THE RUINATION OF MILWAUKEE.

It's a familiar theme here, and the fault of a previous generation of technocrats is clear.

In the decades before and after World War II, government bureaucracies across the U.S. imposed “urban renewal.” Also known as “slum clearance”, these policies worked from the Modernist notion that urban neighborhoods were dangerous and antiquated, and that automobile-centric design represented the brave new technological future. Old neighborhoods were thus demolished, replaced with highways, public housing, and top-down economic developments.

Unsurprisingly, the condemned neighborhoods were overwhelmingly African American, and to a lesser degree Hispanic and Asian. In city after city, highways that were built to appease white suburban commuters, and enabled through eminent domain and funds from the 1949 Housing Act and 1956 Interstate Highway Act, were shoved through these areas, causing surrounding blight and pollution.

The appeasement goes on.

After 1960 and I-94 opening up in 1968, Milwaukee lost population every ten years until by 2020 Milwaukee’s population had fallen to 577,000, a decrease of 164,000 or 22% from its all-time high of 1960. Meanwhile, Waukesha County increased by 248,000 in population from 1960 to 2020.

But this population loss of 164,000 people in Milwaukee from 1960 to 2020 probably understates the true impact of I-94 on Milwaukee. During the 30 years before 1960, a period of time that saw the Great Depression, World War Two, the peace time years of the Eisenhower Administration and no I-94, Milwaukee’s population increased by an average of 9% every 10 years. Applying this 9% increase in population every 10 years, Milwaukee’s population would have grown from 741,000 people in 1960 to 1,242,000 in 2020. This would have made Milwaukee the nation’s 10th largest city in 2020, comparable to where it stood in 1960 as the 11th largest city in the United States. By way of comparison, Madison, a city which does not have a freeway running through it, more than doubled its population from 126,000 in 1960 to 269,000 in 2020.

The decision will be made by the Wisconsin Department of Transportation in the next year or so whether to add a fourth lane to I-94 in each direction. There are numerous reasons to oppose adding a lane to I-94 other than population loss. Adding a fourth lane to I-94 would increase air pollution. Adding a lane to I-94 is a racial equity issue in that it favors suburban commuters over people of color, many of whom don’t own cars. Adding a lane to I-94 does nothing to expand transit. The additional money that would have to be spent to add a lane to I-94 could be better spent repairing local streets.

To a first approximation, the presence of a state capital, with the lobbying opportunities, and the flagship university in Madison, as well as the expansion of finance and insurance at the same time that heavy manufacturing and beer brewing restructured might have had something to do with the changes within Wisconsin population.  If there's anybody still looking for a capstone paper topic, run with it.

There might not be any true expressways through Madison, although the paired streets (Gorham and University westbound, Johnson eastbound) sure work more like stroads than like pedestrian malls, and in Milwaukee, the failure to complete some of the expressways sure affects driver behavior.

Milwaukee Police Captain Jeffrey Sunn, explained a map that shows the most problematic and dangerous intersections in the city.

"Fond Du Lac and Hampton, Fond Du Lac and Capitol, Capitol and Sherman, Sherman and Burleigh, Fond Du Lac and Sherman."

He says anywhere you have high congested traffic ways, crashes are to be expected. This is due to rush hour, speeding and not paying attention to the road.

Capt. Sunn says drivers don't even obey the speed limit when it changes.

"Let's say you're going down Fond Du Lac Avenue, you're exiting Fond Du Lac freeway and it turns into Fond Du Lac Avenue at about 68th Street, sometimes people think they're still on the freeway."

Fond du Lac Avenue, and Appleton Avenue just to its west, are radial roads that might have predated the Northwest Ordinance platting of what became Wisconsin, and the original expressway plan included an expressway alongside Fond du Lac (think the Jeffries roughly alongside Grand River in Detroit or the Kennedy along Northwest Highway in Chicago) all the way downtown, to connect with the north-south expressway near the court house.  The stretch between 68th or so and the north-south was never built, and the planned extension to the lakefront was torn down a few years ago, conveniently providing space for the Deer District.  In like manner, a crosstown north-south expressway a few miles west of downtown was never finished.  The mind boggles at an elevated, let alone depressed, super-highway along the west edge of Jackson Park, but that was once upon a time the plan, and I heard a radio talker this morning laying off some of the congestion on the existing expressways on the absence of that crosstown.  Apparently, though, Fond du Lac is more likely to be a road than a street.

Captain Sunn says there are conversations about installing round-a-bouts, bump-outs or curb designs.

"The city is doing what it can to change peoples' behavior," said 10th District Alderman Michael Murphy.

Ald. Murphy says the Common Council just hit the green light on $6-million for engineering solutions.

"That means changing the streets themselves, so physically altering the streets to force drivers to slow down. That money has just been approved, the Department of Public Works will be looking at rapid implementation of some of those projects in the very near future," Ald. Murphy said.

Capt. Sunn says some people have asked for speed bumps on major streets. He says that will disrupt the flow of traffic.

Is the idea traffic volume first, or safety first, or might the residents have some say in how traffic is tamed?  Let the record show Wisconsin like overdesigned rotaries.