Walker Admin doesn't want us to know the costs and needs of our highways

6 weeks before the November elections, the Walker Administration knows they are vulnerable on what they (haven't) done with the state's roads. And as we found out by an article from Katelyn Ferral in Madison.com today, this has now led WisDOT to hide data that might let the public to know just how crowded and delay-ridden Wisconsin highways are.

The state affirmed that it has retired the delay and reliability metric, which tracks congestion on roads, from its quarterly Mobility Accountability Preservation Safety Service (MAPSS) reports because the federal government has changed how it monitors congestion. Wisconsin's Department of Transportation says it will still measure congestion in some form for reports it sends to the federal government.

Critics say that federal change should not preclude the state from measuring congestion on its own as it has for years and regularly sharing that information with the public. Congestion was not included in the agency's latest MAPSS report from April or July, nor is it considered in the DOT's latest state budget request that was released this month, a departure from past reports and budget requests.

I’m sure this is just a coincidence, and it has nothing to do with the recent national TRIP report from an pro-infrastructure organization which showed that $1.9 billion a year is wasted due to road congestion, and that Wisconsin motorists pay over $3 billion a year in additional costs as a result of bad roads.


This costs serious money.

That same TRIP report also showed that 50% of the state’s roads were listed in “fair” or “poor” condition, and noted that the amount of travel on the state’s roads was rising, especially in recent years.

From 2000 to 2016, annual vehicle miles of travel (VMT) in Wisconsin increased by 12 percent, from 57.3 billion miles traveled annually to 64 billion miles traveled annually. Vehicle travel in Wisconsin increased eight percent in the last three years (2013-2016).

The inconvenient truths of the TRIP survey and other metrics leads the head of a group representing county highway officials to say that WisDOT chose not to include the congestion information for an obvious reason - it would make WisDOT look bad.

Tracking congestion levels is often the most visible, direct way for drivers to understand how roads are functioning and a key indicator for transportation officials to evaluate what system changes might be needed. Without timely, consistent measurement of it, said Dan Fedderly, executive director of the Wisconsin County Highway Association, it is hard to hold the DOT accountable.

"The whole MAPSS program is, in very simple terms, to rate DOT's performance. So once they start changing the parameters around that then it becomes difficult to rate their performance," he said. "I suspect partially it's due to the fact that it's not a metric they're going to do well on based on some of their other policies."

While Fedderly may have a special interest in his theory, the overall point is correct. How are we going to make the best decisions on how to prioritize highway projects if we’re not going to use data that shows how heavily traveled those roads are?

The article goes on to quote new DOT spokesman Christian Schneider as saying that removing congestion from MAPSS has nothing to do with the fact that it would make Walker’s WisDOT look like it was falling further behind in keeping our infrastructure up with the needs of the state. Nooo. Instead, Schneider claims it was to match up with newer and fewer reporting requirements that are coming down from the Trump Administration.


He wouldn't be spinning away from reality, would he?

OK Christian, flat-earth Trumpists may not want all that information these days. But explain to us why WisDOT shouldn’t still use the information from MAPPS to help figure out where and when to spend money to adjust the capacity of our increasingly crowded and deteriorating roads.

After all, it’s not like there isn’t planning going on with these traffic forecasts. As a new article today notes, we’re slated to spend nearly half a billion dollars to not only alleviate congestion on I-94 south of Milwaukee, but to help Foxconn use driverless vehicles to ship products.

The 18.5-mile upgrade that runs from south of College Avenue to Highway 142 in Kenosha County is intended to ease congestion on a roadway where traffic is expected to grow from a current range of 83,000 to 153,000 vehicles a day to 100,000 to 200,000 vehicles daily by 2034, according to the Wisconsin Department of Transportation.

Another key focus, state officials say, is that the upgrade will help Foxconn Technology Group automate the shipping of goods and people for its Mount Pleasant campus, and move freight from Mitchell International Airport to operations in Racine County.

The tech upgrades being built into the freeway were a key selling point when Wisconsin received a $160 million grant for the project from the U.S. Department of Transportation in June.

Oh wait, Foxconn kickbacks and free federal money were in play here. Got it.

The Walker Administration continues to try to run from their failures on road funding ahead of the November elections. But tactics such as hiding congestion data and the costs of new projects from the DOT’s budget request just makes them look even more unfit for the job, and it reiterates that we need new Dem leadership that’ll give honest assessments about what investments need to be made to have our infrastructure reach an acceptable level for the 2010s.