A south side Milwaukee alderman said the latest proposal to expand The Hop streetcar route does not go far enough in extending the system further south.
On Thursday afternoon, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett and other city officials unveiled a $46.8 million package that would fund the construction of a streetcar line extension to the Wisconsin Center and preliminary engineering work related to another three-mile expansion into the Bronzeville and Walker’s Point neighborhoods.
Specifically, the planned three-mile extension would bring the streetcar north to the intersection of North Dr. martin Luther King Jr. Drive and North Avenue, and south to the intersection of South First Street and East Pittsburgh Avenue.
Today, Alderman José Perez said this plan would not take the streetcar far enough southward.
“If we, as a city, are going to commit to take the streetcar north, we also need to commit at the same time to taking it south,” Perez said in a statement. “We need to ensure that all parts of the city are included and treated fairly.”
The spending package put forward on Thursday does put $500,000 toward studying route alternatives for Walker’s Point and extending the streetcar further south and west of the planned terminus at First and Pittsburgh.
Perez said in the statement that it needs to go even further, and a “vague promise” to eventually extend the streetcar to the south side is not sufficient.
“Stopping the streetcar at 1st and Pittsburgh is simply not good enough. The streetcar line must be extended to 6th and National, the gateway to the Latino community,” he said.
The city has identified a potential extension that would travel along either First or Second streets to National Avenue, where it would continue south to Greenfield Avenue or travel west along National Avenue. The preliminary engineering work, however, would not take the expansion that far into the city’s south side.
According to The Hop’s website, the expansion route was chosen based on planning that “balanced cost, benefits, ridership and competitiveness in the federal funding program,” and that more decisions need to be made about extending the route further into Walker’s Point.
Barrett said on Thursday that when the streetcar was first proposed it would be controversial, but once it the system was up and running the conversation would change to where the system would be expanded to.
“I will tell you over the last six months, I have heard far more — and I mean far more — people say to me, ‘When can you get it here? When can you get it close to my business (and) neighborhood?’ That’s what people are clamoring for right now,” he said.
Setting aside $18.8 million as part of the spending proposal for the preliminary planning and engineering work will qualify the streetcar expansion for consideration in the Federal Transit Administration’s Capital Improvement Grant Program.
The three-mile extension as planned would ultimately cost somewhere around $150 million or $160 million, Barrett. The city hopes 50% of those costs would be covered by federal dollars.
