Sunday, June 29, 2008

For immediate release

Contact: Samuel Jensen (414) 405 6753
or Matt Nelson (414) 273 9777
www.transitridersunion.org
transitridersunion@gmail.com

The people deserve the opportunity to vote on sales tax

The advisory sales tax referendum proposal passed by the Milwaukee County Board on Thursday, June 26, has the possibility of providing stable support for vital county services and deserves to be taken to the people on November 4. The Milwaukee Transit Riders Union urges the Milwaukee County Board to show the vision and courage to override County Executive Scott Walker’s promised veto of the referendum.

The sales tax referendum approved by the Milwaukee County Board offers a real opportunity for Milwaukee County residents to have a say in how they want to fund essential county services. The referendum’s proposed 1% sales tax increase, if allowed by the state and passed by the county board, would provide over $67 million in property tax relief (over $170 a year for a house valued at $165,000).

The referendum would take the Milwaukee County Transit System off the property tax and provide $30-40 million in extra funding for transit.

“This extra funding can help replace MCTS’s aging buses, restore services cut since 1999, and allow the system to modernize to the level of most other major American transit systems- real improvement which would improve the daily lives of Milwaukeeans, giving people more mobility and cleaning up our environment,” said Samuel Jensen from the Transit Riders Union

“While the Transit Riders Union would prefer a stronger, binding referendum, given the current stalemate in transit issues in Milwaukee, this referendum is a productive first step, which can give legislators the political backing to fund transit and other county services properly,” said Samuel Jensen of the Milwaukee Transit Riders Union.

The Transit Riders Union urges all Milwaukee County residents to contact their county supervisor and urge them to show support for funding our essential county services, including MCTS , and override Scott Walker’s upcoming veto.

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For more information, contact: Samuel Jensen (414) 405 6753, or Matt Nelson (414) 273 9777

www.transitridersunion.org

Sales Tax Press Release 

Referendum and Explanation as Passed by the County Board 

Did your bus come late today? Was it unusually dirty or loud? Is there a bus stop near you that needs to be repaired or improved in some way? Tell us about it.

Why send complaints to us instead of just to MCTS itself?

The Milwaukee Transit Riders Union is trying to compile rider complaints or specific suggestions for improved transit service. We are doing this so that we can track the improvement that can be made by sending complaints to the bus system. Sending multiple complaints en masse about a single bus, driver, stop, or route also helps us achieve real change by showing serious and persistent problems.

Send a compliant via our website: click here

The Milwaukee Transit Riders Union will be hosting a presentation and open house organised by students from the School of Urban Planning at UWM this Saturday. The Transit Riders Union is functioning as a client for a transit visioning and planning project at the school. The students will be presenting the results of their project as well as gathering public input. All interested in the future of public transit in our area are encouraged to attend.

The presentation and open house will occur during the Transit Riders Union meeting this Saturday, at 11:15 am, at Brewing Grounds for Change Coffeehouse. Agendas will be available before the meeting.

Brewing Grounds is located at 2008 N. Farwell on Milwaukee’s East Side. It is located on rt. 30, is one block east of rt. 15, and 3 blocks south of rt. 21. More detailed directions are available in the Meetings section of the website.

Vote Pro-Transit on Tuesday, April 1!

Local and statewide elections will be held this Tuesday, April 1. All Milwaukee County supervisors, as well as the county executive will be up for election. Within the city of Milwaukee, aldermen, the city attorney, and the mayor are also up for election.

Polls are open from 7AM to 8PM. All employers are required by state law to allow their employees to take up to 3 hours off from work to vote, so long as they request the time off before the day of the election.

Milwaukee County Candidates

Map of Milwaukee County Supervisory Districts

City of Milwaukee Candidates

Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel Elections Website (has information and articles on all city, county, and suburban races)

Shepherd Express Website (has information about and endorsements for city and county races)

89.7 WUWM Public Radio Elections Website (has information about all elections as well as interviews with some of the candidates)

How and where to vote in the city of Milwaukee

For information about voting in the suburbs, contact your local government:

Brown Deer: 371-3000

River Hills: 352-8213

Bayside: 351-8811

Glendale: 288-1700

Fox Point: 351-8900

Whitefish Bay: 962-6690

Shorewood: 847-2700

Wauwatosa: 479-8900

West Allis: 302-8200

West Milwaukee: 645-1530

Greenfield: 329-5219

Greendale: 423-2100

Hales Corners: 529-6161

Franklin: 425-7500

St. Francis: 481-2300

Cudahy: 769-2204

South Milwaukee: 762-2222

Oak Creek: 768-6500

The Milwaukee Transit Riders Union was recently featured in a column on the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel website. The column, written by former county and city hall reporter Larry Sandler, outlines the two candidates for county executive’s- State Senator Lena Taylor and incumbent Scott Walker- positions on different public transit issues.

