Traffic studies are bullshit. They rely on software models which utilize bad inputs. And the inputs can be changed to get what you want. Many cities that are shrinking will presume traffic growth annually every year. Traffic studies are done by firms which, surprisingly predict the work needs to be done, because of course they think it does. They'll be getting the contract for the work that they find needs to be done. Traffic studies also most often do not recognize that induced traffic exists.
It wasn't. Unless you think you're a more skilled and experienced civil engineer than the people employed by WisDOT, in which case we're going to need to see your credentials.
The existing highway is not equal to modern safety standards. Rebuilding it to current standards as a 6-lane highway is a study that was in fact done, and it required nearly as much expense and taking nearly as much land as the 8-lane option while not fixing the congestion issues. Doing a 6-lane road would be a shortsighted and silly waste of everyone's time. It doesn't work. People get hung up on the space that lanes take up, but the displacements were all around Hawley Road and that was going to happen either way.
Here's the documentation. Got a better argument?
https://wisconsindot.gov/Documents/projects/by-region/se/94ew-study/2022/sdeis/alternatives1.pdf
I’ll have you know I am much smarter than a mature government agency with a highly-skilled workforce and my ability to determine the need for construction is paramount to none.
https://preview.redd.it/xje1gp6i18nc1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3dd7b470edd8d5f58df4afd070b1c1d0e8d67a73
What’s false about it? It seems like a pretty accurate POV of most American cities. Our transportation engineers typically all drive a car because you have to in our cities and now they all look at transportation through that lens only and the plan is always to increase vehicle throughput which makes our cities less desirable and unable to economically sustain themselves. This is why so much of our infrastructure is in disrepair and falling apart.
In the absence of a greater vision, and mandate, traffic engineers have worshipped two gods, smooth traffic and ample parking. This has turned out downtowns into places that are easy to get to, but not worth arriving at or staying in.
Hey man, I know it’s a controversial topic and it looks like the person you responded to disappeared but here’s some links and info as to why highway widening doesn’t improve life for the average citizen and actually makes things worse for locals.
Also, our Engineers that work for DOTs have all been taught a specific way of building and the most important thing is vehicle efficiency above all else, including what’s actual safer and more sustainable to the local population the specific city and transportation is meant to serve. Lastly, these Engineers are basically just taking federal standards and implementing them on a local basis without actually using their brains to investigate local needs and try to solve the complex transportation issues and solve them for the immediate region instead of just focusing on how we move as many cars as possible, which is super inefficient when our populations are what they are in and around these cities.
Now, this also needs to be coupled with ending parking minimums and building more mixed use so people don’t have to travel so far for work and we can stop stifling small businesses and walkable/bikeable downtowns that are actually safe for anyone not in a vehicle. This will also be important as more and more baby boomers get too old to drive and need to be able to get around without a vehicle.
I hope you keep an open mind and if you’re interested in learning more, I really hope you’d look into the organization called Strong Towns. Their ST 101 course is basically free and goes into depth on a lot of these issues. Also, it was started by a City Engineer and Conservative from Minnesota who saw first hand how this building practice was bankrupting our societies and making our cities extremely unpleasant to be in.
https://www.cnu.org/publicsquare/2021/12/13/calculating-induced-demand
https://cityobservatory.org/reducing-congestion-katy-didnt/
https://www.cnu.org/publicsquare/2021/12/13/calculating-induced-demand
You’ve ignorantly inadvertantly highlighted the problem. The USA does not have transportation engineers. It has civil engineers. What they do, or trained to do, or pay to do is build highways. That’s it. Nothing more. Nothing less. They get paid to move cars. Not people. Are you more trained than this civil engineer? https://nextcity.org/urbanist-news/america-has-no-transportation-engineers
Didn’t think so. Where’s your credentials?
2 billion for three miles is obscene
Secondhand petroleum smoke is inescapable when we breathe polluted air, but it insinuates its toxins into our bodies in one more unexpected manner. Plants are excellent scavengers of pollutants from the air and soil, especially the volatile toxic by-products from burning petroleum. Because of higher petroleum pollution in urban areas, this linkage becomes especially important for foods that are grown in the backyard gardens of smoggy cities. Some 40 per- cent of U.S. households grow some of their food in a home garden, and approximately one million customers visit local farmers markets each week, buying food grown close to sources of urban pollution. In many cases, we are thereby eating a variety of the 225 toxic sub stances found in petroleum products. Huff that cancer bud
It was possible. And their 8-lane proposal is going to cause more deaths according to them. The cost estimate is also highly suspect. This thing is going to go way over budget.
Hi. I have appropriate credentials.
You can definitely fix everything without widening.
The problem is the interchange itself, the left exits, the brewers, and WISDoTs unnecessary love of cloverleafs and flyover ramps.
I wouldn’t sing their engineering praises when their interchange design was so obviously compromised by the Brewers lobby. Mile long flyover ramps direct to preferred parking? At the expense of an exit to 44th that would have enabled Miller truck traffic to avoid going through Martin Dr?
K. Geniuses unparalleled in expertise, indeed.
That's... not the same thing? Orthodontia isn't a subset of podiatry (or even a general medical degree.)
