The U.S. Department of Transportation is awarding the City of Milwaukee $36.6 million to rebuild 6th Street through downtown and several surrounding neighborhoods as a “complete street” for walkers, bikers and drivers.
The grant, from the Biden administration’s Reconnecting Communities program, will cover a 2.6-mile stretch between National and North avenues, according to a press release from U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin.
“Investments like this have a very positive impact on Milwaukee neighborhoods and the entire city,” Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson said, in the release. “I am grateful to our elected federal leaders who are working to improve lives here and around the State of Wisconsin.”
The redesign of the central portion of the street was also singled out as a catalytic project in the recently-approved 2040 Downtown Plan. The plan calls for reducing the number of vehicle lanes and right-turn “bypasses,” adding trees and potentially adding fully separated bike lanes, transit lanes and “enhanced transit stops.”
The segment was described in a White House fact sheet as “an important corridor connecting predominantly Black communities on the northside through the downtown economic core south to the regional intermodal station and the gateway of Milwaukee’s Hispanic communities on the southside.”
In addition to physical street alterations, the project will include changes “easing the load on the city’s combined sewer system,” the document says.
It would build on the momentum generated by the relocated Milwaukee Public Museum, planned for North Sixth Street and West McKinely Avenue, by making it more accessible and spur adjacent private development, the plan said.
An additional $2 million grant, awarded to the Wisconsin Department of Transportation, will fund a study of replacing or reconfiguring the West National Avenue ramps at I-94/I-43.
