MILWAUKEE — As a car buzzed through the intersection of 27th and Center, it was no surprise to Charles Benz.
“All the time,” Benz said. “That’s why you have so many accidents.”
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Benz is like most Milwaukeeans. Every day he sees someone driving crazy. As he sat down on a bench outside of the Center Street Public Library, a number of vehicles did something that could be considered reckless. Even on the sidewalk, Benz says he doesn’t feel safe.
“Hell no! They want to do 50 or 60 miles per hour,” Benz said of the intersection. “Not caring about pedestrians. I have seen so many accidents here, it don’t make no sense.”
It’s a special intersection, but not in the way Benz would hope. 27th Street is intersected by Fond du Lac Avenue and the two thoroughfares are among the worst in the city for reckless driving citations.
The I-Team put together a map showing where the Milwaukee Police Department (MPD) issued reckless driving citations since 2017. Fond du Lac Avenue, 27th Street, and Capitol Drive create a triangle of danger for pedestrians, homeowners, cyclists, other drivers, and reckless drivers themselves.
While these areas are especially problematic, MPD has issued reckless driving citations everywhere in the city. But according to Robert Schneider, UW-Milwaukee Professor of Urban Planning, the problematic corridors were built to allow for more reckless driving.
“Because of multiple lanes, you have opportunities to pass other cars quickly,” Schneider said. “That type of situation is more conducive to speeding. It’s not surprising to see these three corridors because when we look at the crash data, we see concentrations along those corridors in particular.”
But reckless driving is far more than just speeding. On 27th Street alone, vehicles tend to use the bicycle lane as another driving lane, putting cyclists at a greater risk. While passing through 27th and Fond du Lac Avenue, cars getting cut off as they merge is a regular occurrence.
“The underlying risk of any given roadway corridor has to do a lot with how it’s designed,” Schneider said. “Some streets have reduced the number through travel lanes and reconfigured lanes so there is a bike lane where there used to be a through travel lane. There may be opportunities for curb extensions to shorten crossing distances but also reduce the amount of passing on the right that occurs sometimes in the bike or parking lanes. That’s a physical design that prevents some of the worst passing on the right behavior we see.”
Schneider is quick to point out, some of the responsibility does fall on those behind the wheel. Drivers ultimately decide whether or not they are driving unsafely. However, Schneider says infrastructure and engineering adjustments may take out the free will of drivers.
“The more we have those types of changes to the streets, the underlying risk of any given street goes down,” Schneider said.
Capitol Drive, for instance, has speeding concerns. A 2019 Department of Public Works study shows, on average, more than 950 drivers go 50 miles per hour or faster every single day. That’s at least 20 miles per hour over the posted 30 miles per hour speed limit.
“That’s the sort of street where that type of behavior can happen,” Schneider said. “Roadways, in how they’re designed, have something to do with influencing behavior. If you design roadways so they facilitate slower speeds and have shorter crossing distances for pedestrians, they help facilitate a culture of slower travel and, hopefully, more respectful driving. The design itself can spur those behaviors to be safer.”
Presently, Capitol Drive operates with four lanes, two east and two west, with room for vehicles to park and bike lanes. That kind of design, Schneider says, is setting drivers up to speed and drive recklessly. He says, a redesign of the roadway to include curbside extensions and eliminating a travel lane would change the dynamic of what we know Capitol Drive to be.
“There are a lot of people who have picked up the culture of high-speed driving on Capitol Drive,” Schneider said. “Yes, we see maybe a little more traffic congestion for 30 minutes or an hour in the morning or afternoon peak travel times but the rest of the parts of the day, you limit the speeding that’s going on because there is a little more friction going on in the traffic environment.”
Milwaukee's Department of Public Works is working to install pinned curb extensions on Capitol Drive, west of 60th Street. These are a bit more permanent than the plastic bollards and painted lines as part of the Rapid Implementation Projects, but slightly less permanent than the concrete curb bump outs in other areas of the city.
“It’s taking the idea of a street project that extends the curb, which may take a year or two to plan,” Schneider said. “They’ve got infrastructure that can be fastened to the concrete temporarily to prevent people from driving in the curbside lane and shorten the pedestrian crossing distance. This will take it to the next step in permanence but possible to be removed if something doesn’t work out like impacting bus service in a negative way. They are an important step towards creating safer streets.”
