County Picks Consultant for Reckless Driving Study

The Milwaukee County Department of Transportation has selected a Chicago-based urban planning firm to conduct a countywide reckless driving study.

MUSE Community + Design, or just MUSE, was selected to undertake a project being called “Complete Communities: Addressing Multimodal Safety in All 19 Municipalities.”

MUSE has worked with a number of public and private institutions including City of Chicago agencies like the Department of Transportation, the Department of Public Health and the Department of Planning and Design. MUSE has also worked on a bikeshare project, a neighborhood-level Vision Zero project and the first-ever Cook County Transit Plan.

MUSE will be tasked with carrying out the legwork for the project and developing a final report. That legwork will include “project management, crash data analysis, generating and carrying out a public outreach and engagement plan encompassing all 19 municipalities in Milwaukee County,” according to a report from the Milwaukee County Department of Transportation.

The Complete Communities project is being funded through a $188,000 federal Transportation Alternatives Program (TAP) grant managed by the U.S. Department of Transportation. The county is providing approximately $47,000 in matching funding.

Donna Brown-Martin, director of the county Department of Transportation, previously said, “This is a great opportunity for us to really prioritize how we might be able to address from an education as well as enforcement standpoint, looking at reckless driving.”

The goal is to develop a set of local best practices and policies for combatting reckless driving that all 19 municipalities in the county can implement in their communities.

The project was slightly outside of the boundaries of a normal TAP-funded project, Brown-Martin said. “So the fact that we pulled together a really good application, and they stepped outside their normal boundaries to allow us to do this is great.”

The Complete Communities plan will complement another project MCDOT is working on that, once completed, will also create a pathway to millions in federal funding for transit projects around the county. That project is another planning effort and it’s the first step in becoming eligible for billions in funding for transit projects under the Safe Streets and Roads for All program, which was created by the 2021 federal Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.

The goal for that project is to create a list of projects, each tailored to their respective communities around the county, that in total will contribute to safer streets throughout the county. This initial plan is a prerequisite for tapping into federal funding down the road. With the county leading the planning process, Brown-Martin said, it will make sure that every municipality is moving forward at the same time under this program.