THE LATTER DAY TRACKLESS TROLLEY.

Milwaukee will be getting a new bus rapid transit line.

The Federal Transit Administration is supposed to pick up most of the tab for the project.

[The transit authority] said in a statement Thursday that riders will be able to enter the buses through either the front or back entrances due to wider aisles and level boarding.

The buses are able to operate 247 miles on a single charge. During the winter months, diesel-powered heaters will be installed to keep the passenger department comfortable.

I wonder if there will be Hamburg-style recharging installations at the ends of the line, where the buses lay over.

Work on those reserved lanes and safety islands is now under way.

Expected to be operational by October of 2022, battery-powered electric buses will connect Milwaukee's lakefront, Marquette University, Milwaukee's near west side, Wauwatosa, Froedtert, the Medical College of Wisconsin, and Children's Wisconsin. It will also link people to areas like Fiserv Forum, the Art Museum, American Family Field, and Milwaukee County Zoo.

Does anyone else have memories of the Wells-Wauwatosa car line of long ago?  The last remnants of that line, from near Cathedral Square to Hoyt Park in Wauwatosa and Allis-Chalmers in West Allis, with direct access to County Stadium, quit running in March 1958.

One reason the Wells cars kept running as long as they did was Milwaukee's city engineers wondered about converting the Wells Street streetcar-only viaduct to a busway.

Wells Street Viaduct postcard courtesy
Wisconsin Electric Railway Historical Society.

That conversion proved not to make sense, and city officials of the era thought extra-fare "Freeway Flyer" buses running on the new expressways to park and ride lots at the outer parts of the county were the way to go.  Up to a point, but not so much, and even in Milwaukee there are a lot of days when the expressway isn't expressing.

The new trackless trolleys will use a reservation on the Wisconsin Avenue viaduct just to the south of Wells.  Whether road-ragey motorists on the Avenue will put up with their stroad being put on a road diet for the use by buses that city officials envision as enhancing service to transit-dependent populations remains to be seen.

As part of the lead-up to the project commencing, one guest on that Milwaukee radio station indulged in some wishes for a light rail service from the Summerfest grounds past the baseball stadium and the fairgrounds, and on to Waukesha.  Um, there's an expressway where that used to be.