The Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission, in developing a key transportation plan, failed to consider key demographic data, overstated the amount of money invested in transit and misrepresented highway funding, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.
More here.
You should be happy if you are in the highway-building industry, but if you drive on local streets, maybe not. A fund and taxing authority for the Southeastern Wisconsin RTA is included as well, as is a smaller-than-requested hike for transit ops.
More here.
The House of Representatives added $3 billion for transit spending on its way to passing the stimulus bill yesterday. raising the total to $12 billion.
That’s good news. Still, highway building gets $30 billion and it will be pumped through the traditional formulas, which simply do not work very well.
Will the feds ease the onerous rules on capital transit funding to allow the money to get spent in a way that might actually stimulate?
WisDOT slaps Obama
Monday, February 9th, 2009It’s hard to figure: a governor who endorsed Barack Obama for president when it was a semi-risky thing to do is letting his transportation department show total disrespect for the man now that he holds the highest office in the land.
President Obama had made a few priorities absolutely clear: this country must reduce both greenhouse gases and dependency on foreign oil.
Gov. Jim Doyle’s WisDOT, in planning for a new Zoo Interchange, is taking a real slap at the president by totally ignoring those priorities. There will be no planning for any transit to be incorporated into the new design, nor will there be a freeway / transit alternatives analysis done, despite the city’s request.
It’s a road-only study — more greenhouse gases, more dependency on foreign oil. Guess the governor doesn’t like the president all that much.
And why is this plan roads only? Because of a timeline Gov. Jim Doyle set when he was running for re-election and worried that the Republicans would criticize him for not rebuilding the Zoo Interchange before embarking on the North-South I-94 project. There is no valid engineering, environmental or geopolitical argument against including transit in the Zoo Interchange project. The opposite is true. The region, state and country would be better off if transportation planning included transit. That a project this big doesn’t isn’t just a slap at the president and his priorities — it’s a slap at all of us.
Tags: Barack Obama, Doyle, Transit, Zoo Interchange
Posted in Barack Obama, Commentary, Environment, Federal government, Freeways, Gov. Doyle, Transit, WisDOT | 2 Comments »