Regional tranportation got a major lift on Tuesday, and it happened in South Milwaukee.
Governor Jim Doyle joined the chief executives of Bucyrus International, Northwestern Mutual, Johnson Controls, SC Johnson, Roundy’s and AT&T to unveil legislation to create a Southeastern Wisconsin regional transit authority and, in doing so, fix our broken system of transportation funding and get the Kenosha-Racine-Milwaukee commuter line back on track.
It’s a big win for our city and region.
The gathering at Bucyrus International’s Heritage Building showed real alignment of key business, labor and political interests around a unified approach to transit. Their common goal? Economic development and jobs, job, jobs.
I was happy to attend this event, and Bucyrus CEO Tim Sullivan should get a lot of credit for making it happen.
I’ll have more to say about this in an upcoming post. For now, here are some headlines from the press conference:
- Racine Journal Times: Lawmakers Introduce ‘Transit and Jobs’ Bill
- Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: RTA Plan Would Allow Milwaukee County Sales Tax for Transit
- The Associated Press: Gov. Proposes SE Wis. Commuter Rail Service
You can access the full press release here.
South Milwaukee Blog 
If implemented properly, this is good news for the region.
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If they haven’t already done so, I would urge Alderman Brooks and the other South Milwaukee elected officials to carefully read the study done on the proposed KRM passenger rail system by the Reason Foundation. A brief synopsis of the study is provided below followed by a link to the study report itself.
“The claimed economic benefits of the proposed commuter rail line for the Kenosha-Racine-Milwaukee corridor are “not credible” and other transit options should be studied, according to a new study by Reason Foundation, a free market think tank.
The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee analysis of the local economic benefits of the construction of the rail line wrongly assumes all expenditures, and jobs created, would be local, even though there is no local capacity to produce many of the components, such as the $48 million rail cars. And the $2.1 billion increase in property values the rail project alleges would mean that each of the 3,696 projected 2035 round-trip riders would be “worth” $568,000, a claim that “cannot be taken seriously” the Reason Foundation concludes.
Reason Foundation finds every new passenger boarding the commuter rail system would cost $28. Yet passengers would pay just $2.92 for a ticket, meaning taxpayers would subsidize over $25 for every new one-way rail passenger. By comparison, the total cost per passenger for the Milwaukee County Transit System (MCTS) in 2007 was $3.”
Click to access fa48a61f437d0a203a343c1b3b6d7755.pdf
The conclusions in this report would indicate that an express bus system (noted as “BRT Lite” in the report) would be a much better and cost efficient option than a passenger rail system. Besides the cost savings, a BRT system has the following advantages:
1. Much lower initial capital expenditure and annual operating expenditures for BRT Lite.
2. If the system does not meet expectations, there is much more flexibility to change, improve or discontinue the system. Passenger rail is in a fixed location that cannot be altered. If the rail system fails to meet expectations, the cost to discontinue it would be enormous. In all likelihood, it would not be discontinued and more subsidies by way of increased local taxes would be needed.
3. If the BRT system exceeds expectations, it can be easily expanded at a lower cost than rail.
4. BRT Lite has the ability to pick up and drop off people closer to their destinations. Although South Milwaukee is not the best example of this, with many businesses in close proximity to the railroad tracks, the same cannot be said for the other communities. If we take Oak Creek as an example, the railroad tracks are primarily in undeveloped or residential areas. Very few businesses are nearby and would not benefit from KRM without additional transportation options to get people to them. These costs are not included in the KRM proposal. A BRT Lite system would have the flexibility to adjust its route closer to places of business. In South Milwaukee a BRT Lite station would most likely be in the vicinity of 10th and Milwaukee, about the same distance to Bucyrus as a KRM station.
The Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Transit Authority did look at a BRT alternative, however they only looked at an option for it using dedicated “bus only” lanes from Kenosha to Milwaukee. This option would be much more expensive than a BRT Lite system which would run in normal traffic. The advantage of BRT Lite would be the ability to control traffic signals to insure a green light when a bus reaches an intersection.
Please consider that KRM is not high speed rail. The average speed of the trains would be 38 mph. It is essentially an early 20th century mode of travel. Additionally, the argument that “we must do this because everyone else has one” is flawed. Europe does not have a highway system anywhere as advanced as we do. Therefore trains have historically been a viable option for them. Chicago has successful train systems, but they also have approximately six times the population we have and significantly more traffic problems.
We must also remember that this authority is politically motivated by nature with many members being appointed by the likes of Governor Doyle and Mayor Barrett, two outspoken opponents of automobile traffic who will do what they can to make that mode of transportation as difficult as possible. Also, both never met a tax increase they didn’t like.
The conclusions in this study lead me to believe that KRM is a high risk venture that has a significant chance of failure which will ultimately hurt South Milwaukee for the long term rather than help it. I would strongly urge the alderman to consider this before throwing their support behind it. A BRT Lite alternative accomplishes many of the same goals at a fraction of the cost thereby reducing the long term risk to the city.
A BRT system has already been proposed by Milwaukee County. The following link gives some details of that proposal.
Click to access SMART_plusWeb.pdf
A “lite” variation of this (without dedicated “bus only” lanes unless space for these lanes in certain areas already exists) could be implemented along the lakeshore between Kenosha and Milwaukee.