New Report: Fork in the Road for Wisconsin Transportation Policymakers

Wisconsin faces a choice: It can continue its years-long trend of following state official plans to build and expand highways, at the cost of billions of dollars, or it can invest in priorities identified by local community leaders, who want existing roads repaired, and improvements to transit, bicycle and pedestrian projects their residents are eager to use. While the contrast between official plans and community needs may be starker in Wisconsin than elsewhere, these are the sorts of choices facing governments at all levels across the country.

With driving still lower than in the past – it peaked a decade ago in Wisconsin and nationwide – and transit ridership, bicycling and walking on the rise – Frontier Group’s latest report, Fork in the Road: Will Wisconsin Waste Money on Unneeded Highway Expansion or Invest in 21st Century Transportation Priorities?, calls on policymakers to reexamine their long-held assumptions that traffic will rise indefinitely, and to reallocate transportation funding according to the current reality.

First, we highlight four major highway expansion projects that together exemplify one of the choices Wisconsin could make. These projects include urban interstates and a rural state highway, at a combined cost of $2.8 billion. We document the traffic expectations held by Wisconsin Department of Transportation officials, and compare those with the reality on the roads, as described by WisDOT traffic count data, which reveal that these projects are unnecessary.

Then we highlight several transportation needs from across the state that have been underfunded and neglected, and are crying out for investment – including repairs to existing roads, repairs to landmark bridges in Milwaukee, improvements to transit services in several communities, and bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure projects. The specific examples in the report are merely representative of the statewide needs that have remained unmet and low-priority.

The choice is clear: Wisconsin can spend billions on unnecessary highway expansion, or reallocate some of that money to repair existing roads, which are in poor condition, and to provide funding for transportation projects communities have been waiting years to develop.