It can be accessed here

Tuesday, 18 March 2008                                                     For immediate release

Contact: Samuel Jensen (414) 405 6753

or Matt Nelson (414) 273 9777

www.transitridersunion.org

Candidates lack transit vision

The Milwaukee Transit Riders Union on Tuesday urged both candidates for Milwaukee County executive to get serious about public transit. “Both County Executive Scott Walker and his challenger, State Senator Lena Taylor, lack realistic plans for dealing with Milwaukee County’s transit issues,” said Samuel Jensen, organizer with the Transit Riders Union. “Both candidates have spoken of the funding issues surrounding bus service in Milwaukee County, but neither candidate has put forth a realistic plan to solve them.”

During his first two terms Walker has repeatedly cut bus service and raised fares.

“Scott Walker’s inability to come to an agreement with other regional leaders on funding sources for the KRM Commuter Rail connection to Chicago and the Milwaukee Connector has left both projects stalled by the side of the road, with over $91 million in federal dollars soon to be lost to other cities,” Jensen said. “His only proposal for solving MCTS’s funding crisis involves increased state funds, an unrealistic proposition in a time of large state budget shortfalls.

“While his opponent, Senator Taylor, has repeatedly stated the importance of public transit in our county, she has yet to come forth with any proposals of her own on how to solve the current funding crisis. She has also not come forth with any proposal to get the KRM and Milwaukee Connector projects back on track,” added Jensen.

The Milwaukee Transit Riders Union urges both candidates to come up with detailed, realistic proposals for dealing with the serious issues surrounding public transit in our community before it’s too late.

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For more information, contact Samuel Jensen (414) 405 6753 or Matt Nelson (414) 273 9777.

www.transitridersunion.org

Representatives from the Milwaukee County Transit System will give a short presentation at the Transit Riders Union meeting this Saturday outlining upcoming service reductions.

As per the current Milwaukee County budget, a number of routes will be shortened and/or reorganised later this month. Anyone interested in learning more about these cuts in service should attend the meeting this Saturday.

The meeting will be at 11:15 at Brewing Grounds for Change Coffee Shop, 2008 N. Farwell.

According to MCTS, bus service in Milwaukee County was suspended entirely at 5:30 today due to the snowstorm. Additionally, Waukesha Metro Transit service will end at 7:15 p.m.

Service is planned to resume as usual for both systems on Thursday morning.

For more information, visit: MCTS- www.ridemcts.com and Waukesha Metro Transit- www.waukeshametro.org.

This is a reminder that MCTS bus schedules will be changing as usual on December 30. The routes preview is now available on the MCTS website: http://www.ridemcts.com/preview/. There will be some small reductions in the number of trips, as well as the shortening of route 53. More changes are expected this spring, along with the cutting of sections of certain routes. We will post more information on this spring’s schedule changes when it becomes available.

The Milwaukee Transit Riders Union has been discussing the current plan to widen Interstate 94 from Milwaukee to the state line. Public input is still possible in the process. The closest public meeting to Milwaukee will be held at the Airport Best Western, which is just off MCTS Route 80. More information is available below.

Next road work tab $1.9 billion

Freeway project would expand I-94 to eight lanes from airport to state line

By TOM HELD
theld@journalsentinel.com

Posted: Nov. 15, 2007

The next massive freeway project for southeast Wisconsin, reconstructing and expanding I-94 from the state line to the Mitchell Interchange, comes with equally massive sticker shock: $1.9 billion, the biggest price tag in state roadway history.

State Transportation Secretary Frank Busalacchi shared that hefty cost estimate Thursday when he made public the preferred plan to expand the 35 miles of freeway from six lanes to eight.

The department will release its draft environmental impact statement on the project today, and will seek Federal Highway Administration approval to begin the construction in the Mitchell Interchange in 2009.

The state will look for federal highway funds to pay for half of the $1.9 billion estimated cost.

That figure covers the reconstruction of 17 interchanges in Milwaukee, Racine and Kenosha counties, straightening of the Plainfield curve just south of Howard Ave. and the real estate costs to acquire a dozen houses and a dozen businesses in the freeway right of way. Two of the homes would be removed only if the state wins federal approval to add an interchange at Drexel Ave. in Oak Creek.

