Podcast: Transportation, Festivals, Water, and More! in Milwaukee Wisconsin

On this week's Talking Headways podcast we chat with Jeramey Jannene of Urban Milwaukee about his fair city.  He discusses a whole bunch of topics including the streetcar, transit funding, freeway teardowns, bike share, and water.  So check out this week's episode and find out more about the density of Wisconsin's largest city.  You can also find it on Streetsblog, iTunes, or Stitcher.

Design Your Own Streetcar Route

Very cool idea. Check out Urban Milwaukee and draw a map.

Finally a Loss for the Milwaukee Opposition

Looks like Scott Walker got what was coming to him, a big loss. By refusing to compromise on how to spend $91 million in existing transit funds from the federal government, he was delaying the process for an indefinite period of time. However Mayor Barrett made a smart move by getting 60% of the money put towards a new streetcar loop and 40% for bus lines (probably express buses, not real BRT) with the help of Wisconsin's congressional delegation.

This is a huge win for the City of Milwaukee which has been getting screwed by suburban planning and leadership for too long. This ought to make the crazy talk shows up there go nuts. The walls are going down, keep pushing.

Destroying What You're Trying to Protect

The divide in understanding transportation's value to working families is rather disheartening. At one time, automobiles were seen as the great equalizer, allowing upward mobility for the masses. Sometime along the way, they went from being a benefit to being a burden. Costs of ownership increased as land use patterns led Americans to drive even further away from their workplaces in search of an inexpensive place to raise a family that had a yard for the dog. But that house was in a place where the family had to buy two or even three cars to keep mobile.

But that push through subsidy towards the suburban ideal, has left us with lopsided policy that spends more money than we need to on urban development and mobility. It also leads people to believe that transit is a tool of the poor alone, not seeing the possible benefits to them personally. A recent New York Review of Books (via T4A) article notes that the poor are a large part of the transit constituency and that the regressive effects of a carbon tax should be offset by building more buses.

Investment in the infrastructure of a post-auto-industrial society would provide some compensation for the regressive effects of a carbon tax (or of the increase in prices that would result from a "cap and trade" scheme, as industries passed on the costs of compliance to consumers). It would be an investment in the technologies that are used by poor people, including buses, bus stops, and information about the departures of buses and transit vans.

But what about the middle class? They are squeezed as well with rising costs of automobiling and rising home costs in cities. An answer that has become more palatable is increasing transit funding and moving towards better land use patterns and policies that would increase housing in the core. This change would allow people to save money, and allow them to live within their means by saving money on transportation costs.

But others don't see it that way. Some conservatives and especially libertarians would have you think that freedom is the automobile and that everyone wants to live in a big house with three cars. They believe so much so in this that anything else is forced upon those who we know are actually self selecting. Here is Milwaukee uber conservative Patrick McIlheran:

What's more, people can and do live transit-oriented lives along these Milwaukee streets and others. While Bernstein argued that people here are made poorer by having to drive a lot, the fact is that there's a lot of reasonable real estate next to scheduled transit, should you want it.

...

Dense, transit-oriented living is good and useful for those who seek it. Where its enthusiasts err is in feeling that many more people, maybe all, should be seeking it and that spending lots of tax money will make that happen.

Yeah, TOD isn't going to be everyone's choice, rational thinkers know that, but the problem here is that we're spending lots of tax money to make automobiling happen and not investing in the other pieces of the transportation spectrum or sustainable development. But the mistake he makes here is the idea that buses are for the poor or people who want that lifestyle, but they don't deserve better service that might increase the demand.

Sure people could choose to live a transit oriented lifestyle on the existing bus system, but last time I heard, Milwaukee conservatives have been starving it to death, creating a situation where its not really an option. They don't just have a thing against trains, they have a thing against quality transit. And that is too bad because they are punishing those who they think they are trying to help. Since when did the idea of pooling money for an outcome that is a common good become a bad idea? The savings would be incredible and its unfortunate that the disconnect is even there.

