The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) on Friday approved the Wisconsin Department of Transportation’s project to redesign and expand a 3.5-mile stretch of I-94 in Milwaukee, with construction scheduled to start next year.
The project would expand I-94 from six lanes to eight lanes between 70th Street and 16th Street. The project also includes modifications to interchanges to eliminate left-hand exit and entrance ramps, and right-sizing the Stadium Interchange to a diverging diamond interchange, according to a DOT announcement.
The DOT says the project, which was announced in 2022 with a $1.2 billion price tag, will improve the 60-year-old stretch of freeway.
According to the DOT announcement, with the FHWA authorization, the I-94 East-West project can now advance into final design and construction.
“WisDOT continues to engage community members and stakeholders throughout this project,” the announcement says. “The engagement helped mitigate impacts and refine the selected preferred alternative.”
Pending future funding, utility work and project construction are scheduled to begin in late 2025.
The federal approval for the project comes after a federal civil rights investigation into the project and its impacts was launched last year.
The project raised concerns from multiple Milwaukee and statewide social and environmental organizations, including the Wisconsin chapter of the Sierra Club, 1000 Friends of Wisconsin and Midwest Environmental Advocates, who petitioned the highway administration in May 2023 to open a civil right investigation. The federal government launched that investigation in December.
“If the project goes forward as the agencies plan, persons of color, who are a majority of the residents of the primary study region, will bear the brunt of the impacts of highway construction and expansion, while whites, especially white persons living in highly segregated suburbs, will reap most of the benefits,” that May 2023 petition said.
Then in January, the coalition backing the civil rights complaint argued the Federal Highway Administration should not grant a final approval to the I-94 rebuild plan while the investigation continues and asked Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers to halt the project.
The investigation is still underway, according to a statement from the Sierra Club.
