"The dismal failure of Milwaukee’s civic leaders to bring the region’s public transit infrastructure up to 21st-century standards is more than just another run-of-the-mill breakdown in leadership."

University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Professor Marc. V. Levine gets it right in his op-ed from this Sunday's Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Meanwhile, we have in County Executive Scott Walker a living example of willful obstinacy that is slowly and oh-so-surely killing Milwaukee and the surrounding region. This blind obstructionist is planning to proudly veto an advisory referendum on a (much-needed) 1-cent increase in the county sales tax! 

Read that again: Scott Walker is vetoing a vote in which the people decide - - in a nonbinding vote - -  whether it's worth a tax hike to fix the broken county.

He doesn't want to know how the citizens of his broken county feel about the current state of transit, parks, and other infrastructure?

Who does this sort of thing? A politician who is plotting a run for governor and who fears the likes of Mark Belling, that's who. Scott Walker is looking out for Scott Walker.

Once again, self-interest reigns, and Milwaukee's reputation as a non-starter that cowers under the clumsy brickbats of conservative radio talkers - - a cartoon-character breed that squeals in desperate search of attention and ratings and without regard to any larger truth - -  spreads across the nation as surely as this poorly formed, run-on sentence spreads across your screen.

It's time to ignore the talk-radio narcissists and pandering politicians and do what needs to be done. And if a County Executive fears an advisory vote by the people that may hinder his political future, his time is up.

Dim light at the end of the tunnel

The region needs higher wattage ideas for transit

By MARC V. LEVINE

The dismal failure of Milwaukee’s civic leaders to bring the region’s public transit infrastructure up to 21st-century standards is more than just another run-of-the-mill breakdown in leadership.

It is a public policy debacle that threatens the very economic viability of this city and region — and it comes at a time when we already are struggling with stagnant growth, spreading poverty and shockingly high rates of joblessness in the inner city.

Skyrocketing gas prices and awareness of climate change are reshaping the way Americans live, work and play. Mass transit ridership is surging in cities with rail transit systems, as commuters seek alternatives to $4.50-a-gallon gasoline. Suburban and exurban communities, whose growth was predicated on cars and cheap gas, are facing bursting housing bubbles and an uncertain future.

In this new era, the economic winners will be cities and regions that have invested in state-of-the-art mass transit. Unfortunately, few metropolitan areas are less prepared for these changes than Milwaukee.

Unlike in virtually all other large U.S. cities, leaders here have balked for two decades at building any form of regional rail transit.

By contrast, other cities, such as Baltimore, St. Louis and Minneapolis have built light rail systems since the 1990s (and ridership has soared by 15% this year in all three places). In 2004, Denver voters approved a $4.7 billion bond issue, underwritten by a sales tax, for a 119-mile expansion of their system, while Kansas City recently approved financing of a $1 billion, 27-mile light rail line.

Even in conservative, historically anti-tax “red states,” civic leaders and voters have understood the economic imperative of investing in rail transit. Salt Lake City recently raised the sales tax to expand regional rail. Phoenix is building a 20-mile, $1.3 billion light rail line. And in Texas, that bastion of big-government liberalism, Dallas is investing $4 billion to double the size of its regional light rail system to 90 miles.

In an era of expensive gas and pressures to reduce carbon footprints, it takes some magical thinking to believe that Milwaukee can remain economically competitive as one of the nation’s only large cities without such infrastructure.

The intransigence of Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker, bolstered by know-nothing talk radio hosts, columnists and bloggers, is obviously the biggest impediment to sensible transit policy.

Fortunately, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett supports rail transit. Unfortunately, he has offered an inadequate plan: a streetcar Downtown Circulator that would run in a three-mile loop around downtown, which is too small and too slow to generate either of the two key economic benefits of rail transit — linking workers to employment hubs in the region or promoting development along rail corridors.

Barrett sees the Circulator as a “starter” investment toward a more elaborate rail system, touting its links to the vastly oversold KRM commuter rail proposal. But it’s likely that the mayor’s trolley to nowhere would draw meager ridership, thus providing more ammunition to the opponents of light rail, foreclosing future investments and leaving us with an underutilized white elephant ringing downtown.

Barrett, properly concerned about fiscal responsibility, notes that “advocates have failed to explain how to fund a more extensive system.”

Yes, public finances are tight everywhere. Yet leaders in places as varied as Denver, Baltimore, Dallas, Minneapolis and Charlotte have financed the construction or expansion of their systems in recent years. Moreover, even in fiscally strapped Milwaukee, we’ve found a way to spend billions in the past decade on a baseball stadium and a convention center, mega-projects that nearly all economists agree contribute precious little to regional economic growth.

Surely, then, given the existential importance of transit for metro Milwaukee, a financially sensible, $1 billion regional fixed-rail plan can be crafted:

• Using the $91.5 million in federal funds already allocated.

• Minimizing capital costs by extensively utilizing existing rail rights of way.

• Creatively deploying such tools as tax incremental financing.

• Selling station-area development rights.

• Receiving infrastructure support from the State of Wisconsin.

• And, yes, implementing a regional sales tax (with rebates to low-income residents) to fund transit improvements and operations.

If Sen. Barack Obama is elected president, more federal funding likely will be available for rail transit. Obama’s campaign platform calls for a National Infrastructure Reinvestment Bank that could provide an infusion of funds to cities like Milwaukee to invest in transit (as well as in other infrastructure vital to economic development).

But the biggest problem is not fiscal but political.

Barrett and his allies should boldly confront the anti-rail demagogues, advocating a comprehensive fixed-rail plan for Milwaukee’s future that would link key hubs (downtown, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, the County Grounds and the airport) and stretch from the North Shore suburbs through the central city, perhaps to Brookfield.

The region’s corporate leaders, represented by the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce and the Greater Milwaukee Committee, supposedly support regional rail transit. If that’s true, they should make it the centerpiece of the Milwaukee 7 initiative, turning it into a more muscular regionalism that could underpin an economic revitalization of the city and region.

Rail is not a panacea for Milwaukee’s economic woes: It will not single-handedly solve the crisis of inner city joblessness, end poverty or create a culture of economic innovation here (although it will help in all of those areas).

But imagine a future of $8-a-gallon gas, in which Milwaukee is one of the few large cities in the United States without rail transit.

Businesses increasingly will locate in transit-friendly regions that offer the efficient and economical flow of people, goods and services. A Milwaukee without rail transit runs the risk of becoming economically obsolete, a city whose leaders failed to invest in its economic future.

Investing in rail is not like flipping a switch; the lead time is substantial. We already are way behind other cities, and our economic viability is slipping away.

The time for action is now.

Marc V. Levine is a professor of history, economic development and urban studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Comments

[Dave Reid]

Yea it is one thing to oppose a tax increase. But to oppose a referendum asking the taxpayers if they want a tax increase is well not very democratic now is it?