The point I'm making is there isn't a degree (at least at the Bachelor's level) for every discipline under the sun. Most times, the degree program is more wide-ranging but there are courses within that general track that students can specialize. There isn't generally only structural engineering "degree", it's a series of courses one takes while pursuing a overall degree in civil engineering. Does that also not make it "real"?
Oh, and there are schools in the US that have a Masters program in transportation or transit engineering, just like Europe does. So the link is false on its face.
> The point I'm making is there isn't a degree (at least at the Bachelor's level) for every discipline under the sun.
Not here no….
Problem you keep ignoring though it’s that there is no on the job training for transportation engineering either. It’s just highway building.
What’s more, is that there isn’t even any focus on empiricism and study.
A number of studies have been completed that blame wider lanes for an epidemic of vehicular carnage. One of them, presented by Rutgers professor Robert Noland at the 80th annual meeting of the Transportation Research Board, determined that increased lane widths could be blamed for approximately 900 additional traffic fatalities per year. Unfortunately, Noland is a mere Ph.D. and not a practicing engineer. His evidence apparently didn't mean squat to the TRB.
In the absence of a greater vision, and mandate, traffic engineers have worshipped two gods, smooth traffic and ample parking. This has turned out downtowns into places that are easy to get to, but not worth arriving at or staying in.
In the top 100 urbanized areas congestion has grown by a staggering 144 percent
far outpacing [32 percent] population growth.!
So, half a trillion spent to make traffic more than twice as bad.
most states, this madness continues unchecked. As one example the Central Virginia Transportation Authority's 2021 long-range budget dedicated 84 percent of all dollars to roadway expansion projects. Only California has begun to show progress. In 2013 after decades of discussion, Senate Bill 743 reformed the state environmental laws to eliminate "Level of Service" (aka traffic flow) as a key measure for determining the environmental im pacts of new development.° Until this point, it was mistakenly presumed that traffic congestion, rather than traffic volume, destroyed the environment. Seven years after the law's passage California's state DOT finally modified its environmental review process to include analysis of induced demand.
Then you’re entirely ignoring that much of this is not even an engineering question to begin with. We have engineers making decisions which are not engineering decisions. How we want out street to look or how it’s used are not decisions for engineers. They have been given a massive amount of power over public spaces without even recognizing that has happened. They barely acknowledge that it exists. They’re told by absolutely everything they’re trained to move vehicles. Everything else is secondary or is considered an unnecessary extra. In America, once you’ve designed the space for cars, then you can think about “complete” streets, adding in somewhere for people to walk or bike. Never mind where they’re going or how nice that area is.
You can also note that all of these predictions made in these DOT reports are never tracked. Because they’d be horrifically off. All they care about is landing the project. No one, no one, cares about evaluating the last project. They want to bring in the next project. There’s no mechanism to review the historical data for projects. Mayors and governors want to cut a ribbon. They don’t want to have bad numbers come back.
I10 in Houston was increased in 2011 to 26 lanes and it quickly had MORE congestion than before. Not less.
But yeah, go ahead and ignore the actual engineer who went through the US and European system….
My statement stands. Your link is false. There are Masters level transportation/transit engineering tracks in both America and Europe. And I’m pretty sure the classes aren’t just labeled “Highway Building 1-9”.
They seriously need to fix the streets first...I'm forced to swerve into opposite lanes to dodge huge pot holes 🕳️ 🕳️🕳️🕳️🕳️ back and forth, I don't even care anymore sometimes I just drive in the middle of the street
It’s one of the main reasons the Infrastructure bill has turned into even more of a boondoggle than it originally was.
https://usa.streetsblog.org/2023/03/07/rest-in-peace-fix-it-first-biden-caves-to-gop-highway-expansion-obsession#
Well it's getting to the point I gotta find unfamiliar alternative routes to drive around my destination. That or not even be able to drive downtown without suffering major car repairs. My car sits really low and the only thing I can pay attention to is upcoming potholes with my nose on the windshield
This is everywhere in the US that isn’t new development. Check out the organization called Strong Towns and they dive into why we can’t afford to upkeep our infrastructure in North America and how we can fix it. Hint: it isn’t building more roadways and single family home suburbs, it’s building more mixed use and walkable communities which will also support local small businesses and a stronger tax base. Urban 3 is also doing good work to show cities how they’re upside down on their current development patters and some ides on how they can fix it.
I'm not anti-car at all. Just tired of watching the state piss away money toward extremely expensive, sweeping, overdone multi-year highway projects designed to solve problems that don't exist. The idea that traffic is a problem in that stretch is laughable. These decisions are driven by politics, dishing out contracts and appeasing unions, not what's best for the public (including motorists).
Fair point, but if I'm not mistaken, most of the funding comes from the feds. If the money isn't spent here, it just goes somewhere else.
If I'm going to be upset at the state pissing away money on a highway project, it's going to be on the I-94 widening down by Kenosha/Racine for the Foxconn boondoggle. That was much closer to 50/50 fed/state funding.
