MILWAUKEE — An I-Team story on reckless driving has spurred the Milwaukee Public Works Committee to question the city’s stance on infrastructure’s role in impacting street safety.
“I thought I saw something on the news,” Alderman Bob Bauman said. “ Where a [Department of Transportation] guy was making a statement that traffic calming is actually a bad thing. I found that astounding. With people literally dying on the streets, massive accidents, 10th and Wells the most recent, and we got the DOT taking the position that fast-moving automobiles is good for everybody.”
“We did forward that video to DOT administration yesterday,” Chad Christbaum with DPW said. “We told them it wasn't acceptable.”
The DOT provided a statement, refuting the comments from the spokesperson, affirming its commitment to impacting reckless driving.
The comments came ahead of DPW’s findings from its annual Complete Streets Report. It showed proof that the traffic calming projects it has implemented do have an impact.
“We've seen great results,” Mike Amsden, DPW’s Multimodal Transportation Manager said. “The road diet on King Drive last year, we've seen some incredible speed reductions there.”
At that location, DPW eliminated two driving lanes and added center turn lanes and bike lanes. It provided big results with average speeds dropping by 4.3 miles per hour (MPH). The report also says drivers going 10 MPH or more over the speed limit have decreased dramatically. In 2020, 11.4 percent of all drivers went 10 MPH or more as compared to just 2 percent of drivers in 2021.
“If you have people driving at a certain speed, most people will follow them,” Amsden said. “We still will have some people driving recklessly but generally speeds have gone down.”
DPW has more improvement plans but Christbaum made it clear, it’s imperative DPW and DOT are on the same page. He says a lot of funding and rules on what can and can’t be done comes from the state.
