MILWAUKEE — For years Milwaukee City leaders have been working on fixes to slow down traffic on Van Buren Street, and this summer they are once again floating ideas to make changes.
There are 2 design options on the table now for Van Buren from Wisconsin Avenue to Brady Street that officials hope will work.
"Van Buren historically has been one of our more dangerous streets for walking, it recently has become more dangerous for biking as well,” says Milwaukee Department of Public Works Multi-Modal Transportation Director Mike Amsden.
The 2 design options both have protected bike lanes. One has a one-way bike lane on each side of the street, the other has a two-way bike lane on one side of the street. Protecting bike riders is one of the main goals of the new plans. “I also bike on this street and I feel uncomfortable biking on this painted lane because cars go by really fast,” says neighbor Joelle Strom.
Bike lanes were added and vehicle lanes taken away in 2021 when the city first tried to address the issue of reckless driving on the street. They re-striped the street from 4 lanes to 2 in that go around hoping that would slow down drivers.
Amsden says “anecdotally, we’ve heard a lot of improvements, we’re still kind of looking at some preliminary crash data.” But crash data from the Milwaukee Police Department doesn’t show an improvement. In 2019 before the changes, there were 2 pedestrian-involved crashes and 15 injury crashes. Those numbers were up in 2022 after the fix, to 4 and 28 respectively.
Business owner Mazen Muna, who runs Metro Car Wash on the street, says the changes haven’t made much of a difference.
“People that are driving recklessly will do so no matter what stripes are on the street,” says Muna. He’s also worried about losing parking spaces on the street. “We’re already running out of places to park cars. We’re parking them all around the neighborhood. Sometimes we jog three blocks to go get a car," Muna said.
Amsden says changes to parking should be minimal. “For the most part parking will likely be maintained in either scenario,” he said. More parking would likely be lost to the south where the street is narrower.
The project will be paid for with $2 million already dedicated to the changes from a Tax Incremental Financing District. Once a design is selected later this summer, the city hopes to break ground on the project in the Spring/Summer of 2024. Several public meetings to gather input from neighbors have been held and more are planned for the summer.
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