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Leveraging its High-Impact Paving Program, the City of Milwaukee is rapidly adding new buffered bike lanes and replacing existing worn bike lanes and cross walks on major streets across the city. The program was started in 2013 to try to stretch existing maintenance funding after years of state cuts in shared revenue to municipalities, and seeks to make quick, relatively low-cost repairs to roadways in dire need of resurfacing.

This generally involves milling a couple inches off the existing damaged asphalt surface and adding a new layer of asphalt and pavement markings. The projects do not repair curbs, gutters and sidewalks as would be done in a typical full reconstruct project. The repairs are designed to last seven to 10 years, and the city has been able to resurface more than 60 miles of streets with the HIPP. Of those 60 miles, approximately 25 percent were local (residential or side) streets. In 2017 DPW plans to complete approximately 24 miles of streets with the HIPP, of which eight miles will be local. Thanks to the High-Impact Paving Program and the city’s gradual increases in DPW’s capital budget, Milwaukee has reduced the average replacement cycle for roads from 163 years (you read that correctly!) in 2004 down to 58 years. Given that a street should last 25-60 years, depending on if it is constructed with asphalt or concrete, that is about where the replacement cycle should be.

When an arterial street is resurfaced as part of the rapid fix program, the city evaluates current traffic volumes and is able to make some geometric updates if needed using the new pavement marking patterns. In many cases these roadways were widened decades ago to serve our then growing traffic volumes during Milwaukee’s industrial heyday when thousands of factory workers began driving to work in large factories. Those big peak-hour traffic volumes required the city to widen many of our historic boulevards and streets.

Since most of those factories are no longer open, the streets have more travel lanes than needed, which encourages speeding. If those streets were repaired with a more expensive full-reconstruction project, the entire roadway might be narrowed by moving the curbs in. That is what was done on S. 2nd Street by Rockwell and north of National Ave. When the street was reconstructed the sidewalk areas were widened and bike lanes were added where the now-unneeded extra vehicle lane was added years ago. This process is commonly called a “road diet” and is happening in cities across the country.

Roosevelt Boulevard is a good example of a street that went on a road diet as part of the more limited High-Impact Paving Program. Last year Roosevelt went from four motor vehicle travel lanes and two parking lanes to two motor vehicle travel lanes, buffered bike lanes and parking lanes. The new pavement marking geometrics still provide adequate capacity to manage peak-hour traffic volumes, and they lessen the feeling that people are driving on a freeway and can go 50 mph.

The only downside is some scofflaws use the buffered bike lanes like they are still a motor vehicle travel lane to speed pass on the right. If the street was resurfaced as part of a normal full reconstruct, DPW might have added curb extensions or installed plastic bollards in the buffered area and moved the bike lane between the parked cars and curb to create a truly protected bike lane like those you find in Chicago, Minneapolis and most other major cities.

Minneapolis is on track to have 44 miles of protected bike lanes and Chicago now has more than 100 miles of protected bike lanes, with many new projects being curb-protected bike lanes. Milwaukee currently only has one protected lane — on Bay Street. The quick-fix HIPP understandably doesn’t have funds for those higher level bicycle improvements, but now that the city has caught up with street repairs, it would make sense to begin budgeting to add protected bike lanes like our peer cities.

The other bike projects done this year are listed below. The list was handed out at the Bicycle and Pedestrian Task Force, held on Friday, October 21st. Kristin Bennett, the City of Milwaukee Bicycle and Pedestrian Program Manger, updated those in attendance with a detailed list of project improvements done to date this year The project updates list below also shows the new bike lane locations added with the city’s annual high-impact paving program:

N. 6th/7th/Halyard (Walnut to North) – removed one travel lane in each direction for new standard and buffered bicycle lanes.

S. 16th Street (Windlake to Oklahoma) – removed one travel lane in each direction and added new buffered bike lanes and intersection turn lane improvements. No change to on-street parking.

N. 51st Blvd (Lincoln Creek Bridge to Hampton) – removed one travel lane in each direction and added new bicycle lanes. No change to on-street parking.

N. Atkinson St. (Keefe to Capitol) – removed one travel lane in each direction and added new bicycle lanes plus a continuous center turn lane. No change to on-street parking.

