Federal Court: Wisconsin Uses Bogus Traffic Data to Justify Highways

This article was originally featured on streetsblog.net. By Angie Schmitt. State departments of transportation all over the country use specious traffic projections to justify hugely expensive road widening projects. That’s how you end up with the graph on the right — showing how DOTs continued to forecast traffic growth year after year, even as driving stagnated.

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Press Release: 1000 Friends Calls For Road Audit and Moratorium

Seeks Halt of All Highway Expansions Until Audit on Traffic Projections is Complete. 1000 Friends of Wisconsin today called for an immediate halt to all new highway widening projects until the state conducts an audit of the traffic projections used to justify those projects. The moratorium and audit request comes on the heels of a federal court decision last week that halted the widening of Highway 23 near Fond du Lac because of unjustified and likely erroneous traffic counts predicted for the highway.

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WisDOT ignores science, cherry picks numbers

In a recent testimony to the Joint Finance Commission of the Wisconsin Legislature, WisDOT Secretary Mark Gottlieb accused “certain groups” of cherry picking traffic numbers to show that VMT on the I94 corridor in Milwaukee has gone down over the last decade. It is likely that he was referring to 1000 Friends’ recent analysis of traffic counts across the state that show consistent declines in driving on almost every single major highway.

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State should budget more for local roads

Originally posted on Kenosha News – Our View. Potholes in the streets of Kenosha are a local problem, but they aren’t a unique local problem. Local roads all over the state are in bad shape, according to a study by the organization 1,000 Friends of Wisconsin.

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Wisconsin’s Local Road Crisis

Over 42,000 miles of local roads in the state need immediate repair based on data the Wisconsin DOT database. 14% of all local roads in the state are in pitiable condition – classified by the system as “failed, poor, or very poor”. Rural roads were in worse shape than urban roads, with 44% needing immediate repair, compared to 31 % for urban areas.

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Study: I-94 widening money could fix local streets

A large part of the $850 million state officials want to spend on widening Interstate 94 could instead go to many southeastern Wisconsin roads that are in urgent need of repair, according to a new study. An analysis of Wisconsin Department of Transportation data by a pair of transportation advocacy groups finds that about 2,500 miles of local roads throughout the region are in a “failed, very poor, or poor” condition. The analysis, released Thursday, concludes that one in three southeastern Wisconsin roads are in urgent need of surface repairs.

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