The thing that Patrick is railing against is actually what he's advocating on the other end. It's hypocrisy at its greatest, pushing away from what the market is actually working towards and artificially going the other way. One would hope that if he really wanted to save taxpayer money, he would advocate for the most efficient land use patterns and push for less tax revenue going to large road projects and into projects that could save a lot of people money. In essence, he's pushing for people to spend thousands more so they can save hundreds. This never made sense to me.

TAR Gets a Bit Feathered

I'm sure many of you are familiar with Thomas A. Rubin or TAR, famed anti-rail consultant and ten page commenter to blogs and listserves. Today he released a study funded by his corporate libertarian overlords that contradicted his findings for a local Milwaukee business group earlier in the year.

A new study by a libertarian think tank claims the projected economic benefits of a proposed Milwaukee-to-Kenosha commuter rail line have been inflated and questions its ridership estimates.

But a business leader noted that the author of the study, Los Angeles-based transit consultant Tom Rubin, took a far more positive view of the $200 million project in June, when pro-transit business leaders were pushing the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Transit Authority to hire him as the authority's consultant. And a regional planner said the commuter rail projections were sound.

Who knew he was going to come back on that earlier decision? Well perhaps everyone who's ever encountered one of his writings. He did state that he felt buses were a better option, such as he usually does as long as it doesn't have its own ROW. The quote of the story:

Pete Beitzel, a vice president of the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce, suggested Rubin's opinions depended on who was paying him. "The think tank guys got real mad at him when he said it (the KRM line) was a good idea," Beitzel said. "Apparently, they hired him to change his mind."

H/T Political Environment

I Used to be Snow White

But I drifted. ~~Friday Night Link Party Below~~

It's Not About You! - So says the president of a commercial real estate firm in Milwaukee.

There are too many people who want to get on their soapbox and say, "I'm not going to ride it." The point is, it's not about you. The young person, who does believe in green technology and sustainable development, does want it. Whether you believe in global warming or not is not the point. There are a lot of people who do

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In typical conservative fashion, Paul Weyrich, usually a staunch supporter for transit says no on high speed rail for California. Good thing he doesn't live here. I imagine he's never driven I-5 either. He uses the reason foundation explanation as to why he opposes it. Robert if you're counting Hoovers vs. Keynes, here's another Hoover for you. He does say this about the project:

Unlike the Reason Foundation, I do not think that this project would be a white elephant.

He goes on to deride the ridership estimates like everyone else who doesn't know why they are called "estimates". You know, like the estimates to sell bonds for these grey elephants.
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A report on the Purple Line and all its noise and impact issues was released yesterday. The article did not talk however about particulate matter released from an internal combustion engine even if hybrid on the bus. Wonder if that was in the report.
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Leaving Town? Some in Seattle say they will leave if the region doesn't pass the transit measure. I think there are some big issues that will come about if the transit measures around the country don't pass. What it might mean is that the region is left flat footed without a plan if and when the next transportation bill provides more money for transit. If we go into new deal spending, the regions that have transit plans in the Space Race will benefit from instant recognition that they have projects ready to go.
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Brain Drain + Brain Gain = Negative Brains for Rochester. Keeps the zombies away at least.

H/T Urbanophile
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Details...

Radio Killed the Railroad Star

In Milwaukee the meme is beginning to form that conservative talk radio killed transit and should be tied to its failure to emerge. I've seen it a number times in the last few days in the JS. Our friend Jim Rowan gives us the history of how transit was killed in an article he wrote for the Journal Sentinel.

Examples of the meme recently:

Jim Rowen:

And "light rail" was and continues to be aimed as a partisan, fear-laden phrase against Milwaukee and its urban, Democratic majority on conservative talk radio and in some Republican-dominated suburbs.

Mayor Barrett:

"I think it's driven by conservative talk radio," Barrett said. "There are many people who are suffering because of ideological opposition to rail. ... If you listen to conservative talk radio, you'd think having some sort of rail in Milwaukee is the end of Western civilization as we know it."

Letter to the Editor:

Maybe the service cuts down the road will wake people up. The year 2010 promises a 30% cut in bus service and elimination of the freeway flyer service. The proposed 1% sales tax is the most feasible answer to saving our bus system. The Milwaukee County Transit System is the only system of its size that totally relies on property tax. A sales tax increase would be paid not only by county residents but anybody who visits Milwaukee County. We are not in the hell-hole talk radio talks about.

