Better Streets MKE, Vol. 21
It felt inappropriate and impossible to write a regular edition with updates about transportation projects. The reality of the current national situation is that funding for many projects is in the air. More urgently, our communities are facing threats and fear. While we support local staff who are working so damn hard on continuing grants and engagement efforts, we have decided to wait to share those for another time.
Better Streets MKE is hosting a meetup on Sunday, February 9th, at 1 pm at Indeed Brewing. Protect our community by being a part of the community. Masks, art to share/sell/exchange, and resources are all welcome. We will offer space to share updates, concerns, and discuss how people passionate about transportation can move forward. We are not the experts, and we will not have predetermined solutions. That is for all of us to figure out.
Below, one our authors provides some thoughts on the role of safe streets advocates. It was written before the inauguration.
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If you are reading this, you are probably someone who cares about ending the deaths and injuries on our streets. You are probably well-informed about Vision Zero and Complete Streets, NACTO and bike lanes. Yet as safe streets advocates, I believe we are called to do something more than simply end traffic deaths or pour concrete. In the face of the right-wing (and yes, Nazi) takeover of our government, it is not enough to focus on policies that simply end roadway deaths. We must go further.
It is our calling to protect life.
If all we desire is to end the traffic deaths, Elon Musk promises us all we need. He assures us and his investors that he will bring us fully-automated cars and trucks, that driving will be both everything and nothing. Under Musk’s vision, the work of Vision Zero is done. Nothing has to change; the Tesla will take you to your appointment now. Cancel the program.
JD Vance dreams of a world where we all strive for the same heterosexual marriage, where our friends and our communities are inherently less trustworthy than our families. In JD Vance’s world, you should stay inside: after all, do you know what kind of people are out there, waiting to prey upon you and your kids?
And of course, for Donald Trump: there is no truth, but gas could be cheap. What could matter more?
This is how we arrive at a dead end. If people would just drive better or AVs would dominate the fleet, the deaths would end. I hear these claims on repeat: if the drivers would just get better, all of this work to change the streets could finally end. Here is the impulse to insist that our public spaces need nothing, and that we don’t need them: if only people would just obey the law, we wouldn’t need these curb extensions or bike lanes or plazas or art. Who cares about the people who cannot drive, who are disabled, who are children, who are poor? They should just be like us: just taking our cars from point A to point B, and speeding away if anyone tries to engage with us in public.
It is time to move beyond preventing death and into prioritizing life. We must move beyond our technocratic hopes, where if we just implement the right policies, the good will come. We can do this again, as we did during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our streets were for protest and care, for picnics and walking 6 feet from friends. We stood on our streets, not to get into our cars but just to be there. Streets held the memory of life from before.
We must advocate for neighborhoods where people get outside, and wave across the street, and are kind. The places where the ICE van dare not enter, where the people are fed even as wages run low, where kids play as parents organize. It is a time for Critical Mass and Red Bike & Green, of kids’ playground rides and collective education, of walking school buses and block parties. It is a time to speak to each other at bus stops and to take the bus when the car seems more convenient. For their sake and ours, we must not expect our elected officials and staff to do it all.
We cannot be interested in Milwaukee as some kind of imagined Copenhagen, as if we just fix the streets we will suddenly live in a country and city where people can simply go about their lives quietly and as pleasantly as they do on vacation. We live in a city where people are struggling, and where we will have to struggle to move forward. We must build for a Milwaukee where we expect imperfections and pain but where it is possible to do the only thing that has ever changed anything: getting into our streets and being an active part of collective life. - MM
Other places to show up
Critical Mass
A (fun!) monthly no-drop bike ride, with a fabulous website. Rolling out 6:00 pm sharp.
Friday, February 28th, 2025
Rolling out 6:00 pm sharp
Red Arrow Park
920 N Water St
Transit: GREEN, 15, Hop, 57, 18, 33, 19, 30, CN1, 14
Bublr station at Red Arrow Park
End location: TBD
Pedestrian and Bicycle Advisory Committee
Meetings are open to the public and held on the third Friday of the month. You can sign up for updates on meetings and agendas via e-Notify.
Friday, February 21st, 2025
8:30 to 10:00 am
Hybrid
Zeidler Municipal Building, 5th floor
Virtual Meeting link
Transit: 15, 18, 57, GRE
3 blocks or less from the 14, 19, 30, 33, and CN1.
Bublr station on Van Buren St. near Wells St.
