Welcome to the second weekly installment of Eyes on the Street, a new column running down what’s happening in urban Milwaukee. This week we look at the Lake Parkway extension, Kohl’s and Target, Frontier Airlines vs Southwest Airlines, Development News, Openings and Closings, and more.

In 1992, Marquette proposed closing Wisconsin Avenue to vehicular traffic between North 11th and North 16th streets, as well as North 12th and North 13th streets between Wisconsin Avenue and Wells Street. Closing a section of Wisconsin Avenue was intended to make the campus safer and more attractive, and it certainly would have had a big impact on the university and city, but would it have been positive?

This week there are two important public meetings regarding the future of Milwaukee’s built environment.

Recently, multiple attempts to cut or eliminate bicycle and pedestrian funding from the federal transportation budget have been proposed under the premise that these funds are needed to rebuild America’s infrastructure. So far all of these measures have failed, but do they even address the problem?

Traditionally, in Wisconsin toll roads are opposed by the right, because freeways are free, from the left because tolls are an attack on the middle class, and often by new urbanists, because freeways promote sprawl.

Should the Hoan Bridge have a bike and pedestrian path or not? According to comment section of the Journal Sentinel it appears that there are numerous ‘reasons’ why a bike lane should not be built on the Hoan Bridge, but are they really valid?

Walking from downtown to the Historic Third Ward can be an uncomfortable experience. I-794 and the sea of surface parking lots on Water St., Broadway, and Milwaukee St. create an isolated and intimidating dead spot that deters pedestrians from walking between the two districts.

In June thousands of bicyclists will be riding over the Hoan Bridge during the UPAF Miller Lite Ride for the Arts, many of which will be signing up because it will be such a rare opportunity that can’t be missed as the bridge isn’t currently accessible to bicyclists.

Cities across the country are in the process of constructing or exploring ways to turn freeways into public space. The most notable example of this freeway-to-park transition is Boston’s Big Dig project, which turned the elevated Central Artery freeway (Interstate 93) into a 3.5-mile tunnel and replaced it with the Rose Kennedy Greenway. The Boston project was incredibly expensive, but it’s hard to imagine downtown Boston and The North End with a freeway dividing them today. Turning freeways into parks appears to be a wise solution when a city’s central business district (many of which are encircled in freeways) run out of land that can be easily developed or when the freeway serves as a barrier between two successful urban neighborhoods. Would it be wise to implement such an idea in Milwaukee?

If you picked up a newspaper in Milwaukee in the past month, you would think that roundabouts were a danger to society. Headlines have ranged from “Are roundabouts dangerous? So far, yes” to “Roundabouts take off but still throw drivers a curve.” You would have missed a critical point though, roundabouts are improving safety for those on the roads.