According to an article from today’s Journal-Sentinel, recent findings from the Texas Transportation Institute show Milwaukee as the 44th most traffic-congested city out of the top 50 largest American cities.

What does this mean?
It means the constant calls for expanded freeways are wasteful. Milwaukee’s freeways are some of the least congested in the nation. Aside from approximately 3 to 6 hours each weekday, Milwaukee’s freeways have no congestion whatsoever. At times, some are virtually empty.

At the same time as having some of the fastest freeways for suburban residents, Milwaukee has among the lowest level of transit service for it’s city dwellers. Unlike freeways, buses suffer from chronic overcrowding throughout the day. Billions of dollars have been pumped into expanding Milwaukee’s already sufficient freeways over the past decade, but the Milwaukee County Transit System has been consistently cut at the same time.

Other than being blatantly unfair, this drastic imbalance of funding priorities is bad policy. Milwaukee is the nation’s fourth poorest city. Milwaukee’s poverty rate has soared while transit has been slashed.

Where can we go from here?
We need to make sure that our tax dollars are being spent where they are needed, on transit. These decisions are made on the state level, and we will need to keep a close eye on the state legislature to make sure that they look out for our best interest instead of lobbyists for the road builders. This blog will be focusing covering the state as well as Milwaukee County and we’ll keep everyone posted.