Two Road-to-Trail Projects Funded in 2025

Jackson Park Roadway. Photo by Milwaukee County Parks.

The 2025 Milwaukee County Budget includes two projects that will convert existing sections of roadway to mixed-use trail.

Both projects involve the conversion of parkways controlled by Milwaukee County Parks into new trails. They are also both roadway reconstruction projects with a small section of trail conversion snuck in.

The 2025 budget includes approximately $10 million for the two projects. The majority of the funding will go toward reconstructing existing roadways.

On the southside of the city of Milwaukee, the county will spend approximately $3.4 million to reconstruct less than a mile of Jackson Park Drive between roughly S. 51st and S. 58th Streets, with two blocks between S. 51st and S. 53rd streets converted to trail. In Wauwatosa, the Underwood Creek Parkway will be reconstructed between Swan Boulevard and Firefly Ridge, with approximately 3,000 feet of roadway converted to a trail, at a cost of approximately $6.6 million.

Neither project will cut off automobile access from nearby homes or destinations.

The roads are each in terrible condition. Jackson Park Drive was last reconstructed in the 1980s and Underwood Creek Parkway has a pavement rating of 38/100, which is very low.

Both projects were selected and designed with community input. However, the Jackson Park Drive project proved significantly more controversial.

Initially, Parks planned to convert the entire section of roadway involved in the project to trail. But local neighbors were vehemently opposed and pushed back hard against the project at public meetings. Eventually, the local supervisors, then Peter Burgelis and Juan Miguel Martinez, worked with Parks to develop the option funded in the 2025 budget as a compromise.

Parks wanted to do a full conversion for the same reason it is interested in trail conversion elsewhere in the system: trails are safer, more cost effective and more environmentally friendly. And they typically have little auto traffic.

With limited funding for improving infrastructure, the department wants to focus on projects that directly support recreation. There are more than 60 miles of roadways and 142 acres of parking lots in the system, and the department is trying to reduce this footprint wherever possible.