Milwaukee County reckless driving; traffic-calming demonstration activities

MILWAUKEE - County Executive David Crowley will join leaders from Greendale, Shorewood, South Milwaukee, Wauwatosa, and West Allis on Monday, April 14 to announce the deployment of a series of traffic-calming demonstration activities. 

Demonstration activities

What we know:

The demonstration activities launch throughout April and continue through May.

The demonstration activities will use temporary measures like cones, speed trailers, and near-miss cameras to test strategies for combatting reckless driving, calming traffic, and improving multimodal safety for pedestrians, bicyclists and bus riders.

According to a news release, the demonstration activities were informed by community feedback received at the Safe Streets Roadshow public engagement meetings MCDOT conducted in 2023 in all of Milwaukee County’s municipalities.

What they're saying:

"Reckless driving has reached crisis levels in our community. It will take all of us working together to tackle this important health, safety, and economic prosperity issue," said County Executive David Crowley. "With this series of deployments, residents in five of our municipalities will see some of the work that’s being done to make our roads safer for everyone."

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Funding

Dig deeper:

The projects are funded by a mix of local and federal dollars. Municipalities collaborated to contribute nearly $55,000 in funding to the program. 

This funding supplemented a nearly $220,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Safe Streets and Roads for All (SS4A) grant program. 

Activities for each municipality

What we know:

Traffic-calming demonstration activities for each municipality include:

• Village of Greendale:  Speed trailers and signage will be located on Loomis Road at both Horizon and S. 68th Street. The equipment monitors traffic counts, collects new speed data and calms traffic speeds.

Later this month, the equipment will move to S. 76th Street & Root River Parkway, enabling the Village to collect data for Parkview Road and the pedestrian crossing to the Community Center.

This is the Village of Greendale’s second series of demonstration activities. The first occurred in October 2024 with temporary speed bumps, speed trailers and additional signage on Northway at Basswood and Arrowwood.

• Village of Shorewood: In mid-April, the Village of Shorewood will install two temporary traffic circles at the intersections of Murray & Kensington and Murray & Beverly, along with temporary curb extensions at the intersections of Kensington & Larkin and Kensington & Bartlett. Additionally, there will be a temporary speed table at Morris & Pinedale. These locations have been identified as high-speed intersections and streets throughout the Shorewood community.
• City of South Milwaukee: The City of South Milwaukee is temporarily narrowing Chicago Avenue (Highway 32) at the intersection of Oak Street. The project team is using use quick-build materials to calm traffic and collect vehicle counts and speed data.

Project funding allowed the City of South Milwaukee to purchase enough traffic barrels, cones, and lighted signage to significantly improve visibility to this uncontrolled intersection and forewarn motorists of potential pedestrian crossings in a high-traffic area near a school. Two speed trailers will be used at this location to collect traffic data.

The speed trailers will later be placed at other City of South Milwaukee locations known for high speeds, high occurrences of crashes or other traffic safety issues.

• City of Wauwatosa: The City of Wauwatosa is conducting near-miss studies at two different locations:  Menomonee River Parkway & Swan Boulevard (April) and Wauwatosa Avenue & North Avenue (May).

Project funding has been used to purchase two new Miovision Near-Miss Detection camera systems. The funding will allow data collected to be analyzed and for the cameras to be redeployed across Wauwatosa as needed.

• City of West Allis:  West Allis is conducting a near-miss study with Miovision Near-Miss Detection cameras and equipment at the intersection of Lincoln & S. 60th Street. Project funding will allow the data collected to be analyzed.

Additionally, a temporary speed cushion will be placed at a segment of S. 59th Street between Mitchell and Lapham. Temporary speed humps will be deployed near S. 96th Street & Maple Court and S. 97th Street between Schlinger Street and Washington Street.