“Active Streets” Serves As Road-to-Trail Test Runs

Closure of Lincoln Creek Parkway for Active Streets program. Photo by Graham Kilmer.

Milwaukee County Parks has brought back the Active Streets program along two parkways as a dry-run for their conversion to future trails.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, the City of Milwaukee partnered with the county to close a series of parkways and city streets to through traffic in order to increase outdoor recreation space for people to use. A survey found the program was popular and with support for bringing it back.

Now, the parks department is closing off vehicle traffic on sections of the Little Menomonee Parkway and the Lincoln Creek Parkway this summer as part of the program.

The Little Menomonee Parkway will be closed between W. Mill Road and W. Appleton Avenue (0.9 miles) beginning June 15.

The Lincoln Creek Parkway has been closed since June 8 between N. 23rd Street and N. 27th Street (0.3 miles). Concrete barricades are being used to block the sections being used for Active Steets.

These two sections of parkway are also slated to be permanently converted to bicycle and pedestrian trails. The department received funding in 2022 to for design and reconstruction. Both are considered redundant roadway, in that they don’t add anything connections to the street network that don’t already exist elsewhere, nor do they provide driveway access for homes in the area. They are also connections to the county’s Oak Leaf Trail network.

Trails are also less expensive than roadways to maintain. Parks estimates it will save approximately $12,000 a year on maintenance costs with these two conversion projects. The department plans to have the new trails designed and constructed by the end of 2024. The department is pursuing a policy of reducing the amount of pavement and infrastructure dedicated to cars and motor vehicles in the system.

“Over half of our capital requests are for parking lots and roads. And this is not something that really, really impacts recreation or health outcomes for our citizens,” said Deputy Director Jim Tarantino.

The department hopes closing these parkways off as Active Streets this summer will build support for the trail conversion projects. The department recently faced stiff opposition from neighbors when it proposed converting a section of Jackson Park Drive to a trailway.

Parks reports that staff members knocked on more than 100 doors in the Lincoln Creek area to tell residents about the coming closure. Of the 66 people staff spoke with, 46 “expressed positive sentiment toward the project” according to the department.