Milwaukee subways (Madison, Waukesha: houses, school, college)

[michael31681]

Im Supprized You Dont Have A Light Rail At Least. With A Population Of 602,782 In The City And 1,753,355 In The Metro You Would Thing There Would Be More Then Just A Bus System To Offer. Is The Trffic Bad In Milwaukee? I Live In The Twin Cities And In Minneapolis There Is A Light Rail That Travels From The Mall Of America Witch Is On The Southern Suburbs Makes A Stop At The Airport And Then Travels To Downtown Minneapolis. The Light Rail Systems Is An Excelent Way To Travel With Out Dealing With Traffic. There Is Another Rail Line Called North Star Commuter Rail That Is Underconstruction That Will Travel To Minneapolis's Northern Suburbs. There Is Also A Light Rail Thats In The Planning To Go From Downtown Minneapolis To Downtown Stpaul. I Really Thing That Better Tranportation Helps A City Grow. The Twin Cities Population Is Currently At 3,502,891 And There Is Alot Of Condos Going Along These Rail Lines. Its Helping To Boost The Population And Is Projected To Hit 4,000,000 In Less The 10 Years. My Friend Has Lived In Milwaukee And I Thought He Said There Was A Train That Went From Milwaukee To Chicago Is That True?

[Drover]

Originally Posted by michael31681

Im Supprized You Dont Have A Light Rail At Least. With A Population Of 602,782 In The City And 1,753,355 In The Metro You Would Thing There Would Be More Then Just A Bus System To Offer. Is The Trffic Bad In Milwaukee? I Live In The Twin Cities And In Minneapolis There Is A Light Rail That Travels From The Mall Of America Witch Is On The Southern Suburbs Makes A Stop At The Airport And Then Travels To Downtown Minneapolis. The Light Rail Systems Is An Excelent Way To Travel With Out Dealing With Traffic. There Is Another Rail Line Called North Star Commuter Rail That Is Underconstruction That Will Travel To Minneapolis's Northern Suburbs. There Is Also A Light Rail Thats In The Planning To Go From Downtown Minneapolis To Downtown Stpaul. I Really Thing That Better Tranportation Helps A City Grow. The Twin Cities Population Is Currently At 3,502,891 And There Is Alot Of Condos Going Along These Rail Lines. Its Helping To Boost The Population And Is Projected To Hit 4,000,000 In Less The 10 Years. My Friend Has Lived In Milwaukee And I Thought He Said There Was A Train That Went From Milwaukee To Chicago Is That True?

Somebody Please Explain This Fascination With Typing Everything With The First Letter Of Every Word Capitalized. What The Hell Is With That, And Why Do People Actually Go Through All That Unnecessary Effort Just To Make Their Posts Harder To Read??

Anyway, Traffic is not very bad in Milwaukee at all, which is the main reason why there is not much need for light rail. The only train that goes from Milwaukee to Chicago and vice-versa is Amtrak. There is a branch of the Chicago-centric Metra commuter rail system that goes to Kenosha.

[MKE POL]

I would say NEVER to subways due to our city leadership and vision(i.e. Phoenix) el-train maybe and would be more feasible. I really want to see our 1960's freeway system completey expanded to 5 lanes each way at least, and new freeways. Like another southern bypass, northern bypass, hwy 16 to all the way to I-43 expanded freeway and the lake freeway to continue to I-94 in Oak creek. We don't need grass and trees right next to the freeway!!!

[ffknight918]

St Louis has a small light rail system. St Louis is about half of the size of Milwaukee. I think that it would make a lot of sense. Maybe stop a few places downtown, the airport, the college campuses, and the suburbs.

[EnjoyEP]

People, people, people...

I just simply do not get this current fascination with the trendiness that is subways, light rail, etc., whatever in cities. To be honest, the push for light rail and subways and the like seems to be more of a "sexy" or "trendy" thing, for cities to try to "keep up with the Joneses" in their own special way.

Look, I am all for cutting pollution and traffic jams and saving on natural gas, etc. So I am in no way anti-public transportation. But I am for logical public transportation.

