Transit « Milwaukee County First

Can You Spare Five Minutes For Transit?

There was a fantastic editorial in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel about the transit system. It was written by John Rossetto, who is co-owner of both Transfer Pizzeria Cafe and VIA Downer restaurants.

Mr. Rossetto describes how many of his employees and his businesses themselves are dependent on the transit system for their very livelihoods:

You’ve [...]

County Supervisors Plan Transit Rally For Monday

From a joint press release:

“SAVE OUR RIDE” WITH SUPERVISORS AT JOINT FINANCE COMMITTEE HEARING

County residents invited to join Supervisors riding the bus to testify at public hearing

Milwaukee, WI – Milwaukee County Supervisors Marina Dimitrijevic, Patricia Jursik and Jim “Luigi” Schmitt, along with Supervisor-Elect Jason Haas, are inviting residents to join a coalition of Supervisors, transit advocates, [...]

Is Walker’s Attack On Public Employees A Red Herring?

Earlier this week, Milwaukee County First issued a press release regarding Scott Walker’s misnamed “Budget Repair Bill.” In the press release, welamented the vast amount of completely unnecessary damage that Walker and the Republicans in the legislature were proposing to cause.

The item in this disrepair bill which has caught everyone’s attention is the attack [...]

Budgetgeddon!

As predicted, Scott Walker is planning on running his gubernatorial campaign

Scott Walker hard at work on the budget

on the backs of Milwaukee County citizens.

JSOnline is giving a sneak preview of the 2011 recommended budgets which Walker’s departmental heads came up with based on the expectations that Walker gave them to follow.

[...]

Large Turnout In Favor of Transit Sales Tax

Courtesy of our friends at SERTA, we find a column by Charlie Rosenberg, who describes the turnout and reaction of the crowd at Monday nights listening session:

A West Allis resident who introduced herself “You can call me Mrs. Taxpayer” firmly told a listening session in a packed West Allis Library meeting room April 12 [...]

Well, Mr. Walker, Which Is It?

In an article appearing in the Third Coast Digest, Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker was allowed to try to defend his record as county executive.

The article is chock full of inaccuracies, such as when Walker tries to tell us that the transit system is doing just fine. While not the subject of this post, [...]

Everyone's Fault But His Own

I’m a little late on this, but it is still relevant. Maybe even more so today with the zoo interchange in disarray and not enough public transit to help ease the congestion:

Cartoon by the very talented Stuart Carlson, who is again able to do local commentary at Milwaukee News Buzz.

[...]

How badly have transit fare hikes hurt ridership?

Arguably the single worst thing one could do to improve an ailing bus system is raise the already-high bus fare from an even $2.00 per trip to $2.25. But that is exactly what happened in the last county budget.

The Journal Sentinel has reported that bus ridership declined 9% last year to the lowest [...]

The Importance of Infrastructure

From Rob Henken, President of Public Policy Forum, on their blog, Milwaukee Talkie:

On other major transportation issues, success is more difficult to define. For example, significant progress was made on planning and building diverse support for the Kenosha-Racine-Milwaukee commuter rail line, but lack of a local funding source has prevented the project from moving [...]

Even McIlheran agrees: Milwaukee's buses need sufficient funding.

And I quote:

“Milwaukee’s buses need sufficient funding.”

That’s remarkable! The one remaining daily paper’s right-wing editorializor agrees that the bus system needs sufficient funding. At least we are in agreement on that.

It is notable that Mr. McIlheran suggests no viable alternative sources of the funding. Also, he blends all of the public transit [...]

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