City of Milwaukee Awarded $8 Million for Safer Streets
The City of Milwaukee has been awarded an $8 million federal grant to fund targeted safety improvements on N. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive and W. Forest Home Avenue. This 2025 Safe Streets and Roads for All Implementation Grant will be used to reduce speeding on both corridors and improve safety for all roadway users, with a particular focus on making streets safer for children. The City will be enhancing pedestrian crossings, improving transit boarding areas, and adding traffic calming features, focusing improvements near schools, health and childcare facilities, libraries, and parks. The total project budget is $10,000,000, which includes a $2 million local match requirement that the City will contribute.
The City’s award complements a separate Safe Streets and Roads for All grant announced today by Milwaukee County, which includes work within the City of Milwaukee.
“This investment puts safety first, especially for our kids. By improving crossings, calming traffic, and upgrading transit access along MLK Drive and Forest Home Avenue, we are making these corridors safer for families and neighbors who use them every day,” said Mayor Cavalier Johnson.
The Safe Streets for Kids project will address a 1.7-mile segment of N. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive between N. 7th Street and W. North Avenue and a 1.0-mile segment of W. Forest Home Avenue from W. Historic Mitchell Street to W. Lincoln Avenue. Both street segments are part of the City’s High Injury Network. This project will comprehensively address safety problems on this corridor by incorporating Complete Street interventions that are proven to reduce crash risk such as bus bulbs, narrower travel lanes, reduced curb radii, curb extensions, leading pedestrian intervals, and raised intersections or crosswalks. These features provide more space and shorter crossings for people walking, while reducing speeding and opportunities for passing illegally on the right. They also improve transit safety and comfort by providing more space for riders to board and alight or wait for buses, and make it more convenient for riders to transfer between routes when crossing streets. Accessible Pedestrian Signals (APS) will be installed where needed at signalized intersections, which will assist people with visual and audible impairments by creating safer and more efficient crossings at signalized intersections along the corridor. This project will also resurface both streets.
“This grant will us to comprehensively address safety problems on these corridors by incorporating Complete Street interventions that are proven to reduce crash risk,” said Department of Public Works Commissioner Jerrel Kruschke. “Milwaukee continues to invest in infrastructure and improve safety for everyone using our streets.”
Improving traffic safety on our streets is one of Milwaukee’s top priorities, and the City is working to take quick and comprehensive actions to address the reckless driving crisis. This Safe Streets and Roads for All Implementation Grant will compliment existing efforts to tackle this issue such as the City’s commitment to zero traffic deaths by 2037, the adoption of a Complete Streets Policy, and the Mayor’s initiative to dramatically expand the City’s protected bikeway network.
NOTE: This press release was submitted to Urban Milwaukee and was not written by an Urban Milwaukee writer. While it is believed to be reliable, Urban Milwaukee does not guarantee its accuracy or completeness.
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