Milwaukee Seeks Partners On Project Lowering Speed Limits

The Department of Public Works continues to advance its plan to lower side street speed limits from 25 miles per hour (mph) to 20 mph with the goals of reducing the severity of crashes, deterring reckless driving and saving lives.

The speed limit change would be made as part of the nationwide “20 is Plenty” movement. Milwaukee’s default speed limit, when no sign is present, is currently 25 mph. Severe injury risk for pedestrians jumps from 25% at 23 mph to 50% at 31 mph and 75% at 39 mph.

The proposal also comes as part of the city’s recent adoption of a “Vision Zero” strategy of eliminating traffic deaths.

The Common Council, in October 2021, allocated $1.2 million from the city’s $197.2 million first tranche of American Rescue Plan Act grant funding on speed reduction efforts, including replacing speed limit signs and education. It’s part of a larger allocation to combat reckless driving.

Now DPW is seeking private partners to lead the effort, including designing and executing a communication plan, developing a replacement strategy for the speed limit signs and collecting before and after performance dates from at least 45 locations. The contractor, described in a request for proposals as a partnership of a marketing and engineering firm, would be responsible for working with city staff to host outreach meetings, developing a bilingual communication strategy, creating a campaign website and marketing materials and executing a $50,000 advertising campaign. The winning partners would also need to take over administration of the reckless driving mini-grant program which has provided up to $5,000 grants to neighborhood groups to try different interventions to reduce unsafe driving.

The partners would also need to study 50 commercial corridors in the city to see if the speed limit should be reduced to 25 or 20 mph in those areas. Additional study areas, provided by the city, would include targeted streets where the speed limit is set as 30 mph.

Responses to the RFP are due July 29. The marketing campaign is to launch by the end of December, with speed limits changed by June 30, 2023.

But council members have been agitating for months why the changes haven’t been made quickly.

“Why isn’t this like done?” asked Public Works Committee Chair Alderman Robert Bauman in November 2021.

Then Public Works Commissioner Jeff Polenske said the department needed to finalize a plan and ensure it would have council support. City Engineer (and now interim commissioner) Jerrel Kruschke and multi-modal planning manager Michael Amsden have reiterated that the department does not have the capacity or expertise in-house to execute the whole effort. Polenske and others repeatedly noted that it was more involved than simply changing street signs and needed an education and marketing component to be successful.

“I don’t know how much education you need to say ‘I’m not supposed to go faster than 30.’ I’m not sure if there’s a class to take. A billboard. It just seems elementary,” said Ald. Mark Borkowski. “I hear education and it drives me crazy because it’s so damn simple.”

Cities implementing 20 mph policies include Minneapolis and St. Paul. Madison has a test policy. The newly-elected mayor of Atlanta made speed limit reduction a point of his campaign.

The city adopted a Complete Streets policy in 2018 and has started making “rapid implementation” changes where it uses paint, flexible dividers, planters and other dividers to narrow streets. Those rapid projects have taken place on S. 13th St., N. 27th St., W. Villard Ave. and W. North Ave. Longer-term road reconstruction projects are also being designed with traffic calming measures.

DPW is currently working on 16 street reconfiguration projects funded with American Rescue Plan Act funding. Nine of the projects are expected to be completed this summer. The department, with ARPA funding, is also working on a record number of resident-requested speed humps. The Public Works Committee is expected to review approximately 60 requests for new speed humps at its July meeting, the last window where the cost is reduced by 66% using ARPA funding.

“Our streets are for everyone including pedestrians, bicyclists, scooters, local businesses, and, yes, cars. We must thoughtfully balance the needs of all users,” said Mayor Cavalier Johnson in announcing the RFP. “I look forward to working with experts to help us plan for greater safety with multimodal mobility throughout the city.”

A copy of the RFP is available on Urban Milwaukee.