Milwaukee

A new report from Rails-to-Trails Conservancy spotlights how disadvantaged neighborhoods in Milwaukee have less access to safe bicycle routes than other parts of the city.

One of the most effective ways to get elected officials to pay attention to traffic safety is to spell out the dangers in their own districts. A new effort from a coalition in Milwaukee does just that, crafting reports for each of the city's 15 aldermanic districts on the eve of the Wisconsin Bike Summit.

Anti-urban politicians have tried to paint Milwaukee as a den of government dependence. But the data shows it, like many cities, actually subsidizes rural and suburban areas.

Low-income residents of Detroit and Milwaukee face formidable obstacles to job access. These two Rust Belt regions are consistently ranked among the most segregated in the country, and neither has a good transit system.

One of the nation's most poorly conceived highway proposals will become slightly less ridiculous. Transportation officials in Wisconsin recently announced they will no longer consider double-decking a portion of Interstate 94 in Milwaukee. The billion-dollar project would have raised the highway to building height in the Story Hill neighborhood.

The Wisconsin Department of Transportation is set on widening Interstate 94, a highway that runs east-west through Milwaukee. The agency is so committed to this idea that it is proceeding, at great expense and over the objections of Milwaukee's mayor, with a project to double-deck a portion of the road through a relatively densely populated area. The money that WisDOT is prepared to shell out for this highway expansion could be better spent providing quality transit options along the corridor, the Wisconsin Public Interest Research says in a new report  [PDF].

Transit advocates around the country were transfixed by a story in Tennessee this April, when the state chapter of Americans for Prosperity made a bid to pre-emptively kill Nashville bus rapid transit. It was an especially brazen attempt by Charles and David Koch's political network to strong-arm local transportation policy makers. But it was far from the only time the Kochs and their surrogates have taken aim at transit.

U.S. PIRG and the Frontier Group released a report yesterday, "Highway Boondoggles: Wasted Money and America’s Transportation Future." In it, they examine 11 of the most wasteful, least justifiable road projects underway in America right now.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act, which outlawed discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.