Monthly Archives: April 2026

What does it cost to move people?

A member of our local group tuned into Amtrak’s public webinar Tuesday night on the proposed Hiawatha Service extension west to Madison. The numbers are striking—not just on their own, but in comparison to how we currently invest in transportation.

For less than $300 million, Wisconsin could establish passenger rail service connecting Milwaukee to Madison—roughly new 80 miles—with potential service starting 2030. Just four years from now.

Now compare that to what we’ve normalized:

• The Zoo Interchange rebuild: $1.7 billion, nearly a decade of construction
• The ongoing, eight year I-94 East-West Corridor Project: $1.7 billion for just 3.5 miles
• The proposed I-794 Lake Interchange rebuild: $300+ million for about one mile

We are consistently spending billions to move cars short distances faster.

Meanwhile, for a fraction of that cost, we could connect entire regions—linking people to jobs, education, healthcare, and culture—without requiring everyone to own, operate, and store a private vehicle.

That’s the fundamental difference.

Highways move cars.
Trains move people.

And when we invest in systems that move people, we expand access—not just speed. A rail connection between Milwaukee and Madison is more than a transportation project; it’s an economic development tool, a workforce connector, and a resilience strategy.

It allows:

• A student in Madison to intern in Milwaukee without relocating
• A worker in Milwaukee to access jobs in Madison without a 90-minute drive
• Visitors to move between cities without adding traffic or parking demand
• Smaller communities along the line to plug into two major economic centers

This is what Strong Towns means when we talk about return on investment.

It’s not just about upfront cost—it’s about what we get in return. And right now, we’re putting massive resources into systems that require continuous expansion, constant maintenance, and still leave many people behind.

We can do both—but we should be asking harder questions about balance.

What if even a portion of our transportation dollars went toward systems that:

• Reduce long-term maintenance liabilities
• Increase access for more people
• Support walkable, productive places at both ends of the trip

The proposed Hiawatha West line is a reminder that we have options.

And more importantly, it’s a reminder that how we choose to move people shapes the kind of communities we build.

There’s a certain kind of silence that follows a car crash — the kind that settles in your chest before the sirens even arrive.

This afternoon, that silence came from the intersection of Chicago Avenue, Hawthorne Avenue, and the Oak Creek Parkway near Better Together Cafe — a place many in our community already know, and worry about.

For a long time, neighbors have raised concerns about this series of intersections. Not hypotheticals, but real, lived experiences. Near misses. Confusion. Speed. The sense that something here is dangerous.

And today, the thing many fear happened, again.

We hope that everyone involved is okay, especially on the eve of Easter. But hope alone isn’t a strategy. And crashes like this aren’t random.

They are predictable.

This intersection is trying to do too much. It prioritizes moving cars quickly over moving people safely. It creates multiple conflict points, has limited visibility, and offers little to no accommodation for the people who use this space outside of a vehicle — despite the presence of the trail, nearby destinations, and everyday foot and bike traffic.

South Milwaukee’s own Municipal Safety Action Plan, developed as part of Vision Zero efforts with Milwaukee County, already flags this area. The data is clear. Speeds regularly exceed 25 mph limits by 11 to 17 miles per hour. The corridor shows a pattern of turning-related crashes. Multiple design conflicts are built into the layout.

This isn’t unknown. It’s documented. And yet, nothing has been tried.

Not even the low-cost, quick-build options that could be implemented today. These are not radical ideas. They are standard, proven safety interventions, the kind of things cities use when they decide that preventing the next crash matters more than waiting or burying their heads in the sand to maintain the status quo.

Because here’s the hardest truth: this wasn’t just an accident. It was the outcome of design, and the decision to leave that design unchanged, despite community safety concerns.

When a large SUV can leave the roadway, jump a curb, and travel 25 feet toward a tree line, that’s not just driver behavior. That’s speed. That’s geometry. That’s a system that allows mistakes to become severe.

Over the past three years at this intersection, there has been one fatal crash and five total crashes. Citywide, from 2018 through 2024, South Milwaukee has averaged 236 crashes per year — a number that barely changes, year after year. That’s not randomness. That’s a pattern.

We don’t have to accept that pattern.

We can act now. Start small. Test something. Measure it. Adjust.

Because the cost of inaction is no longer abstract. It’s something you can hear from your kitchen window.

And no one in South Milwaukee should have to live with that.