By Christina Luick
Ald. Nik Kovac hops off his bike. (Photo by Christina Luick)
City of Milwaukee officials kick started their week by biking to work on a beautiful Monday morning for Wisconsin Bike Week. Mayor Tom Barrett, along with Ald. Nik Kovac and members of Bublr Bikes and Bike Fed, parked their bikes at Red Arrow Park and spoke about plans and goals for bicycles in Milwaukee. Barrett recalled how in 2001 the city only had bike lanes on Prospect and Farwell. Now, there are over 112 miles of bike lanes in Milwaukee. “We’ve come a long way, baby,” said Barrett. He mentioned how proud he was of the friendship and association that Milwaukee has with Bublr Bikes.
Mayor Tom Barrett laughs as he puts back his Bublr Bike during Bike Week. (Photo by Christina Luick)
There are 58 bikeshare stations and Barrett said there are more come. “They sort of breed like rabbits,” said Barrett. “We are getting more and more and more Bublr bikes and we like that.” There is a plan to add more bike lanes on streetcar routes. Also, Barrett announced that the city is beginning to develop a bike boulevard in Riverwest as part of the Transportation Alternatives program grant. It will help slow motor vehicle traffic to make it safer for bicyclists. “They are designed to strengthen neighborhoods and so the bicycle boulevards are a critical aspect of making our neighborhoods even stronger,” said Barrett.
“It really is exciting to see how far we’ve come. And it’s also exciting to say that we’re going to continue to have even more expansion.” Last year Barrett committed to the Path to Platinum initiative which advocates for better and safer bicycling in the city. Barrett said that the 2017 budget gave the Department of Public Works the authority reorganize the transportation operations section and create a unit to help support initiatives of the new bicycle and pedestrian coordinator the City of Milwaukee recently hired. The last thing Barrett announced was that the Department of Public Works is nearing a completion on a draft policy to improve conditions of walking, biking and using transit to benefit all users of transportation.
Tonieh Welland, Black Girls Do Bike co-founder, addresses the need for more bike lanes in the community. (Photo by Christina Luick)
“So as you can see, we continue this commitment and it’s happening because the people in the city of Milwaukee want us to have that,” said Barrett. “They want us to have multimodal forms of transportation and the best way to do that is to work together neighborhood by neighborhood by neighborhood. And we’re really proud of our team and everything that’s happening that’s allowing this to become a reality.”
Ald. Kovac said that there will be a bike lane expansion on the Locust and North Ave. bridges.
“I say this every year, I think of this event, that making a city great for bicycling doesn’t just help bicyclists, it helps pedestrians and it even helps cars,” said Kovac. “Now, it is true that if you just make everything a freeway cars tend to get to places faster but they don’t necessarily get places safer.”
Tonieh Welland is a member of Bublr Bikes, Path to Platinum and one of the founders of Black Girls Do Bike. She talked about how much progress Path to Platinum is making in Milwaukee.
Welland said that she spoke to people who did not feel safe bicycling. Path to Platinum created a survey that received almost 1,000 responses, and from the data they gathered, 80 percent of respondents said that they wanted separated lanes from cars.
“Besides the people that are here on bikes, we’ve got to get people that are not just here, downtown,” said Welland about people telling their city officials what they want. “We’ve got to get people, and have a call of action in all 15 of our aldermanic districts in the city of Milwaukee.”
For more information about Wisconsin Bike Week and its events, go to wisconsinbikefed.org. The last day of Bike Week is June 11.