[milwaukee-electric] Re: Milwaukee streetcar engineering to begin this fall.

[Robert Madison]

Ken and Tracie wrote:
> I don't mean to offend anybody, but I find this proposed Milwaukee streetcar 
> line disappointing
>
> This line appears to serve NO purpose! Why not just visit Kenosha or East 
> Troy to ride
> streetcars?
>
> This is a waste of money. Girdling the essentially irrelevant Downtown with
> a car line that goes nowhere?
>
> Do I support a light rail line between potential riders and a popular
> destination? Makes sense to me. Light rail from the suburbs to an active
> business district, university, arena, stadium and/or mall? Absolutely!  But
> circling the outer perimeter of what is no longer a vibrant center of
> consumerism or civic activity? Ridiculous!
>
> Riders may prefer rail to rubber, but I believe a one seat ride trumps all.
> What are the planners going to do? Force transfers to the streetcars and
> perhaps alienate bus riders?
>
> The charm and ambience of a streetcar may be the tipping point for fans like 
> us, but to John Q. Public, an enclosed mall during winter wins every time.
>
> Starter lines ought be like the ones built in Portland, San Diego or
> Calgary.
>
> K.
>   

It depends on what else they have planned for the area.  The current 
economic downturn notwithstanding, the edges of downtown were starting 
to convert more to mixed-use development (residential/commercial).

I moved out of Milwaukee in 2006, but still keep my finger on the local 
pulse every now and then.  When I left, they were still debating what to 
do with the old Pabst Brewery site, and how to use all the land 
reclaimed from the destruction of that useless Park-East freeway.  If 
they can actually get some good development (and I'll admit, I don't 
know what the current status of any of those projects are, perhaps 
someone can let me know what's happened recently), then this streetcar 
line will be a great centerpiece to the revitalization of the area.  
Right before I left Milwaukee, I lived at State & Cass, which would be 
just a block away from the proposed route.  I was going to UWM at the 
time, and, granted, this service wouldn't go there (but you can't get 
everything, at least not right away), but it would have been very 
convenient for my trips into the main part of downtown.

The bigger shame is that they didn't tear down I-794, like some had 
proposed (including, I believe, former mayor Norquist).  Then they could 
have reclaimed even more valuable land, and perhaps run the streetcar 
right down the middle of the new right of way.

Passenger rail is going to take a more important role in the future of 
the region, and Milwaukee's Amtrak Station is separated from downtown by 
that monstrosity that they just rebuilt.  The streetcar link will 
certainly be more inviting to the public coming from the train station 
than walking underneath the freeway.

I think this is the right move, for several reasons.  First, it finally 
breaks the "no-rail" barrier that has infected Milwaukee's thinking for 
decades.  It circumvents Scott Walker, who is only pretending to support 
the express bus service because he realizes it's the only way he could 
have avoided having rail (where was his support for the bus service from 
2002 until 2007 or so?).  It's not just Walker personally, but the 
entire political establishment in the region which seems hell bent on 
screwing the city and preventing any good transit from ever being 
built.  When people see how nice the ride is, they'll want expansion.

Another reason I think this is a good idea is that it gives Milwaukee 
some sort of footing for what might happen in the future.  As energy 
costs escalate, oil supplies dwindle, and the whole unsustainable 
economic system that encourages long-distance commuting continues to 
fall, cities will need to physically shrink in order to survive.  We 
seriously can't afford all of the infrastructure that we have in this 
country, and what will have to happen is that we will have to choose 
between having good quality infrastructure that is limited in the area 
it serves, or overextending our resources by trying to serve every 
possible corner.

This will be made much easier as mixed-use development continues to 
expand, which means that people's worlds can shrink, and they won't need 
to travel very far to get to where they need to go.  Instead of having 
the light rail serve the suburbs, the goal ought to be to encourage 
people to leave the suburbs and return to the city.

If there is a part of your note that I will agree with, it's that the 
line ought to be expanded (or, at least, make provisions for expansion) 
to UWM and Marquette.  Expanding northeast to UWM would serve more of 
the most densely populated part of the city.  Going west to Marquette 
would not only serve that school, but also provide a link to the other 
part of downtown.  I don't think it's worth it to serve an "arena, 
stadium, and/or mall," unless those facilities just happen to be along 
the route (which the Bradley Center is, for whatever life that place has 
left).

One of my biggest complaints about the initial Milwaukee Conenctor 
routing was that it basically dead-ended at Miller Park, which is used 
all of 81 times per year.  The rest of the time, the 
trains/cars/buses/trams/whatever would be going there empty.  There's 
nothing else nearby to attract ridership, because the stadium is pretty 
much in the middle of nowhere, surrounded on two sides by freeways, and 
(IIRC) on one side by a cemetery, and one side by the VA grounds (and 
that's after you walk through the ginormous parking lots to get there).  
Shopping malls haven't exactly been a great story of economic success, 
either.  Northridge, Capitol Court, Southgate, etc. all died in the 
1990s (or, in the case of Northridge, I believe early 2000s) despite 
being conveniently located and having pretty good transit access as 
well.  Last time I was there, there wasn't much left of Grand Avenue (in 
the middle of downtown, and along the proposed streetcar route).  
Everything else is way out in the suburbs, where it would be very 
expensive to build a line to serve them.

Bayshore was just rebuilt to be super car-friendly and very 
transit-unfriendly.  None of the other shopping malls in the area seem 
to want to be particularly transit-friendly either.

Long story short, I think this streetcar line will be fine, provided the 
development at the north end of the route gets done properly.