Milwaukee County Department of Transportation Safe Streets Roadshow Update

The Milwaukee County Department of Transportation (MCDOT) launched a new safety initiative earlier this summer. The Complete Communities Transportation Planning Project is an unprecedented effort to increase multimodal safety and address reckless driving across all 19 municipalities in Milwaukee County. Details about the project, including funding, the project’s timeline, and its background information, can be found on the project website:  http://county.milwaukee.gov/CompleteCommunities.

As an opportunity to engage with and hear from residents, Milwaukee County is continuing its Safe Streets Roadshow throughout the summer with meetings in each of its 19 municipalities, including one session in Spanish in the City of Milwaukee on August 24^th. Additionally, MCDOT will have a booth at two different community events in South Milwaukee and West Milwaukee where attendees will be able to provide feedback on what safer streets would mean to them. Residents are invited to attend any of these events regardless of where they live within Milwaukee County. The list of events for August is below.

Municipality	Date and Time	Venue
St. Francis	August 3rd, 2PM	St. Francis Civic Center, 3400 E. Howard Ave.
South Milwaukee	August 3rd, 5PM-7PM	South Milwaukee Municipal Building, 2424 15th Ave. Community Night Out Event (stop by the MCDOT Complete Communities table anytime between 5PM-7PM)
Oak Creek	August 9th, 2PM	Oak Creek Public Library, 8040 S. 6th St.
City of Milwaukee	August 9th, 6PM	Kosciuszko Community Center, 2201 S. 7th St.
Whitefish Bay	August 10th, 2PM	Whitefish Bay Public Library, 5420 N. Marlborough Dr.
Fox Point/River Hills	August 18th, 1PM	Friendship Circle Café & Bakery, 8649 N. Port Washington Rd.
West Milwaukee	August 18th, 5PM-7PM	West Milwaukee Intermediate School, 5104 W. Greenfield Ave.  National Night Out Event (stop by the MCDOT Complete Communities table anytime between 5PM-7PM)
City of Milwaukee (en español)	August 24th, 6PM	Sacred Heart Center, 1545 S. Layton Blvd. (this meeting and its accompanying materials will be entirely in the Spanish language)

The Safe Streets Roadshow offers residents the opportunity to share their feedback on how they are impacted by reckless driving and how safer streets can improve their quality of life. Residents will also hear an overview of the project including goals and timeline. If residents are unable to attend a meeting and wish to contribute feedback, they can complete a digital survey. The survey can be accessed at https://bit.ly/mcdotsurvey and is open through August 31^st, 2023.

What Have We Heard? Milwaukee County hosted 13 Safe Streets Roadshow meetings in June and July. Attendance has increased 77% from an average of 13 attendees per meeting in June to 23 per meeting in July. However, the first two Safe Streets Roadshow meetings within the City of Milwaukee, in partnership with their Vision Zero initiative, experienced below average attendance. At the June and July meetings, 480 pieces of digital, written, and place-based feedback were gathered from participants. A few high-level takeaways include the observation that drivers are changing behavior due to the presence of reckless driving, either driving less or taking different routes. Residents observed that streets would feel safer if more people used transit, biking and walking as normal modes of transportation, if people understood traffic rules, and if vehicles slowed down. When asked to answer the prompt, “Getting around my community would be safer if…,” one West Allis community member responded, “Roads would be safer if they were designed with people in mind, not vehicles.”

In addition to the Safe Streets Roadshow, this effort is informed and guided by municipal partners throughout Milwaukee County through steering committees including a Public Advisory Committee (PAC) comprised of community leaders, advocates, and non-profits, and an interdisciplinary Safety Working Group (SWG) comprised of industry leaders and professionals.

Furthermore, a comprehensive crash data dashboard (similar to Milwaukee County’s COVID-19 dashboard), developed in partnership with the Medical College of Wisconsin and UW-Milwaukee, will be released later this year. This online tool will display crash trends and hotspots throughout Milwaukee County using a variety of demographic criteria to better inform the public and all parties working towards improving multimodal safety and mitigating reckless driving and its impacts.

Milwaukee County’s vision to be the healthiest county in Wisconsin by achieving racial equity cannot be achieved without taking a new approach to transportation safety, addressing the root causes of reckless driving, and protecting our most vulnerable roadway users. The Complete Communities Transportation Planning process and resulting Action Plan will use an equity lens to center communities of color who often experience the greatest harm.

Learn more about Complete Communities, see a complete list of dates and locations for the Safe Streets Roadshow and complete a digital survey open through August 31^st on the project website: http://county.milwaukee.gov/CompleteCommunities. The project is expected to conclude in late 2024.

Please reach out to Jeff Sponcia, Transportation Program Planning Manager at MCDOT (jeff.sponcia@milwaukeecountywi.gov), for any questions.

NOTE: This press release was submitted to Urban Milwaukee and was not written by an Urban Milwaukee writer. It has not been verified for its accuracy or completeness.