Milwaukee doesn't have the geographic size, population base, or traffic congestion to have anywhere near a need for something like light rail or a subway system in relation to the extremely high costs of building such a system and maintaining one. In economic terms, this is the word demand. Frankly, there is little-to-no demand from the general populace here demanding such a system.

Light rail, subways, etc., are EXTREMELY expensive to build. Even more so, they are EXTREMELY expensive to maintain, continue to operate, etc. Unless there is a large demand and usage, fiscally they become huge scourges on a general populace. In an already extremely over-taxed area such as Milwaukee with not a huge affluent base, the last thing this area would need is a gigantic financial blow like this would be.

Cities that have a huge need for light rail type systems FIRST (I am thinking of Denver Metro just offhand) and THEN build the systems are the ones that are giving their systems a chance to be efficient, effective, cost-efficient tools.

Transversely, cities that think it is better to first build the system and think that once it is built and operating that then the demand will follow are operating under a complete reversal of basic economic principles and are doomed to fail. Buffalo, NY is a prime example. Great system they built. But with little usage still in it (because there was never really a demand or need in the first place), it has become a 1/2-billion dollar scourge in an area that didn't need anymore of them.

Milwaukee metro would need to be at least 1-million people more before this would make any sense whatsoever .

Buses aren't "sexy" so that is why they aren't demanded for like subways, light rail, etc., however, I think MKE metro needs to start filling up buses and improving bus routes, service, etc., before any billion dollar projects are concocted.

[Drover]

First off, the Milwaukee Metro is already well over one million people. But size is only part of the equation. Population density is another. Higher population density increases the demand for mass transit solutions, including rail systems. One million-plus people living in an area the size of Philadelphia Proper justifies a rail system; one million people living in the entire greater Omaha area does not.

Another key factor is the distribution of employment centers. Larger cities that saw the great majority of their development before the ubiquitousness of the automobile tend to have a disproportionately large central employment cluster, because in the early 20th century the most efficient way to lay out transportation systems was to have one central place of convergence where everybody would go to, put in their 8 hours, and then go home. But newer cities such as Sun Belt cities (Phoenix, Vegas, Dallas, etc.) saw most of their development after the automobile became ubiquitous. Cars made it possible to have nearly infinite combinations of departure and destination points, so it no longer became necessary to try to funnel everyone into the same place for work every day; you could spread out the employment clusters.

Milwaukee's situation is somewhere in between. While it has a traditional "old-style" downtown employment core, it simply never achieved the sort of density that larger and/or older cities have like Boston and Chicago. The lack of critical-mass density and the relatively small size of the whole metro area made it easier to increasingly decentralize the employment centers as the metropolitan area developed because a) there was plenty of cheap open space to develop, and b) the whole transportation infrastructure was not quite locked into the "funnel everyone toward downtown" model like Chicago's is.

And so the net result is simply that Milwaukee has neither the population density nor the employment centralization -- and therefore does not have the traffic congestion -- to justify the massive expense of a light-rail system.

[Drover]

P.S. sorry to be a windbag, but some issues are too complex for glib two-line responses.

[south-to-west]

Drover is absolutely correct. When I was home over the holidays, I could get from Brown Deer to Downtown in 15 minutes, which is unimaginable in many major cities. Milwaukee simply doesn't have the traffic or congestion to warrant such a system.

However, I think Milwaukee would be a great city for bus rapid transit (BRT), which is like light rail, but uses articulated buses. It's a lot cheaper than light rail, but has many of the same conveniences and even similar levels of efficiency in that it uses a separate right-of-way. Even better, once demand reaches the necessary level to warrant light rail, BRT lines can be easily upgraded to light rail lines.

[supernerdgirl]

Originally Posted by Drover

Somebody Please Explain This Fascination With Typing Everything With The First Letter Of Every Word Capitalized. What The Hell Is With That, And Why Do People Actually Go Through All That Unnecessary Effort Just To Make Their Posts Harder To Read??

i think it's a control in the forum if someone types in all caps.

i think.

[Drover]

Originally Posted by supernerdgirl

i think it's a control in the forum if someone types in all caps.

i think.

I DON'T THINK THAT'S THE CASE AS EVIDENCED BY THIS HERE POST... MAYBE IT DEPENDS ON IF YOU'RE A NEWBIE OR NOT?