•      Need to Prioritize Transit: The state should not be spending $1.9 billion on highways - including $200 million to add lanes to I-94 - when Wisconsin has not provided adequate state funding for existing transit systems and for widely desired planned expansions (like the KRM), and when the state requires local taxpayers to assume a vastly disproportionate share of the funding for transit. Transit is a vital resource to ensure equity for the large numbers of low income and minority residents and persons with disabilities who lack vehicles; to help reduce air pollution; to limit urban sprawl; and to improve urban development opportunities. The state needs to prioritize AND PAY FOR those transit improvements - and it should do that before it builds yet another expanded highway. WisDOT needs to change its focus and use transit expansion to try to reduce the need for bigger highways.

•      Environmental Justice, Air Quality, Health Effects: Numerous studies show that traffic-generated particulates and pollution have adverse affects on health, particularly among children. A recent study shows that students attending schools within 500 meters of a freeway can suffer permanent lung damage. In Milwaukee, there are at least ten schools near the North-South freeway, many of which have more than 50% students of color and/or low income students attending them.  There has been no meaningful analysis of how the multi-year construction itself, or increased travel generated by highway expansion, will affect the health of those students and other neighborhood residents, and no plan to prevent harm.

•      Environmental Effects: In addition to air pollution, the plan does not deal adequately with climate change; the loss of wetlands; the stormwater and related runoff and potential flooding and/or water pollution that paving more land for a bigger highway could cause; or the potential harm to many threatened and endangered species.

•      Need to Prevent Loss of Milwaukee Development: The state should not construct a new, multi-million dollar interchange at Drexel Ave., especially when WisDOT admits in the DEIS that constructing the interchange could hurt development and redevelopment efforts in the city of Milwaukee while encouraging development on unused, green, suburban land.

•      Lack of Plan to Fund Big Highways: The state needs to decide how this project will be funded before it commits to multi-billion dollar expenditures. State residents have a right to know how this will affect their taxes and transportation fees and the state’s financial outlook. They also have a right to know how a project that will absorb so many resources will affect other needed projects; I am concerned that funding shortfalls could divert even more money to big highway projects and lead to further decreases in state money for transit, and for local governments to maintain local roads.