MILWAUKEE COUNTY, Wis. — The Milwaukee County Department of Transportation (DOT) wants to make all the roads in the county safer by using federal dollars to change the design of streets.
However, before Milwaukee County DOT can get to that point, they have been looking for public input on what changes should be made. After three months of public meetings called the Milwaukee County Safe Streets Roadshow, we now know what community members want.
"Nineteen municipalities, 22 meetings over the course of the three-month period from June all the way through the end of August,” said Donna Brown-Martin, the director of the Milwaukee County DOT.
The Milwaukee County Department of Transportation went from the smallest village to the largest city in the county to hear from you.
"Reducing speed limits on certain streets, you know 45 to 40,” said Sebastian Becerra, a community member who attended an August meeting of the Milwaukee County Safe Streets Roadshow.
The meetings were a crucial step in a $1.2 million federal grant.
"We had 620 in-person discussions,” said Brown-Martin. "That is pretty significant for a subject talking about safe streets."
Hundreds of other people filled out surveys. According to the county, there were some consistent key takeaways from the meetings. People were changing their driving habits to feel safer on the roads, people were changing where they walked to be safer and they wanted road changes, which included things like bumps out, speed humps, or other traffic calming measures so people would be forced to slow down.
"The issue for me is with speeding,” said Edwina Matthews from Brown Deer who attended a June meeting.
"Aggressive speeding and angry drivers,” said Rob Guilbert, another Brown Deer community member who attended a June meeting.
Now the county will use the community input along with data they gather from engineers, law enforcement, and even school districts to craft how they want to change streets. That will be submitted to the federal government by 2025 in order to gain access to billions of dollars in funding. If approved the county would split the cost of road improvements with the federal government paying 80 percent and the county paying 20 percent.
"We'll begin to lay out the plan for how we will be able to address those. So if that is a stop sign, if that is a change in the signal, if it is one of the bumps that is in the middle of the roads then we will start to do that,” said Brown-Martin. "Everyone wants to feel safer."
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