Babies and Bathwater

Jim Rowen discusses County Supervisor Scott Walker's gameplan on rail.

Walker told The Milwaukee Journal in a 1999 story that it would be OK with him if multiple, major transportation projects in a package that might include Milwaukee rail had to die together to keep light rail from being built.

Monday Night Can't Watch the DNC Because I Don't Have Cable Linkage

Augusta is looking at streetcars. One of the points that Streetcar Salesman Charlie Hales talks about in this article that I don't see in too many of them is the difference in pedestrian traffic before and after the streetcar. This is one of the things I think Jan Gehl talks about that I just love, prove things with data. Data data data. Jan is all about doing ped counts to tell shop keepers that their shop isn't suffering because they don't have parking if they have 1,000 people walking by per hour.

The Albany Times Union has an article stressing something that should be adopted as one of our memes. Public transit is an investment, not an expense. Ed Tennyson says this all the time and it certainly makes a lot of sense. Since it is an investment, we need to amortize over the life of the transit to get its true benefits and operational costs.

Finally, Dave Reid at Urban Milwaukee has an awesome post on drinking and not driving.

As a society we say “don’t drink and drive” but in this case actions speak louder than words. Zoning and land use policies have an impact on the built environment that often promotes driving and limits other transportation options. These regulations to some extent mandate how we get home from work and unfortunately how we get from the tavern, home. Many regulations are involved in this problem but with adjustments to the three below a real reduction in drunk driving can be promoted.

The Option of Urbanism: Subsidizing the Rich

Here is another view of it from the Option of Urbanism. We've been taking quotes for the last week from the book.

According to Myron Orfield's Metropolitics, the affluent outer-ring suburbs in the favored quarter "dominate regional economic growth and garner a disproportionate share of the region's new roads and other development infrastructure." Orfield also pointed out that much of the funding for this infrastructure is raised from the region as a whole. For example, all car-driving residents in the region pay gas taxes to partially support the building of highways, and taxpayers of the region as a whole pay the rest of the money through their income, property, and sales taxes.

So this happens for roads, but people yell and scream bloody murder when they are taxed for transit and "it doesn't help me directly". The worst part about this as well is that cities are slowly signing on to their own declines.

The unlikely consequence of this pattern of infrastructure development is that the whole region pays for infrastructure that tends to be placed in the favored quarter; the poor pay for the infrastructure of the rich. According to Orfield, the central cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, for example, pay $6 million a year to help move their middle class households and businesses to the edge of the region.

Part of the problem is the regional competition for jobs. Minneapolis has a tax base sharing program that might alleviate this a little, but most regions are not so lucky. And there is still exporting going on to places like Bloomington and Eden Prairie.

M1ek has discussed this before and James Rowen covered a similar issue for Milwaukee in talking about how much they give to the regional planning commission, and how little they get out of it. Perhaps this is something that needs to be put in mayor's and city council members faces. DC, for all its flaws has the right idea of trying to take care of its citizens instead of the folks who take advantage of their services during the day, but drive back out at night.

For Real?

Who would have guessed that the bus system in Milwaukee is declining after the County Executive keeps trying to drown it in a bathtub Grover Norquist style.

With a veto override attempt coming up next week on a sales tax referendum, a recent state audit is echoing calls to boost funding for the Milwaukee County Transit System.

The independent audit, required by state law, depicts the bus system as a cost-effective operation with declining service. Auditors recommended more state and local funding, in the form of a dedicated revenue stream.

What's In the Water in Milwaukee?

Apparently something that draws conservative radio jockeys to that city like moths to a flame. Have you ever wondered about why a fairly dense city with good historic fabric has failed to do any fixed guideway transit planning and is slowly suffocating its bus system because the economy will be so good everyone will be driving cars?

Well Urban Milwaukee has the story and the lowdown on the local politics of transit. It might be similar to the situation in your city. Also if you're interested, check out James Rowen's Political Environment which covers a lot of transit, growth and development issues in the region as well. Great writing going on up there, just wish they could win a few political battles.