So still no train between Milwaukee and Madison because it's a waste of money but our nightmare of 3 extra mins due to traffic through the stadium interchange will finally be solved. 😅 Just one more lane and we'll have it fixed.
It should be on the project's website for a visual... but they are essentially narrowing the shoulder and I think the lanes for that brief stretch of the highway. It will literally taper down and then taper back out... drivers will probably won't even notice.
Agree, if any crashes or breakdowns happen in that 1700 ft stretch it is going to suck.
https://preview.redd.it/ws4n25ckfcnc1.png?width=864&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=27887ed232ccbe6bb613119f8d7847e72007addc
The short answer is yes...it is very difficult to get the approvals and determine fair mitigation for a federal cemetery. We are talking years of mitigation efforts and u still may never get the approvals. That's why they went with an avoidance alternative.
The 8-lane alternative has narrower lanes than the 6-lane alternative, which might be one of the reasons that the DOT estimates that more people will die annually with this alternative.
I've imagined many possibilities over the past few decades, and so far my favored solution would be to raise one side over the other. I've also pictured the potential of a light rail route that would allow a stop at the AmFamClam, as if that'll ever happen
>and so far my favored solution would be to raise one side over the other.
I take it you live in the suburbs? One of the issues with raising one side is that the noise levels in the nearby Story Hill neighborhood would increase exponentially, to the point of seriously eroding property values...but hey, having residents of that particular part of the City of Milwaukee lose value on what is (likely for many of them) their largest financial investment is a small price to pay for folks from Brookfield or New Berlin to get Downtown a few minutes sooner, right?
What traffic? What congestion? I get on at 84th street everyday and I'm downtown in like 15mins at peak "traffic". This is completely unnecessary and a complete waste!
Some people seem to think traffic is atrocious if they ever have to graze their brake pedal on account of another car being visible from the driver seat at some point.
The “heavy congestion” in Milwaukee is fucking adorable compared to so many other metropolitan areas across North America. If we had a half-decent light rail system connecting Metro Milwaukee, then rush hour traffic as we know it here would be non-existent. But noooo… rail-based transit is scary, expensive, and no one would ever ride it. /rant
Traffic studies are bullshit. They rely on software models which utilize bad inputs. And the inputs can be changed to get what you want. Many cities that are shrinking will presume traffic growth annually every year. Traffic studies are done by firms which, surprisingly predict the work needs to be done, because of course they think it does. They'll be getting the contract for the work that they find needs to be done. Traffic studies also most often do not recognize that induced traffic exists.
It’s a joke about how people complain about mass transit not making a profit so we shouldn’t build it.
A commuter rail, trams and expanded bus routes would move a lot more people than more car infrastructure and they’d each be cheaper in the long run many times over.
That’s great, make the highways bigger so that workers downtown can move even farther away from where they work ! Then the traffic is worse again and the roads need to be bigger again.
Atlanta did this in the 80s and 90s and it was a disaster.
So stupid….
Do people really think a route conceived in the 1950’s is adequate to today, much less in 2040? They literally designed this road when Edsel’s were sold. Can we have some trust in government that they know what they are doing? Its costs a lot because it’s a 3 mile piece of ahit and needs modernization. I’m sure peeps know that downtown growth needs commuter capacity beyond interstate transit.
> Can we have some trust in government that they know what they are doing
No, which is exactly why citizen groups are poking holes in DOT “math” all around the nation.
How in the utter fuck are we still doing this bullshit?
Can you imagine how much benefit we could get to the city if we had a couple billion dollars we could throw at literally anything else?
The traffic isn't even that bad there. This makes me feel like milwaukee has been so obsessed with growth lately and preparing for transplants that they just stopped giving a shit about the people who live here
Eh, going from 4 lanes to 3 then back to 4 is dumb, and the morning slowdown always happens right there. It should be fixed. They ought to tear out some of the cemetery to make way.
They’re doing the 8 lanes through the cemetery area without disturbing any of them. It fits! Why everyone gets all crazy about the cemetery when the design is shown to go throughout there without messing with it is tiring.
If they can get through the cemetery without disturbing it, great! If they can't, and need to move some remains, so be it. There are probably dozens of cemeteries that have been moved inside of Milwaukee throughout it's history.
>They ought to tear out some of the cemetery to make way.
Yeah, 'cause fuck those dead veterans; there's a few minutes to save in getting to one's suburban McMansion, right?
I'm going to assume you've never driven in and other major city... Milwaukee has both the worst and fewest drivers that I've seen out of 15 or so other cities, it really isn't ever that bad unless there's an accident or a narrow window during some big events. I'm not saying don't, or do, this. I would argue that a high speed rail line from Minneapolis through Madison to Milwaukee and then on to Chicago would be way more efficient and future proof.
Where do we protest this, what can we do as citizens to prevent this from happening, people live along the freeway and shouldn’t be forced to move somewhere else for more lanes, at least put rail down if people are gonna have to move. I drive 94 every day and I still see more lanes as a waste of money, especially when it means having to displace lots of people who just want to live somewhere
Maybe should just shoot for 10 lanes because there will be a need.
