Pete Buttigieg Tours Port With Mayor, Rides Train With Governor

Governor Tony Evers and U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg ride the Amtrak Hiawatha. Photo by Jeramey Jannene.

It wasn’t planes, trains and automobiles, but ports, ships and trains.

U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg concluded a Lake Michigan infrastructure tour Wednesday with an up-close look at several federally-funded Milwaukee infrastructure projects including a tour of the port and a train ride.

“I’ve had a lot of dust on my shoes, but this is the first time that I’ve had grain dust on my jacket,” said the secretary after touring DeLong Company‘s very active Agricultural Maritime Export Facility (AMEF). While inspecting the complex, the largest investment in the port in more than 70 years, Buttigieg was able to watch tons of dry distillers grains with solubles (DDGS), a byproduct of ethanol exported as animal feed, get loaded onto a ship bound for Ireland.

“Partners are key to accomplishing great things and that’s what is taking place right here,” said Mayor Cavalier Johnson. The city-owned site is leased to DeLong and a public-private partnership funded the facility, which exports DDGS and other agricultural projects.

The $45 million facility, which opened in spring 2022, is already due for a $15.8 million expansion, with a $9.3 million federal grant announced last November.

“We hope it’s something we can continue to replicate here at Port Milwaukee,” said port director Jackie Q. Carter in welcoming Buttigieg. The port director also held a roundtable with the transportation at the port’s office before the event at the AMEF.

“So many Americans, when they think about ports and supply chains, they picture those ocean portions on our coast where we are importing products from Asia,” said the secretary. “Well, what we love best is to see opportunities to sell our products to the rest of the world and bring that income to our workers and to our farmers and to right here in America’s heartland and right here across the United States.”

Buttigieg said President Joe Biden‘s administration was committed to making investments to help people and goods move “safety and efficiently” through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. He said that included the $1 billion Blotnik Bridge project between Superior and Duluth and several small projects, like the conversion of the S.S. Badger in Manitowoc from coal to gas. “For every bridge with a billion-dollar project like that, there are hundreds of rural off-system bridges that we are supporting, too.”

“We are reversing literally decades of infrastructure underinvestment,” said the secretary.

Train Ride

In the afternoon, Buttigieg joined Governor Tony Evers for an approximately 15-minute ride aboard the Amtrak Hiawatha Service between the Milwaukee Airport Rail Station and Milwaukee Intermodal Station.

But the two spent plenty of time discussing Amtrak’s new offering that leverages the Hiawatha: the Amtrak Borealis. The line, which serves as a westward expansion of the popular Hiawatha, launched in May.

The Borealis is a St. Paul extension of the Chicago-Milwaukee Hiawatha and serves as a second daily train to Minnesota in addition to the cross-country Amtrak Empire Builder. Evers, Buttigieg and a contingent of media and security personnel were able to ride in one of Amtrak’s new Venture series cars.

Federal funding is covering most of the startup costs of the new state-sponsored line.

Before the duo climbed aboard, they were able to see the $17.2 million construction project to expand the airport train station and watch a lengthy Canadian Pacific Kansas City freight train rumble by. In a press gaggle after the ride, Buttigieg said it was important that the large freight railroads be partners, as the law requires, in allowing Amtrak and other passenger rail services to use their tracks and enable a public desire for restored passenger service to succeed.

After disembarking from the train, the governor and secretary were greeted at the Intermodal Station concourse by Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley.

6th Street Redesign, Freeway Expansion

At multiple points throughout the day, Buttigieg promoted the $36 million grant announced in March to rebuild 6th Street through Downtown and the near north and south sides with a complete street design that promotes safety for all road users. “Changing all of that is going to bring huge economic opportunities,” said the secretary during his port appearance.

“That was a very competitive project. Milwaukee has a lot to be proud of with that grant,” said Buttigieg. “And I know there will be more where that came from.” Biden visited Milwaukee in March to announce the award.

Buttigieg also referenced the project when asked about his national support for undoing the harms of past freeway constructions, but at the same time granting a Federal Highway Administration endorsement to the expansion of Interstate 94.

“When highway construction happens in the future, we’re not going to repeat some of the mistakes from the past,” said Buttigieg of the expansion. “We’re going to do that in a way that takes community concerns into account and does not repeat the experience of the previous generation when these construction projects [happened] at the expense of neighborhoods, often of communities of color, that did not have the political power to resist or shape those projects.”

