Milwaukee Announces 60 Traffic Calming Projects for 2025

The city has successfully reduced traffic deaths and aims to eliminate them completely within the next decade.

1 minute read

March 23, 2025, 5:00 AM PDT

By Diana Ionescu @aworkoffiction


Close-up on pedestrian crosswalk light in downtown Milwaukee, Wisconsin with historic building with steeple visible in background.

Eric Skadson / Adobe Stock

Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson announced 60 new traffic calming projects for the year in a press conference touting the city’s traffic safety efforts.

According to reporting by Jeramey Jannene in Urban Milwaukee, “Projects include reconstructing more than two miles of W. Lisbon Avenue, building a new 20th Street Powerline Trail, adding protected bike lanes to several roadways and making targeted traffic calming improvements near schools, trails and parks.”

The mayor added, “This is part of the ‘all of the above’ approach that we try to employ in the city to address issues around safety on our roadways.” Milwaukee aims to eliminate traffic deaths within a decade.

Jannene notes that although the city promised to build 45 projects in 2024, only 34 were started or finished. However, 2025 poses increased urgency: “It is the second to last year the city can rely on federal American Rescue Plan Act funding. The pandemic-recovery funding, which has supported a wide variety of government programs locally and nationally, must be expended by the end of 2026 or returned.”

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