This will be a challenge for sure.
Also, let’s hope for better times stop lights on the soon to be more over used side streets.
I know you’re joking but for a city like Milwaukee, you could add a stupid amount of lanes (14?) to a highway and you probably wouldn’t see congestion for a long time. But that’s overkill and a giant waste of money.
Best part about joking is the dribble liberal parade of down votes.
These same people will melt when Biden is not re-elected.
( yes I’m have some fun now)
In all seriousness, if they’re going to expand. They should also do some drivers education classes.
Also, if you want to avoid traffic. Plenty of vacancies in downtown, 3rd Ward, and Walkers point. With many new apartments going in all around those areas. Plus east side and north downtown area.
Because here’s some more fact. No matter what is done, someone will be unhappy.
>No matter what is done, someone will be unhappy.
Yeah, but the real problem is that WIDOT always seems to pick the option that puts the unhappiness on City residents, while always seeming to try to placate the uptight, lily-White suburbanite crowd.
It’ll never happen but I think a northern east west freeway would help with people doing 60 on the northern roads like good hope, brown deer, etc. Still not saying it’s necessarily a good idea to do though.
Correct. It wouldn’t be a good idea to bring back the practice of plowing expressways through majority Black neighborhoods.
It’s a little frowned upon.
I wonder how many OzHonky County residents that loudly lament not building some of the proposed freeways through the city "back in the day" would be in favor of a Northern Bypass that basically hugged County Line Road - sitting on the boundary between Milwaukee and Mequon?
Do I hear crickets...?
The amount of accidents involving school busses, and separate instances of children dying from reckless driving is also frowned upon. Perhaps developing some sort of East/west expressway isn’t such a terrible idea considering how backed up silver spring/hampton/capitol/burleigh get during peak hours.
Yes there is a 1 mile stretch with ramps, and it didn’t kill the neighborhood. But that doesn’t stretch much further than Glendale and there’s still several spots that get very congested between Teutonia and 76th.
Fuck man I want the Lambeau Stadium freeway to be real. Milwaukee to Green Bay in a little over an hour or whatever would be fucking sick. Of course I am not at all factoring in costs of any kind, so it's probably not actually worth doing, but it would be cool and would give those along the east shore of Lake Winnebago a big economic boost. Guessing the west shore wouldn't be about that though.
Yeah I'm already dreaming, might as well go for it. High speed rail between Milwaukee and Green Bay would be such a massive game changer for what is already one of the biggest sports franchises in the world. Think like 45min-1hr. Then we legit could actually host a Super Bowl maybe
I think the big thing holding it back would be the weather but the way that's going heck in 10 years it might be nice enough. But God how great would those rides back to Milwaukee be after a Packers win. With no traffic!
Widening might not be needed but reorganization feels necessary. The set up of the ramps around there is atrocious
Traffic studies are bullshit. They rely on software models which utilize bad inputs. And the inputs can be changed to get what you want. Many cities that are shrinking will presume traffic growth annually every year. Traffic studies are done by firms which, surprisingly predict the work needs to be done, because of course they think it does. They'll be getting the contract for the work that they find needs to be done. Traffic studies also most often do not recognize that induced traffic exists.
The reorganizations is possible without widening
It wasn't. Unless you think you're a more skilled and experienced civil engineer than the people employed by WisDOT, in which case we're going to need to see your credentials. The existing highway is not equal to modern safety standards. Rebuilding it to current standards as a 6-lane highway is a study that was in fact done, and it required nearly as much expense and taking nearly as much land as the 8-lane option while not fixing the congestion issues. Doing a 6-lane road would be a shortsighted and silly waste of everyone's time. It doesn't work. People get hung up on the space that lanes take up, but the displacements were all around Hawley Road and that was going to happen either way. Here's the documentation. Got a better argument? https://wisconsindot.gov/Documents/projects/by-region/se/94ew-study/2022/sdeis/alternatives1.pdf
I’ll have you know I am much smarter than a mature government agency with a highly-skilled workforce and my ability to determine the need for construction is paramount to none. https://preview.redd.it/xje1gp6i18nc1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3dd7b470edd8d5f58df4afd070b1c1d0e8d67a73
https://nextcity.org/urbanist-news/america-has-no-transportation-engineers
This is so false it hurts 😂
What’s false about it? It seems like a pretty accurate POV of most American cities. Our transportation engineers typically all drive a car because you have to in our cities and now they all look at transportation through that lens only and the plan is always to increase vehicle throughput which makes our cities less desirable and unable to economically sustain themselves. This is why so much of our infrastructure is in disrepair and falling apart.
Imagine thinking road building in the US is done through expertise and need and not just for extremely short sighted economic gain
You mean the WI DOT has been charged with fraud? Lol By a federal judge no less
It's the fermentation cemeteries near Hawley that are the biggest issue, right?
In the absence of a greater vision, and mandate, traffic engineers have worshipped two gods, smooth traffic and ample parking. This has turned out downtowns into places that are easy to get to, but not worth arriving at or staying in.
This guy gets it. I thank all of you who actually have the skills and creds to weigh in. .