The federal government has yet to formally weigh in on the proposal to convert the Stadium Freeway (Wisconsin Highway 175) or the east-west portion of Interstate 794 into a boulevard. It did reject a Reconnecting Communities study grant for the Stadium Freeway before announcing the 6th Street grant.

Buttigieg’s Great Lakes Infrastructure Week

Wednesday’s activities were a follow-up to a flight to Green Bay Tuesday and tours of ports in Menomonee, MI and Manitowoc, WI.

“It was on the strength of these waters and their potential that this region became an economic powerhouse, an engine of growth, especially for America’s manufacturing and agricultural economics and with that the rise of America’s middle class,” said the secretary.

He lives in the region, when not in D.C. Buttigieg and his husband Chasten built a home outside of the latter’s hometown of Traverse City, Michigan, not far from Lake Michigan. The former mayor of South Bend, Indiana votes from his Michigan address. “Anything that affects the Great Lakes is close to my heart, and that’s part of why we wanted to make sure we visited the extraordinary ports,” said Buttigieg.

During the port visit, Buttigieg was joined by Wisconsin Secretary of Agriculture Randy Romanski, Common Council President José G. Pérez, Alderman Peter Burgelis, the new council designee on the Harbor Commission, several other harbor commissioners and port staffers, Longshoremans Association Local 815 interim president Jeff Becton and State Representative Christine Sinicki.

Former port director Adam Tindall-Schlicht, now the administrator of the Great Lakes St. Lawrence Seaway Development Corporation, was also on hand. “We stole your great port director,” said Buttigieg. Tindall-Schlicht, who still lives in Milwaukee, offered brief remarks praising Carter, his former deputy, and the “once in a generation” investments expanding Great Lakes shipping.

In an interview, DeLong company vice president Bo DeLong said the expansion of the port facility will provide greater flexibility to the operation of the facility. “It’s mainly about doing two things at once,” said DeLong. That includes storing and loading two commodities onto the same ship, as well as unloading rail cars or trucks at the same time a ship is loading. Additional silos and handling equipment are to be added to the facility. “This is just our second year and we’re very pleased with the volume increase over the first year.”

The DeLong facility is the first in the Great Lakes capable of handling DDGS, which is moisture-laden and poorly suited for shipping containers. DDGS is used as a protein-rich feed to supplement animal diets. Many of the initial shipments, said Bo DeLong, have gone to Europe, but an upcoming vessel is slated to travel to Morocco in North Africa.

Buttigieg stopped at LuLu Cafe & Bar in Bay View for lunch.

Political Discourse

Because he was visiting Wisconsin on official business, the Hatch Act prohibited Buttigieg from engaging in “political activity.”

The secretary declined all questions about the presidential nomination process and any overtly political topics. He did, in prepared remarks, hint at Donald Trump‘s presidency by saying there were “no more so-called infrastructure weeks with no results in Washington and big factory announcements that never led to anything” and touted the ability of the Biden-Harris administration to get an infrastructure bill passed with patience and some Republican votes.

But Buttigieg’s restrictions didn’t stop Johnson and Evers from offering political praise and criticism.

“They saved Milwaukee from fiscal disaster,” said Johnson of federal funding from the Biden administration that provided a financial bridge for the City of Milwaukee until the sales tax deal could be negotiated. “Let’s be clear, the Biden-Harris administration has made a real difference in the lives of people right here on the ground in this city, and not just in this city, but in Wisconsin and across the United States of America.”

Evers also praised the American Rescue Plan Act, Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and other federal support the state has received. He also noted that his predecessor, Scott Walker, wasn’t too fond of rail investment.

“You might remember that one of my predecessors was kind of an anti-train guy. Well, I tell you what, that here has changed with Borealis and having a great train going across Wisconsin to Minnesota and the Hiawatha still going… this is something we needed,” said Evers. The line exceeded projections with 18,500 rides in its first full month and turned an operational profit.

Conservatives, meanwhile, criticized Buttigieg and the administration. “While Secretary Buttigieg takes the stage as the latest surrogate for the Biden-Harris administration’s failed economic agenda, Wisconsinites know it’s the same bad policies, just a different person,” said Americans for Prosperity Wisconsin in a statement. “Buttigieg is pro-‘Bidenomics’ and is just as much at fault for our economic uncertainty as Tammy Baldwin and Kamala Harris—bearing responsibility for some of the most unpopular top-down policies to come out of Washington, like the heavy-handed electric vehicle mandate and gas-powered car ban that threatens freedom and makes life harder for Wisconsinites.”

Existing members must be signed in to see the interactive map. Sign in.