Milwaukee mayor abandons highway removal plan

Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson announced he no longer supports tearing down part of Interstate 794, reports Aaron Short in Streetsblog USA.

According to Short, "Johnson rejected replacing the highway with at-grade boulevards that connect to the street grid because he worried drivers would get stuck in traffic." 

Some city council members and advocates blasted the mayor's decision, with a group of officials saying "This is a generational opportunity for our city, and we should not bristle at the idea of freeway removal simply because it represents the greatest departure from the current status quo." 

I-794 separates the Historic Third Ward from other downtown neighborhoods, and parts of the span are coming to the end of their useful life. Wisconsin DOT studied several alternatives, from rebuilding the highway (at a cost of $425 million to $575 million) to replacing the span with a boulevard (at a cost of $850 million to $1.25 billion). However, "Advocates argued state officials overestimated the cost of dismantling highways and building new roads, and underestimated the benefit on downtown neighborhoods if boulevards were built instead."