SOUTH MILWAUKEE, Wisc. — Ryan Breaker is the driving force behind Strong Towns South Milwaukee.
It's an offshoot of Strong Towns Metro Milwaukee, a community organization that focuses on pedestrian safety and creates solutions for reckless driving.
“Seeing these other places that are walkable and you have corner stores everywhere and what's so different about that? We clearly used to have these things but we don't anymore. What happened? What’s different?” said Breaker.
Breaker says he was inspired to do this because he has seen a disconnect between the resources and actions being taken just up the road in Milwaukee and the lack of work being done here.
VIDEO: Strong Towns South Milwaukee hopes to address reckless driving
“What other towns across the country have successfully done is implementing traffic calming solutions cheaply and affordably and quickly, within a matter of days, using just what they already have,” said Breaker.
Michael Donnell owns South Milwaukee Sausage and Meats, which sits right at the corner of 12th and Milwaukee.
Known as “Doc,” he says he has seen plenty of pedestrians struggling to cross safely, pushing him to put a sign in his window as a small way to help.
“South Milwaukee is a growing community. I think that more and more people are coming. The more visitors we have, they might not know how dangerous some of the intersections are. I'd hate to see something happen,” said Donnell.
Clinton Verley says he was drawn to joining Strong Towns after seeing how dangerous road safety is firsthand.
“My older brother and my dad, who are runners, have both been hit by cars while they've been running,” said Verley.
Verley says he is thankful that he found a group that wants to make a change, rather than just complain.
“Our focus is not really on bringing more police to enforce the speed limits. It's more so on designing the streets so that drivers are just automatically nudged and sort of forced to drive in a safer way, in a slower way,” said Verley.
Strong Towns meets every second Thursday night at Moran's Pub.
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