory Foxconn Technology Group is building near Racine.
Walker’s transportation policies have made for strange bedfellows at times. Predictably, many of the opponents of the project have come from the political left. His pursuit of the Zoo Interchange landed the state in a lawsuit after the Black Health Coalition of Wisconsin and MICAH (Milwaukee Inner-city Congregations Allied for Hope) contended the $1.7 billion project would almost exclusively benefit wealthy, mostly white residents living in the city’s western suburbs. The state settled the suit in 2014 for $13.5 million, money that will be used mostly to provide new bus routes.
Walker has never endorsed the idea that projects like the Zoo Interchange do little to benefit inner-city residents, but he did recently take up a stance that has hitherto been usually associated with his critics on the left. Speaking at an event held by the Milwaukee Press Club and Rotary Club of Milwaukee on Tuesday, Sept. 4, Walker said he sees no reason why he and other policymakers should place a priority on widening highways. What transportation money the state does have should instead be reserved for repairs and maintenance.
It was a line that left-leaning organizations like the Wisconsin Public Interest Research Group (WISPIRG) have been using for years. Peter Skopec, state director of WISPIRG, said he maintains that projects like the Zoo Interchange tend to backfire. Rather than reducing congestion, the additional space they provide for vehicles simply encourages more people to drive, he said.
Others like Thompson can do little more than hope that someone soon comes forward with a commitment to giving the state a well-thought-out, long-term transportation plan. He said the Transportation Development Association has endorsed neither Walker nor his Democratic opponent, Tony Evers, in the gubernatorial race. “We believe we need a coherent plan, and we need funding,” Thompson said. “We are hoping to get as many people elected to office that agree with that as being possible.”
