Freeway Blues - WisDOT’s Proposed I-94 Expansion Sounds Like Déjà Vu (All Over Again)

Fail to learn from the past and you’re doomed to relive it, or so historians tell us. Regarding the Wisconsin Department of Transportation and the Milwaukee freeway system, much needed lessons have historically fallen on deaf ears and may continue to do so given the proposed round of freeway improvements.

Currently at issue are WisDOT plans to attempt once again to relieve congestion on the I-94 stretch between the Marquette and Zoo interchanges by expanding the 3.5-mile stretch running from 17th to 70th streets from six to eight lanes. The freeway, built in the 1960s, now far exceeds its original capacity of 115,000 vehicles per day with a crash rate two to three times the state average, WisDot says. New businesses that have grown around previous freeway improvements will only complicate the aging roadway’s future.

A memo from Gov. Tony Evers sent earlier this year paints a rosy picture of what sounds like a seamless transition to the new design. In his memo, Evers stresses that all development will occur within the existing right-of-way or on public land, without destroying freeway-adjacent homes or businesses in the process. Funds from the Federal Highway Administration will underwrite the estimated $1.1 billion in improvements.

Sound good, or at least better than past Milwaukee freeway projects that decimated entire neighborhoods? Maybe, but that’s not the end of the story. A subsequent Evers memo offering “corrections” to his original communique contained some significant changes, according to Mike Pyritz, spokesperson for WisDOTS’ southeast region. “The project will be a blend of federal and state funds, with federal dollars covering a large portion of the project cost,” Pyritz says. “That percentage depends on the way funds are allocated in future state budgets.”

The freeway’s current right-of-way, it turns out, will not be sufficient after all. Whether the repair work maintains the current six lanes or expands to eight lanes, cannibalizing nearby properties will be necessary. “At this time there are 14 homes and businesses that could be impacted,” Pyritz says. “Depending on the final design, it’s possible that number will be lowered.”

WisDOT plans to hold public hearings on the project later this year or early next year. For freeway watchers and community members, especially those in Milwaukee’s central city, this is an all too familiar refrain that focuses more on the transportation needs of suburban commuters than it does the health and wellbeing of freeway neighbors. Few, if any, are happy about it.

WILL PAST BE PROLOGUE?

Milwaukee’s freeway history, like that of many U.S. cities, started in the wake of the post-World War II economic boom with the need to move growing numbers of cars more quickly through increasingly gridlocked surface streets. And like cities such as St. Paul, Detroit and New Orleans, Milwaukee’s concrete ribbons of highspeed pavement rode roughshod over the city’s neighborhoods of color, destroying and displacing entire communities so that the growing number of suburban commuters could reach their downtown offices more efficiently. In the 1960s the combined construction of I-43 and the Park East freeways devastated Bronzeville, the historic center of Milwaukee’s Black community. A thriving residential and commercial district with retail stores, professional offices and theaters that hosted the likes of Billie Holiday and Duke Ellington, Bronzeville was destroyed in favor of freeway access stretching to the city’s affluent North Shore suburbs.

The freeway construction appetite continued. The Zoo Interchange, part of the 1960s building frenzy, undertook a $1.7 billion upgrade in 2012 to improve its admittedly dangerous configuration. The effort sparked significant controversy when planners failed to consider other forms of transportation as part of the package. The Milwaukee Inner-city Congregations Allied for Hope and the Black Health Coalition of Wisconsin filed a lawsuit in federal court against WisDOT, claiming the project would benefit white suburbanites with cars and discriminate against an inner-city community reliant on public transportation. The suit was settled in 2014, with WisDOT agreeing to pay $13.5 million toward public transit improvements.

The Inner-city Congregations emerged once again as a plaintiff in a 2017 suit filed in federal court to halt the initial effort to expand the I-94 stretch currently under consideration. Joining the suit was the American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin filing behalf of fellow plaintiffs NAACP Milwaukee and the Sierra Club John Muir Chapter. The lawsuit followed in the footsteps of its 2014 predecessor, contending that the project’s impact analysis failed to consider racial, social and environmental concerns caused by the expansion.