The completion date is set for 2016.

The number of homes to be removed has dropped steadily during the project planning, from earlier estimates of 40 to 45 in Milwaukee County alone, to the four in Milwaukee County and another eight scattered in Racine and Kenosha counties.

As the property impacts decreased, the price tag climbed, to a figure that stuns some officials.

“Those are huge, huge numbers when you’re talking $1.7 (billion) to $2 billion,” said Patrick Curley, chief of staff to Mayor Tom Barrett. “What that all means when this is all constructed is that it’s going to be higher.”

Barrett was tied up Thursday with the selection of a new police chief in Milwaukee and unavailable to comment on the I-94 reconstruction plan.

For comparison, the ongoing reconstruction of the Marquette Interchange is estimated to cost $810 million.

Only the deep tunnel project with other improvements to the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District appears to be a more expensive public works project, topping $4 billion, spread through the 1980s and up to 2010.

Taken as a whole, the freeway reconstruction in southeast Wisconsin, as projected by the regional plan commission, will top $6.23 billion, according to a 2003 estimate. That plan also calls for expanding the east-west I-94 to eight lanes from the Zoo Interchange to Highway 16 in western Waukesha County.

Objections raised

The logical question to ask is “what can we afford,” said Steve Hiniker, executive director of the environmental advocacy group 1000 Friends of Wisconsin.

The cost goes beyond dollars to the additional encroachment on farmland and wetlands and the additional auto emissions, Hiniker said.

“You have a couple billion dollars now going into freeway expansion at a time when we’re also trying to figure out ways to reduce auto travel because of the use and cost of oil and the impacts on our climate,” he said. “We have to take a deep breath and figure out how we’re going to build a multimodal system, instead of just pouring concrete.”

Gretchen Schuldt, co-chair of Citizens Allied for Sane Highways, a group opposed to freeway expansion, took a similarly critical view.

The added lanes will contribute to the health problems in children caused by the auto-produced pollutants, particularly those attending schools in the freeway corridor, Schuldt said.

And the plan to expand the freeways seems counter to the ongoing shift in transportation resources.

“The oil era is clearly coming to an end,” Schuldt said. “Instead of investing in transit and smart energy projects, we’re throwing it on pavement and will bankrupt the state sooner rather than later.”

Busalacchi found support for his plan from Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker and area legislators who regard the north-south corridor as a vital pathway for commerce and a link to the dollars available in the Chicago marketplace.

In their view, the 35 miles of concrete and asphalt, at nearly 50 years old, has deteriorated beyond repair, and projected congestion will hamper the transport of products into and through the state. Without the reconstruction and expansion, accident rates will continue to increase, they say.

Busalacchi said the result of rebuilding the interchange in its current six-lane configuration would foster gridlock in several areas. Traffic volumes will top 130,000 vehicles a day in Kenosha County and 190,000 vehicles a day near the Mitchell Interchange, exceeding the capacity of the six-lane freeway by 2035, according to DOT figures.

“In order to keep Wisconsin open for business, and to keep the economy growing, we have to keep this open,” Busalacchi said.

Rep. Jeff Stone (R-Greendale) said the lost business and economic impact of not expanding the corridor to eight lanes would be more than the cost of the project.

“These expansions are expensive, and yet, we have congestion that needs to be addressed, and the only way you’re going to get there is by adding capacity,” said Stone, who focuses on transportation spending as a member of the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee.

The plan Busalacchi provided includes changes in the construction schedule for the project.

Work would start on the Mitchell Interchange in 2009, with the reconstruction there to be completed by 2012, in time for work to start on the Zoo Interchange on the west side of the county.

The frontage roads in Racine and Kenosha counties would be rebuilt over the same time.

After completion of the Mitchell Interchange work, crews will begin rebuilding and expanding the interstate at the state line and proceed north.

Public hearings are scheduled as follows:
-Dec. 3, 4-8 p.m. West Middle School, 8401 S. 13th St., in Oak Creek
-Dec. 6, 5-8 p.m. Mahone Middle School, 6900 60th St., Kenosha
-Dec. 11, 5-8 p.m. CATI Center, 2320 Renaissance Blvd., Sturtevant
-Dec. 12, 4-8 p.m. Best Western Airport, 5105 S. Howell Ave., Milwaukee. Comments on the draft environmental impact statement can be sent to: WisDOT Southeast Freeways Team, 141 NW Barstow St., Waukesha, WI 53187. The deadline is Dec. 31.