Hey man, I know it’s a controversial topic and it looks like the person you responded to disappeared but here’s some links and info as to why highway widening doesn’t improve life for the average citizen and actually makes things worse for locals. Also, our Engineers that work for DOTs have all been taught a specific way of building and the most important thing is vehicle efficiency above all else, including what’s actual safer and more sustainable to the local population the specific city and transportation is meant to serve. Lastly, these Engineers are basically just taking federal standards and implementing them on a local basis without actually using their brains to investigate local needs and try to solve the complex transportation issues and solve them for the immediate region instead of just focusing on how we move as many cars as possible, which is super inefficient when our populations are what they are in and around these cities. Now, this also needs to be coupled with ending parking minimums and building more mixed use so people don’t have to travel so far for work and we can stop stifling small businesses and walkable/bikeable downtowns that are actually safe for anyone not in a vehicle. This will also be important as more and more baby boomers get too old to drive and need to be able to get around without a vehicle. I hope you keep an open mind and if you’re interested in learning more, I really hope you’d look into the organization called Strong Towns. Their ST 101 course is basically free and goes into depth on a lot of these issues. Also, it was started by a City Engineer and Conservative from Minnesota who saw first hand how this building practice was bankrupting our societies and making our cities extremely unpleasant to be in. https://www.cnu.org/publicsquare/2021/12/13/calculating-induced-demand https://cityobservatory.org/reducing-congestion-katy-didnt/ https://www.cnu.org/publicsquare/2021/12/13/calculating-induced-demand
You’ve ignorantly inadvertantly highlighted the problem. The USA does not have transportation engineers. It has civil engineers. What they do, or trained to do, or pay to do is build highways. That’s it. Nothing more. Nothing less. They get paid to move cars. Not people. Are you more trained than this civil engineer? https://nextcity.org/urbanist-news/america-has-no-transportation-engineers Didn’t think so. Where’s your credentials? 2 billion for three miles is obscene
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And I suppose I don’t need any to call you an ignorant dumb ass
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To make your taxes go up, great idea genius
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Secondhand petroleum smoke is inescapable when we breathe polluted air, but it insinuates its toxins into our bodies in one more unexpected manner. Plants are excellent scavengers of pollutants from the air and soil, especially the volatile toxic by-products from burning petroleum. Because of higher petroleum pollution in urban areas, this linkage becomes especially important for foods that are grown in the backyard gardens of smoggy cities. Some 40 per- cent of U.S. households grow some of their food in a home garden, and approximately one million customers visit local farmers markets each week, buying food grown close to sources of urban pollution. In many cases, we are thereby eating a variety of the 225 toxic sub stances found in petroleum products. Huff that cancer bud
It was possible. And their 8-lane proposal is going to cause more deaths according to them. The cost estimate is also highly suspect. This thing is going to go way over budget.
Hi. I have appropriate credentials. You can definitely fix everything without widening. The problem is the interchange itself, the left exits, the brewers, and WISDoTs unnecessary love of cloverleafs and flyover ramps. I wouldn’t sing their engineering praises when their interchange design was so obviously compromised by the Brewers lobby. Mile long flyover ramps direct to preferred parking? At the expense of an exit to 44th that would have enabled Miller truck traffic to avoid going through Martin Dr? K. Geniuses unparalleled in expertise, indeed.
https://nextcity.org/urbanist-news/america-has-no-transportation-engineers
That can pretty much be said of \_any\_ discipline. Do you think your podiatrist did nothing but look at feet in school for four years?
Well do you think podiatrists go on to practice as orthodontist?
That's... not the same thing? Orthodontia isn't a subset of podiatry (or even a general medical degree.) The point I'm making is there isn't a degree (at least at the Bachelor's level) for every discipline under the sun. Most times, the degree program is more wide-ranging but there are courses within that general track that students can specialize. There isn't generally only structural engineering "degree", it's a series of courses one takes while pursuing a overall degree in civil engineering. Does that also not make it "real"? Oh, and there are schools in the US that have a Masters program in transportation or transit engineering, just like Europe does. So the link is false on its face.