Cut It Out Already!!! Using Cost to Design a System Is Wrong

No no no no no more using existing rights of way to put together a cheap transit system. Stop talking about it in terms of money and stop thinking its a good idea to start out that way! If we want people to take transit we need good transit that connects to places people want to go. And these days there are very few existing ROW opportunities that do that.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has an article about what the region needs to do. It's a good push but the following should never be the start of a regional system.

Minimizing capital costs by extensively utilizing existing rail rights of way.

Existing rights of way mean commuter rail but before commuter rail is implemented, a good central city system needs to be in place to get people to all of their destinations. We're learning this from systems like Houston where an extensive core system is going to lead to a much more effective commuter rail system. This is also evidenced in the large rail cities like Chicago, Boston, New York, and DC. If you don't have central circulation, the commuter rail doesn't work as well. So cut it out already and do it right. We've learned so much in the last few years, why do we want to keep going down the same path?

Exporting Urban Tax Base

Wow. Milwaukee Wisconsin is in an abusive marriage. They are a member of a regional planning agency that has 7 counties, of which three people from each county are representatives. There are no representatives from the city itself which provides 1/3 of the agencies operating budget. This agency, the SEWRPC, is in charge of land use and transportation planning for the counties.

The City of Milwaukee has 100,000 more residents than the combined populations of a majority of SEWRPC counties - Kenosha, Walworth, Washington and Ozaukee - but has zero seats on the commission.

Yet Milwaukee County pays the largest share of SEWRPC's operating budget that is collected from the seven counties' annual property tax levies - more than 33%, or $834,000 of $2,370,000 for 2007, records show.

Funny then how this happens...

Little wonder, then, that a major SEWRPC activity in this decade has been the creation of a $6.5 billion regional transportation plan that does not contain a single penny for any transit upgrade or initiative.

The plan is about to launch, over the City of Milwaukee's formal objection, a $1.9 billion, eight-year project segment including a new fourth I-94 lane from Milwaukee to Illinois. The plan deliberately omits a commuter rail plan that is available for the same corridor.

Even though gasoline has broken the $4-per-gallon barrier and demand for transit is up, neither the state nor SEWRPC will revisit the plan, its assumptions, spending and goals. That's not planning. That's denial.

So this is what happens when you give suburban jurisdictions control of the transportation funding that is regional in nature. No wonder they can't get the KRM line built or a reasonable transit network. They are always getting bad planning advice and have no funding clout.

The Future is in the Past

Orphan Road has photos of a 1920 plan for a Seattle Subway System. It looks awfully familiar.

Second Avenue Sagas discusses the 1960 New York Subway Expansion that never happened.

Switchback laments the loss of the Arborway Branch of the Green Line in Boston. The State has a legal obligation to run it as a rail line again, but they just paved over the tracks, hoping the thought will just go away. I would say that Boston is second to AC Transit in rail hate. Not an easy feat when everyone else is trying to put rail lines back.

A post on the Political Environment Blog discusses the loss of a rail fight in Milwaukee back in 1997. Then Governor Tommy Thompson loved the idea, but apparently its demise was due to right-wing radio. It seems like some things never change. The city still can't quite beat back the scourge of winger radio and in a city that's set up well for transit (weighted density 5,830) with approaching $5 gas, things are starting to look up a little when the main paper is pushing both sides a bit harder.

Had Tommy stood up to the local conservative talk radio hosts who still use "light rail" as an all-purpose anti-urban code phrase, workers and students commuting from Waukesha could be riding the rails with some of that $4-gallon gas money in their pockets.

We can learn much from the past, so we don't make similar mistakes going forward.

Streetcars & Philanthropists

Michael Cudahy, a Milwaukie philanthropist, is sick of the leadership there not getting along on transit issues. So what does he do? He proposes his own streetcar line and suggests that developers pay for parts of it. If only developers paid for all of them, then we'd be in business.

A Visceral Response

Visceral in the dictionary means not intellectual or dealing with crude or elemental emotions. This is the response that often comes when you talk to people about their opinions on politics and in fact transit. Some folks hold some deep seeded feelings about roads and others about transit. Right now the road folks are winning in most parts of the country because thats all that people know. They go with whats in their gut and what they know, whether its right or wrong.

