New County Traffic Safety Plan Unlocks Access To $5 Billion Funding Pool

Holton Street Bridge at intersection of N. Van Buren St. and E. Brady St.

It has taken nearly three years, but Milwaukee County is almost finished with a comprehensive, countywide plan for improving street safety.

Since January 2022, the Milwaukee County Department of Transportation (MCDOT) has been working through a series of steps to make the county eligible for a $5 billion pool of road funding, the Safe Streets and Roads for All program,  allocated through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.

The first major phase called for robust public input, with MCDOT holding its Safe Streets Roadshow at 22 locations in 2023. The second major phase was the development of the Safety Action Plan.

MCDOT officials presented a draft of their comprehensive safety action plan to the Milwaukee County Board Wednesday at the Committee on Transportation and Transit meeting.

The county did the leg work to identify potential projects in all 19 municipalities. County officials intend to work with each municipality to create their own safety action plans for submittal to the federal government. The City of Milwaukee already secured $25 million in funding through the Safe Streets and Roads for All program to rebuild W. Center Street between N. Teutonia Avenue west to N. Sherman Boulevard.

For the MCDOT effort, planners used crash data analysis and public engagement to develop a list of corridors to target, then developed another list of 500 locations that could use a traffic safety intervention and ultimately narrowed that list down to 142 problem areas and developed a specific traffic safety project for each, said Jeff Sponcia, MCDOT transportation planning manager.

“[The action plan] dives into where those are, what the countermeasure is, an estimate of how much it will cost and other helpful information,” Sponcia said. 

Planners approached the plan using a Vision Zero framework for road safety. It represents a different way of thinking about traffic safety and designing roadways, said Josh Boehm, a planning consultant with WSP USA.

“The premise of Vision Zero is that deaths are preventable, not inevitable,” Boehm said.

That hasn’t always been the case for engineers and roadway designers, he said. Designing roads under Vision Zero entails trying to account for human error.

“We’re really focused not on preventing all crashes — from a property-damage-only crash to a fatal or serious injury crash,” Boehm said. “We’re really just focused on preventing the most serious crashes, the ones that result in fatalities and serious injuries.”

One of the project requirements was a formal commitment to Vision Zero, which the county board passed in August.

MCDOT is still planning to make some tweaks to the draft report based on feedback from elected officials and stakeholders. The department will submit a final Safety Action Plan to the county board for approval in January, setting the county up to be eligible for grant awards in the spring.

UPDATE: This story has been updated to clarify that the plan is still only a draft and not finalized, as planners are still collecting feedback from elected officials and stakeholders that may affect the final draft.

Legislation Link - Urban Milwaukee members see direct links to legislation mentioned in this article. Join today