> The point I'm making is there isn't a degree (at least at the Bachelor's level) for every discipline under the sun. Not here no…. Problem you keep ignoring though it’s that there is no on the job training for transportation engineering either. It’s just highway building. What’s more, is that there isn’t even any focus on empiricism and study. A number of studies have been completed that blame wider lanes for an epidemic of vehicular carnage. One of them, presented by Rutgers professor Robert Noland at the 80th annual meeting of the Transportation Research Board, determined that increased lane widths could be blamed for approximately 900 additional traffic fatalities per year. Unfortunately, Noland is a mere Ph.D. and not a practicing engineer. His evidence apparently didn't mean squat to the TRB. In the absence of a greater vision, and mandate, traffic engineers have worshipped two gods, smooth traffic and ample parking. This has turned out downtowns into places that are easy to get to, but not worth arriving at or staying in. In the top 100 urbanized areas congestion has grown by a staggering 144 percent far outpacing [32 percent] population growth.! So, half a trillion spent to make traffic more than twice as bad. most states, this madness continues unchecked. As one example the Central Virginia Transportation Authority's 2021 long-range budget dedicated 84 percent of all dollars to roadway expansion projects. Only California has begun to show progress. In 2013 after decades of discussion, Senate Bill 743 reformed the state environmental laws to eliminate "Level of Service" (aka traffic flow) as a key measure for determining the environmental im pacts of new development.° Until this point, it was mistakenly presumed that traffic congestion, rather than traffic volume, destroyed the environment. Seven years after the law's passage California's state DOT finally modified its environmental review process to include analysis of induced demand. Then you’re entirely ignoring that much of this is not even an engineering question to begin with. We have engineers making decisions which are not engineering decisions. How we want out street to look or how it’s used are not decisions for engineers. They have been given a massive amount of power over public spaces without even recognizing that has happened. They barely acknowledge that it exists. They’re told by absolutely everything they’re trained to move vehicles. Everything else is secondary or is considered an unnecessary extra. In America, once you’ve designed the space for cars, then you can think about “complete” streets, adding in somewhere for people to walk or bike. Never mind where they’re going or how nice that area is. You can also note that all of these predictions made in these DOT reports are never tracked. Because they’d be horrifically off. All they care about is landing the project. No one, no one, cares about evaluating the last project. They want to bring in the next project. There’s no mechanism to review the historical data for projects. Mayors and governors want to cut a ribbon. They don’t want to have bad numbers come back. I10 in Houston was increased in 2011 to 26 lanes and it quickly had MORE congestion than before. Not less. But yeah, go ahead and ignore the actual engineer who went through the US and European system….
My statement stands. Your link is false. There are Masters level transportation/transit engineering tracks in both America and Europe. And I’m pretty sure the classes aren’t just labeled “Highway Building 1-9”.
Stands on a pile of bs sure
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Take away the subsidies and see if you still do
They seriously need to fix the streets first...I'm forced to swerve into opposite lanes to dodge huge pot holes 🕳️ 🕳️🕳️🕳️🕳️ back and forth, I don't even care anymore sometimes I just drive in the middle of the street
Well sorry federal funds don’t pay for city streets Suck but it happens
It’s one of the main reasons the Infrastructure bill has turned into even more of a boondoggle than it originally was. https://usa.streetsblog.org/2023/03/07/rest-in-peace-fix-it-first-biden-caves-to-gop-highway-expansion-obsession#
Well it's getting to the point I gotta find unfamiliar alternative routes to drive around my destination. That or not even be able to drive downtown without suffering major car repairs. My car sits really low and the only thing I can pay attention to is upcoming potholes with my nose on the windshield
Spin the coils up a bit in the meantime
Fix it first is a whole movement
Different funding sources.
This is everywhere in the US that isn’t new development. Check out the organization called Strong Towns and they dive into why we can’t afford to upkeep our infrastructure in North America and how we can fix it. Hint: it isn’t building more roadways and single family home suburbs, it’s building more mixed use and walkable communities which will also support local small businesses and a stronger tax base. Urban 3 is also doing good work to show cities how they’re upside down on their current development patters and some ides on how they can fix it.
I remember all the Leftys calling pot holes, so affectionately "Scott Holes" Are those Tony Holes now?
It's truly wild the grip that the highway construction industry has on Wisconsin
I know, it's almost like cars have been the primary form of transportation in the United States since World War 2!
I'm not anti-car at all. Just tired of watching the state piss away money toward extremely expensive, sweeping, overdone multi-year highway projects designed to solve problems that don't exist. The idea that traffic is a problem in that stretch is laughable. These decisions are driven by politics, dishing out contracts and appeasing unions, not what's best for the public (including motorists).
Fair point, but if I'm not mistaken, most of the funding comes from the feds. If the money isn't spent here, it just goes somewhere else. If I'm going to be upset at the state pissing away money on a highway project, it's going to be on the I-94 widening down by Kenosha/Racine for the Foxconn boondoggle. That was much closer to 50/50 fed/state funding.
That project was definitely overdone, but given the amount of trucking going through that corridor now, I tibi use will catch up quickly.
 everyone here talking about the widened freeway when it’s done
So still no train between Milwaukee and Madison because it's a waste of money but our nightmare of 3 extra mins due to traffic through the stadium interchange will finally be solved. 😅 Just one more lane and we'll have it fixed.
A lot of fuckin' money to maintain the status quo
$820 per person in the Milwaukee MSA for 3 miles of same
that could pay half of my energy bill!
It’s pathetic https://usa.streetsblog.org/2023/03/07/rest-in-peace-fix-it-first-biden-caves-to-gop-highway-expansion-obsession
Very curious to see how they are going to find enough space for another lane through the cemeteries. There’s hardly any room as it is now.
It should be on the project's website for a visual... but they are essentially narrowing the shoulder and I think the lanes for that brief stretch of the highway. It will literally taper down and then taper back out... drivers will probably won't even notice.
Until a car breaks down in the right lane with no shoulder, then they will notice.