W. Center Street (N. 20th to 27th) – replaced existing bicycle lanes with minor modifications

W. Grange Avenue (S. Howell to S. 6th) – removed one travel lane in each direction, replacing them with buffered bike lanes.

N. Jefferson Street (St. Paul to Erie) – added new bicycle lanes, no changes to parking or travel lanes

W. Lincoln Avenue (S. 16th to Layton/27th) – replaced existing bicycle lanes with minor modifications

W. Morgan Avenue (Forest Home to S. 68th) – replaced existing bicycle lanes with minor modifications

N. Oakland Avenue (Edgewood to Park Place) – replaced existing bicycle lanes with the addition of green bike lane markings on southbound Oakland at Locust Street (right turn lane)

W. Oklahoma Avenue (S. Chase to S. 6th) – added new bicycle lanes, on-street parking removed

W. Roosevelt Drive (Fond Du Lac to N. 36th) – removed one travel lane in each direction, replaced with buffered bicycle lanes and wider parallel parking lanes

You can read the complete project update from the city by clicking on the thumbnail image to the right. While the majority of projects have been progressing, the city has fallen behind schedule on some long anticipated projects. Perhaps most notable is the Transportation Alternatives Program grant to hire a consultant to create a pedestrian plan for the City of Milwaukee. That grant has a four-year life cycle, but has progressed so slowly that the city has had to request access to the grant funds again.

Still, the city is making good progress on the pedestrian program despite the lack of a formal plan. As the list to the right details, there have been many new crosswalk call buttons added. Not listed, but significant, the city recently constructed a raised intersection near the Bike Fed’s Milwaukee office at S. 37 and W. Pierce streets. The raised intersection was installed to improve safety at the busy crosswalks by the ramp to the Menomonee Valley Passage to the Hank Aaron State Trail. The number of people walking and bicycling in the area has skyrocketed there since the opening of the Urban Ecology Center, La Esquela Verde, and the Bike Fed office. There is a lot of speeding on Pierce St. (AKA “The Polish Highway”), so the neighbors have been asking for traffic calming. This is the first step at the busiest intersection.

If you read thought the PDF of the report linked above, you will see “no significant activity on this project due to staff medical leave” under a few other grant projects. The slow progress on existing grants was mostly because Bennett was hit by a car on Water St. while riding home from work. The crash was serious and her injuries forced her to miss quite a bit of work. The good news is she is doing much better and back at work.

After his Bike to Work with the Mayor ride last June Bike Week, Mayor Tom Barrett announced the city was forming a group to recommend projects and policies to get Milwaukee a Platinum Bicycle Friendly Community rating from the League of American Bicyclists. We applaud that commitment, but look forward to the first new protected bike lanes, neighborhood greenways network (sometimes called bicycle boulevards, or safe streets) or other next generation bicycle improvements to encourage more people to ride in Milwaukee.

While adding more buffered and traditional bike lanes is definitely a step in the right direction, no city can go Platinum without protected bike lanes and a network of safe streets, and other next generation changes from the NACTO guide. If we really do want to make Milwaukee a better city for cycling, we only have to look at the NACTO guide and what other big cities in the US have been doing for the last five to 10 years.

As a still-proud son of Milwaukee, I appreciate that our city faces very significant problems, most of which have no easy solutions. But we believe that is all the more reason to double down on cycling. Bicycling is a simple, inexpensive and proven solution to many complicated problems our Milwaukee faces today.

What can you do to help move Milwaukee closer to Platinum? Take a moment to call or email your alderperson and the Mayor and tell them why you think bicycling is a simple, cost-effective way to make Milwaukee an even better place to live, work, and do business for all of our residents. Our elected officials tell us they hear about trash pick-up, taxes, snow plowing and crime all the time. If we want to move cycling further up their priority list, we have to speak up. When is the last time you contacted any of your elected representatives? If it has been more than a year, it is time to reach out.

You can also provide your input to improve bicycling and safer streets throughout Milwaukee by taking this survey from the Path to Platinum Committee, which is working to advise the city on how to get the Platinum rating.