So for places like San Francisco and New York, it isn't a question of does transit work or not, its how much more should we invest in to make it better than it already is. On the other side of the pale are these road oriented communities which are fighting hard to get transit off the ground such as Charlotte and Milwaukee. The road folks know they have a slight chance to kill transit in these places so they are throwing the kitchen sink because they are the last front in the road wars. The Anti's fight hard but in order to beat them back like we have for the last few decades we must not back down from their constant barrage of misinformation and misdirection.

An article in Newsweek suggests that politics is as I mentioned before, a visceral decision that leaves behind rational thought and that progressive minded folks shouldn't back down from a good fight. I see this as an ideological fight and when we get the chance we should sock it to the opposition Karl Rove style. Frame the issues in the most passionate way possible and set up decision makers with the facts they need to beat back the opposition. A mix of options and a vision for how all modes will work together. Cars are not the answer to everything. This is how we win.

City of Beer and Buses

So Milwaukee Wisconsin is having the same debate that every city has when they are deciding whether to hop on the mass transit horse. The Leader of the County wants buses because they are more effective for "those people" and the Mayor wants a streetcar system, I'm guessing as a foot in the door for light rail. Well they should all just stop and go for the gold. I don't understand why these folks don't just invest in their communities. Light rail is an excellent investment. Look what it has done for Minneapolis. A shot in the arm along Hiawatha Avenue is what they needed and they got it. Now they can't talk enough about the Central Corridor and Southwest Corridor. The only thing that stands in their way is well...shortsighted government leaders. Tim Pawlenty and Scott Walker should just go away. In fact they should move to Cincinnati and live with Stephan Louis. That city is probably last on the list of large cities where people want to live in the United States, specifically when they get out of college. Why? Because there is no thinking and dreaming going on there, only people that say no. I don't know how these people got voted in, but in the next election I hope people throw out the bathtub drowning conservatives and vote for whoever has big dreams and wants to invest in their future.

More Milwaukee and a Sane Commentary

As I've stated before, the crazy folks in Milwaukee and elsewhere (Villains like O'Toole and Cox) believe that transit is for the poor. They think that if the economy was better everyone would be able to drive. Well the editorial staff of the local newspaper isn't buying it and it shows. After printing numerous positive letters to the editor and listening to the opposition, they've had enough.

This'll be a stunning statement here, he said, accurately. "I want to have a system that serves the needs of people who are dependent on mass transit. But ideally, I'd like to build an economy in this county and this city that means that fewer people are dependent on mass transit."In other words, transit is welfare, which government provides for the poor souls who lack cars. Transit's also a zero-sum game, in which the middle class benefits only at the expense of the needy. Transit wasn't always welfare. The middle class and the poor rode the streetcars of yore shoulder to shoulder. In other cities - Minneapolis-St. Paul being a recent example - light rail has proved to be one way to return to those days.

Just fighting the good fight. Props to the Journal Sentinel for figuring it out.

Milwaukee Mayor Makes a Leap

While Milwaukee has been making plans for Commuter rail and figuring out how to fund it to Chicago, the Mayor has been coming up with a plan to spend money that the FTA still owes the city. It includes a streetcar loop and a connection to express buses and the new commuter rail line. In the article though, the County Executive is calling it a trojan horse for light rail.

Barrett envisions a city where trains, buses, streetcars, parking facilities and pedestrian corridors would work together in a "comprehensive and affordable" way to provide improved transit for workers and city visitors. But the plan sparked conflict with Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker, who called it "really just a Trojan horse for light rail" and "a drain on the limited resources we have available to support the bus system."Barrett shot back by pointing to Walker's six years of cutting Milwaukee County Transit System service and raising fares, saying, "It sounds to me like his mission is to kill Milwaukee County transit," not protect it.

The comments from Walker are more bs straight from the O'Toole and Cox camp. If you don't have resources, then create them. People can't just keep getting away with everything for free, including roads. But perhaps we should even the playing field before arguing that free market forces are at work when we can see from the previous post that they most certainly won't. I would be glad to see this be a trojan horse for light rail and other modes. The trojan horse against rail was let loose years ago, why not fight back?

Update from the Comments...More on this Topic from Brewcityzen.