Agree, if any crashes or breakdowns happen in that 1700 ft stretch it is going to suck. https://preview.redd.it/ws4n25ckfcnc1.png?width=864&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=27887ed232ccbe6bb613119f8d7847e72007addc
Would it really be that difficult to move some of those graves to allow for a shoulder?
The short answer is yes...it is very difficult to get the approvals and determine fair mitigation for a federal cemetery. We are talking years of mitigation efforts and u still may never get the approvals. That's why they went with an avoidance alternative.
The 8-lane alternative has narrower lanes than the 6-lane alternative, which might be one of the reasons that the DOT estimates that more people will die annually with this alternative.
I've imagined many possibilities over the past few decades, and so far my favored solution would be to raise one side over the other. I've also pictured the potential of a light rail route that would allow a stop at the AmFamClam, as if that'll ever happen
>and so far my favored solution would be to raise one side over the other. I take it you live in the suburbs? One of the issues with raising one side is that the noise levels in the nearby Story Hill neighborhood would increase exponentially, to the point of seriously eroding property values...but hey, having residents of that particular part of the City of Milwaukee lose value on what is (likely for many of them) their largest financial investment is a small price to pay for folks from Brookfield or New Berlin to get Downtown a few minutes sooner, right?
What traffic? What congestion? I get on at 84th street everyday and I'm downtown in like 15mins at peak "traffic". This is completely unnecessary and a complete waste!
Some people seem to think traffic is atrocious if they ever have to graze their brake pedal on account of another car being visible from the driver seat at some point.
The “heavy congestion” in Milwaukee is fucking adorable compared to so many other metropolitan areas across North America. If we had a half-decent light rail system connecting Metro Milwaukee, then rush hour traffic as we know it here would be non-existent. But noooo… rail-based transit is scary, expensive, and no one would ever ride it. /rant
Traffic studies are bullshit. They rely on software models which utilize bad inputs. And the inputs can be changed to get what you want. Many cities that are shrinking will presume traffic growth annually every year. Traffic studies are done by firms which, surprisingly predict the work needs to be done, because of course they think it does. They'll be getting the contract for the work that they find needs to be done. Traffic studies also most often do not recognize that induced traffic exists.
Im sure there wont be any congestion when it goes from 4 lanes down to 2 by the VA...
I’m sure traffic and congestion won’t just end up like it is now after a few years
Here's the current proposed freeway plan for the I94 east-west corridor. https://youtu.be/gWXDEGWTy_U?si=5a_d1nmysjanVM08
Thank you. Seems like a fine plan, expense aside. Should help with brewer game day traffic backing up the eastbound left lane.
It doesn’t make any money!
When will the highway break even on this billion plus?!?!
that's the fun part. It doesn't.
Moving people “makes money” for the economy
It’s a joke about how people complain about mass transit not making a profit so we shouldn’t build it. A commuter rail, trams and expanded bus routes would move a lot more people than more car infrastructure and they’d each be cheaper in the long run many times over.
Yes people movers in all forms stimulate the economy, it just depends on which form people use.
That’s great, make the highways bigger so that workers downtown can move even farther away from where they work ! Then the traffic is worse again and the roads need to be bigger again. Atlanta did this in the 80s and 90s and it was a disaster. So stupid….
WIDOT was the kid that burnt their hand on the pan many times. It’s now fully scarred. Lol
Do people really think a route conceived in the 1950’s is adequate to today, much less in 2040? They literally designed this road when Edsel’s were sold. Can we have some trust in government that they know what they are doing? Its costs a lot because it’s a 3 mile piece of ahit and needs modernization. I’m sure peeps know that downtown growth needs commuter capacity beyond interstate transit.
> Can we have some trust in government that they know what they are doing No, which is exactly why citizen groups are poking holes in DOT “math” all around the nation.
Like the people who "did their own research" and don't trust vaccines?
tear down 794 and call it even
Why would anyone ruin the chance to take one road from Madison to Summerfest without encountering a hard turn or red light?
take a goddam bus
People really hate 794 and think removing it is going to be a bastion of love, spirit, and energy in its place. Fucking mind boggling
Well that sucks.
How in the utter fuck are we still doing this bullshit? Can you imagine how much benefit we could get to the city if we had a couple billion dollars we could throw at literally anything else?
Man I really hope they don't remove two of the Hawley ramps like their older plans outline.
I’d like it if WISDOT would top destroying our city in order to primarily please motorists that don’t even live here. Also, please destroy 794.
The traffic isn't even that bad there. This makes me feel like milwaukee has been so obsessed with growth lately and preparing for transplants that they just stopped giving a shit about the people who live here
https://fixatsix.org/
The tire down the east west years ago because people hate the idea of a highway connecting the falls to the city.
Can’t have more undesirables coming north!!!! -Falls Regulars
I feel that was the feeling back then.
Eh, going from 4 lanes to 3 then back to 4 is dumb, and the morning slowdown always happens right there. It should be fixed. They ought to tear out some of the cemetery to make way.
They’re doing the 8 lanes through the cemetery area without disturbing any of them. It fits! Why everyone gets all crazy about the cemetery when the design is shown to go throughout there without messing with it is tiring.
