Bikes! Damn bikes!

Sunday's Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel editorial by Patrick McIlheran kicks off with a sage observation regarding the average driver's attitude toward anyone traveling via non-motorized conveyance:

There are times when road policy is a temptation to sin. Try W. Center St., for instance.

Like a lot of old main streets in Milwaukee, Center now has a marked bike lane. You can cross the stripe if there's no bike coming and you're going to park or enter a driveway.

But if it's just you, an empty bike lane, a curbside stretch with no parking and there's an overcautious left-turning Buick in front of you waiting for the oncoming traffic to clear . . . no, you can't ease around on the right. Not if there's a white stripe marking the bike lane. State law says so.

Have you ever done it anyway? By what I see, a lot of Milwaukee drivers have had their fill of interminably halting every two blocks in rush hour. Stripe? What stripe?

Not to lack sympathy for the needs of bicyclists, but the city's lane for them may be trying the souls of drivers, to whom we must say: Leave earlier, be patient, share the road.

Then a transition (and genuflection) to the glorious city-bisecting (trisecting?) freeway, blessed by Saint Zeidler:

Or take a freeway, which isn't a sinful temptation, either. In Milwaukee, one of the progressives' heroic myths is how an uprising of the people stopped the pavers before their superhighways could plow under half the city and drain the life from the rest. Its premise is that freeways are an imposition on the city for the benefit of suburbanites, a kind of secular sin that ruined a pre-automotive Eden.

A new book aims to clear up some of that moralizing. In "Mayor Frank P. Zeidler: Transportation Development in Post-War Milwaukee," James J. Casey Jr. makes the point that our freeways were planned and begun under the mayor who is accorded something close to sainthood by Milwaukee urbanists. What's more, says Casey, Zeidler never regretted building them.

"The common perception of Frank as being anti-freeway isn't borne out by the policies he carried out and by the beliefs he held until he died," says Casey.

The book in question, by the way, is published by the American Public Works Association. Yes, the people who build and service highways and freeways (other available titles include Snow Removal Techniques - Plowing Tips from the Pros, and Ready, Set, Plow! Tips and Tricks for Preparing Your Fleet for Snow Season).

I have no doubt that the Frank Zeidler who helped approve the highway plan in 1952 did so because he saw a way to move people and goods efficiently (and this is not to mention the enormous federal grants and subsidies hanging low from the trees for freeway projects - - lost if not used). I also know that 21st century Frank Zeidler would balk at the knee-jerk asphalt-spreading being proposed today.

Approving of the basic freeway system is not equivalent to condoning continued unchecked  gold-plating of asphalt at the direct expense of creating and maintaining desirable, affordable transit systems and walkable/bikeable communities (including bike paths that don't inconvenience drivers). I don't think the American Public Works Association can claim Zeidler as a "teammate."

Link: JS Online: City's practical partisan never regretted freeways:.

Comments

[Jim Casey]

Unfortunately, the author is misguided in asserting that Frank Zeidler would balk at continued freeway improvements in the 21st century. The fact is, until he passed away in July 2006, he supported completion of the Park East, Stadium South, and Northwest Freeways (commonly known as the Stadium North Freeway). And he felt that either the Park West should have been built, or the roughly 1,800 structures removed for it should never have been removed in the first place. Weeks before he passed away, driving in my car, he told me how the Fond du Lac Freeway should be extended from 68th and Congress to 60th Street, as part of the eventual linkup with the Stadium North Freeway. The author should buy my 2006 book before he makes assumptions about what Frank Zeidler stood for.