YOU KNEW THIS WOULD HAPPEN.

A pedestrian is dead after being hit near the Milwaukee Public Market.  Why?

A 39-year-old has died after being hit by a semi near the Milwaukee Public Market.

Milwaukee Police responded at 11:17 a.m near Broadway and St. Paul. A semi struck a pedestrian crossing the street while the truck was making a turn.

The pedestrian died from their [c.q.] injuries.

The driver of the semi stayed on the scene and is cooperating with the police.

How many times, dear reader, must I call attention to the folly of using 53 foot trailers for urban deliveries?

Unattributed photograph retrieved from WTMJ Radio.

Broadway at St. Paul is down by the Milwaukee Public Market where the streetcar bends the corner around.  It is not the kind of place one would want to maneuver a long trailer under the best of circumstances, which on a Tuesday morning with the coffee shops and delis already in operation, and the bars about to open, and the Milwaukee Brewers hosting the Pittsburgh Pirates.  And the "efficiency" of bringing a larger lot of cargo into the Third Ward (a few weekends ago, while I was there, I saw another 53 foot trailer attempting to maneuver at the corner of Water and St. Paul: fortunately no pedestrians were hurt and no fenders were bent) doesn't make any sense.  "Are the people of Venice unable to obtain food without semi tractor trailers? Of course not; I’ve eaten some of the best food of my life there. How is this food distributed if not by tractor trailer? More slowly, one delivery boat at a time, the same way stuff was distributed in American cities during the first half of the 20th Century."

In the Third Ward, though, a few Commission Row wholesalers still operate, breaking bulk from the semis to parcel out to box trucks for the restaurants and independent grocers they serve.  Reconfiguring the Third Ward to accommodate semis?  Milwaukee has Butler or Muskego for that, and the grocery chains have situated their warehouses accordingly.  The charm of the Third Ward, to those coffee drinkers and baseball fans, is that it is not stroad hell; nay, there is talk in Milwaukee of removing the connector expressways that cut up the neighborhood fifty years ago.

How about the taxpayer? They get to pay more to “improve” the transportation system to accommodate semi tractor trailers everywhere. It’s not just enough that we can transport goods between cities on our major highways, but we also need to tap taxpayers to widen out our local streets and intersections to accommodate all that efficiency. Of course, that is going make local streets less safe – especially for those outside of a vehicle – but it will have the side benefit of allowing us regular folk to drive more places even faster.

In the Third Ward, the best thing to do might be to close the streets to the big rigs.  "So it is with the use of 53 foot trailers to provision the cities. Venice or Paris would not be the same with a road infrastructure designed for North American suburbs."  Nor, to repeat, would be Commission Row, where adaptive reuse of the old commission merchant houses works pretty well.  "Plus, your community might express a preference to look more like Paris or Venice, or for that matter, like Norman Rockwell's America."  As Charles "Strong Towns" Marohn notes, "If you choose not to make accommodating the efficiency of tractor trailers your primary design criteria and perhaps decide that wealth creation, solvency and safety of residents are more important, just know that – while there will be some wailing and gnashing of teeth – nobody in your city will starve."

I follow some of Milwaukee's New Urbanists on social media.  Let's see if anything comes of it.  We have one dead pedestrian and one teamster who will be having nightmares.  The Third Ward's tourist appeal comes precisely from not accommodating the alleged efficiency of tractor trailers.  Might something good come of today's tragedy?