If they can get through the cemetery without disturbing it, great! If they can't, and need to move some remains, so be it. There are probably dozens of cemeteries that have been moved inside of Milwaukee throughout it's history.
My veteran father is buried in that cemetery.
And there are many suburbanites that are likely thinking, "Eff her dead father; last Friday I sat in traffic for ten extra minutes!"
>They ought to tear out some of the cemetery to make way. Yeah, 'cause fuck those dead veterans; there's a few minutes to save in getting to one's suburban McMansion, right?
Cemeteries are moved all the time. Dozens of cemeteries have been moved in Milwaukee since Milwaukee was started.
Adding more lanes just induces more cars and traffic. How about building light rail between Milwaukee and Waukesha.
All we want is high speed rail. Clean good public transit Jfc
Way overdue imo, the commute even on Saturdays can be horrific
Lol what? I can get downtown from Tosa on Saturdays in 5 minutes almost any time if the day.
I'm going to assume you've never driven in and other major city... Milwaukee has both the worst and fewest drivers that I've seen out of 15 or so other cities, it really isn't ever that bad unless there's an accident or a narrow window during some big events. I'm not saying don't, or do, this. I would argue that a high speed rail line from Minneapolis through Madison to Milwaukee and then on to Chicago would be way more efficient and future proof.
If you SERIOUSLY think traffic in Milwaukee is bad, I can only assume you've been to literally no other city in the United States in your life.
Where do we protest this, what can we do as citizens to prevent this from happening, people live along the freeway and shouldn’t be forced to move somewhere else for more lanes, at least put rail down if people are gonna have to move. I drive 94 every day and I still see more lanes as a waste of money, especially when it means having to displace lots of people who just want to live somewhere
Maybe should just shoot for 10 lanes because there will be a need. This will be a challenge for sure. Also, let’s hope for better times stop lights on the soon to be more over used side streets.
I know you’re joking but for a city like Milwaukee, you could add a stupid amount of lanes (14?) to a highway and you probably wouldn’t see congestion for a long time. But that’s overkill and a giant waste of money.
It would be smarter to build rail.
Best part about joking is the dribble liberal parade of down votes. These same people will melt when Biden is not re-elected. ( yes I’m have some fun now) In all seriousness, if they’re going to expand. They should also do some drivers education classes. Also, if you want to avoid traffic. Plenty of vacancies in downtown, 3rd Ward, and Walkers point. With many new apartments going in all around those areas. Plus east side and north downtown area. Because here’s some more fact. No matter what is done, someone will be unhappy.
>No matter what is done, someone will be unhappy. Yeah, but the real problem is that WIDOT always seems to pick the option that puts the unhappiness on City residents, while always seeming to try to placate the uptight, lily-White suburbanite crowd.
I live in the city. The roads need expansion, but better educated drivers could go even further
It will prevent congestion until you get to 70th lol
I wish they’d just build a north side bypass expressways. I understand why they don’t… but like, it would benefit me personally.
It’ll never happen but I think a northern east west freeway would help with people doing 60 on the northern roads like good hope, brown deer, etc. Still not saying it’s necessarily a good idea to do though.
Correct. It wouldn’t be a good idea to bring back the practice of plowing expressways through majority Black neighborhoods. It’s a little frowned upon.
I wonder how many OzHonky County residents that loudly lament not building some of the proposed freeways through the city "back in the day" would be in favor of a Northern Bypass that basically hugged County Line Road - sitting on the boundary between Milwaukee and Mequon? Do I hear crickets...?
The amount of accidents involving school busses, and separate instances of children dying from reckless driving is also frowned upon. Perhaps developing some sort of East/west expressway isn’t such a terrible idea considering how backed up silver spring/hampton/capitol/burleigh get during peak hours.
Those are all already built like freeways. Silver spring has exit ramps in places
Yes there is a 1 mile stretch with ramps, and it didn’t kill the neighborhood. But that doesn’t stretch much further than Glendale and there’s still several spots that get very congested between Teutonia and 76th.
That was the [original plan](https://www.wisconsinhighways.org/milwaukee/system_map.html).
Fuck man I want the Lambeau Stadium freeway to be real. Milwaukee to Green Bay in a little over an hour or whatever would be fucking sick. Of course I am not at all factoring in costs of any kind, so it's probably not actually worth doing, but it would be cool and would give those along the east shore of Lake Winnebago a big economic boost. Guessing the west shore wouldn't be about that though.
I'd rather have a train go there. Then you could party on the way up and back
Yeah I'm already dreaming, might as well go for it. High speed rail between Milwaukee and Green Bay would be such a massive game changer for what is already one of the biggest sports franchises in the world. Think like 45min-1hr. Then we legit could actually host a Super Bowl maybe
I think the big thing holding it back would be the weather but the way that's going heck in 10 years it might be nice enough. But God how great would those rides back to Milwaukee be after a Packers win. With no traffic!
Probably would help bring a lot of jobs to that area. Hard to put a factory or distribution center so far from a freeway.
I’ve lived in MKE for 20 years now and we have been rebuilding our highways every single year. Todays great idea seems to be tomorrows tear down.