opinion

How Walker would make roads less safe

There are too few sidewalks in Wisconsin, not enough access to public transportation and not enough bike lanes. And if legislators in Madison don't make some big changes to Gov. Scott Walker's budget proposal, all these things are going to get worse, not better.

A state law called Complete Streets requires all road projects built with state or federal funds to include accommodations for those people who aren't driving cars: a paved shoulder for bikes, a sidewalk for those of us who like to walk.

The governor's budget, now under consideration by the Joint Finance Committee, repeals it.

"Wisconsin has historically been known as a great bicycling state," said Aaron Ruff, a public health educator with the Marathon County Health Department. "We're afraid we could go backwards now, after all the progress we've made."

The Complete Streets law, passed in 2010, formalized something that a lot of local municipalities were already doing, and maybe still are, which is to try to plan for the less automobile-centric future that is inevitably coming. (Thumbnail version of why it's inevitable: The largest parts of the population, the baby boomers and the millennials, both are driving less — boomers because they are retiring, millennials because they just don't seem to like cars and driving as much as their parents did.) Making it a requirement for new road projects in Wisconsin is a way of ensuring that our communities are growing in a way that will not leave out the growing number of people who want to get around by walking, bicycling, taking a bus or, sure, driving too.

The major argument for repealing the law is that it requirement costs money; Walker estimates repeal would save about $7.4 million in the two-year budget period.

But of course his budget also proposes borrowing $1.3 billion for the specific purpose of building roads.

In other words, reining in transportation spending is not a budget priority. Making roads less safe for bicyclists and pedestrians is.

There are already lots of intentionally placed loopholes in the policy, including exceptions for freeways and any case where "the cost of establishing bikeways or pedestrian ways would be excessively disproportionate to the need or (their) probable use," so I don't think there's much of an argument that the policy is excessively burdensome to the local governments. In fact, it's more common for cities to want to boast about how bike-friendly they are — and for good reason. A 2010 study estimated the economic impact of bicycling and bicycle tourism in Wisconsin to be more than $924 million per year. It's a favorite activity of those young professionals that every city wants to attract.

But fiscal pressure is intense on all levels of government, and "incomplete streets" are likely to be cheaper in the short run. Without the requirement, Ruff said we should expect to see fewer projects making an effort to include non-drivers.

I'm not a particularly hardcore bicyclist. I rarely bike to work. My family gets out the bicycles to go to the farmers market or whatever on the weekends. I am more avid as a walker, and I am fairly religious about by self-imposed rule that, within reason, I walk to any appointment during my work day.

But this is kind of the point. In a given week, I use several different modes of getting around. That's what most people do — and our roads should reflect that. Where there aren't sidewalks or bike lanes, we're all less able to decide the form of transportation that's best for us.

Robert Mentzer is engagement editor for Gannett Central Wisconsin Media. Contact: rmentzer@gannett.com, 715-845-0604; on Twitter: @robertmentzer.