Civil Right Suit in WI over Roads vs. Transit

[CHamilton]

WisDOT Faces Civil Rights Suit Over $1.7 Billion “Zoo Interchange”

Civil rights and environmental groups believe the massive expenditure, while the city's transit system faces cuts, is discriminatory.

In the politically polarized Milwaukee region, there are two widely divergent visions of what transportation should do.

There’s the Waukesha vision, which might be summarized as all highways, no transit. This suburban Republican stronghold — one of the most conservative counties in the country — has for years been systematically severing the already limited transit connections to its core city, Milwaukee.

Then you have the Milwaukee vision, which prioritizes transit, at least to the extent that it can. This is a city that tore down a highway before the feds were handing out TIGER grants to fund such projects. It is currently planning a streetcar project. In 2008, Milwaukee County voters elected to raise their taxes in order to expand transit options — before the state legislature refused to authorize the collection of funds.

That should give you a sense of the transportation feuds in Wisconsin’s largest metro area. The region’s weak transit system is a key factor in Milwaukee’s status as the nation’s most segregated metro area. But in this battle, the Waukesha vision is generally winning — and it’s not that close.

 

[Eric S]

We'll see how this all plays out. The State of WI regularly plans and funds highway reconstruction and expansion projects. When urbanites complain that transit improvements and expansion is never included, the response is usually that highways are a state responsibility, while transit is a local/regional responsibility. Then, when regions (cities or counties) have tried to fund transit through sales taxes, the state legislature has usually refused approval.

If I'm not mistaken, a similar suit was filed in the 1990s, the result of which was that a portion of some federal transportation funding for the Milwaukee metro area was distributed to the City of Milwaukee and Milwaukee County to be spent on transit only. Milwaukee County replaced quite a few transit buses and the City of Milwaukee has proposed using their share to fund a downtown streetcar circulator.

 

[Ozark Southern]

IMO, this is exactly what the self-proclaimed "fiscal conservatives" do. They decry what they term "tax and spend," even when we actually vote for a tax increase in order to fund a project we want and need. Then they go and blow a whole lot of money on something without any real plan to fund it. You know the $1.7 billion is just the construction costs; what of the increased maintenance cost that the state will have to fork out over this interchange's 75-year lifespan? Their "fiscal conservatism" will not allow them to raise taxes to pay for it, so we end up just adding more to the debt.

I guess what really grinds my gears about this is that MO is in a similar position. We went and spent $100 million on highway upgrades to US-65, but we can't find $3 million a year to run a train to St. Louis. Now, admittedly, the highway congestion was very bad--often during rush hour traffic would be moving at 40-45MPH--and the construction has been very efficient, completely rebuilding 10 miles of highway and the third busiest interchange in the state in about two and a half years. My problem with it is that we still have not built the bus terminal that we pegged as needing replacement a decade ago. Regional bus service, which simply doesn't exist in the Ozarks, would if properly implemented drastically reduce the traffic problem on this highway, which really only serves three suburbs with a total population of about 40,000 people. This is the state of things in places like WI, OH, and MO, which outside of the cities simply see transit as a way of enabling the poor to be lazy.

 

[CHamilton]

Wisconsin DOT “Flagrantly Ignored” Federal Civil Rights Requirements

For years, Milwaukee civil rights and environmental advocates have charged that the Wisconsin Department of Transportation elevates the concerns of white suburban commuters over non-white, transit-dependent city dwellers.

...

Vindication for transit advocates came recently with a U.S. DOT finding that WisDOT is in violation of federal civil rights statutes. Gretchen Schuldt, of Network blog Urban Milwaukee, combed through the report from U.S. DOT. Her finding? WisDOT “flagrantly ignored” federal law and the rights of urban minorities.