Neighborhood Groups Analyze Street and Bus Accessibility Through ‘Walk Audits’

By Meredith Melland

This story was originally published by Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service, where you can find other stories reporting on fifteen city neighborhoods in Milwaukee. Visit milwaukeenns.org.

There is no sidewalk on the east side of Green Bay Avenue at Olive Street. There is also no crosswalk from the bus stop across the multi-lane street that leads to Webers Greenhouse.

For teens that commute to Webers to participate in internships and apprenticeships at Teens Grow Greens, that’s a danger.

“You just kind of have to send a prayer and hope you get across the other side,” said Breasia Hall, a junior in high school and second-year horticulture apprentice who works at Webers.

Teens and community members at Webers, 4215 N. Green Bay Ave., made up one of several groups in the Clarke Square, Metcalfe Park/Sherman Park, Burnham Park, Rufus King and Bay View neighborhoods that participated recently in “walk audits.” The audits, funded through a grant from AARP, were organized by the Congress for the New Urbanism Wisconsin chapter and Strong Towns Metro Milwaukee.

Both groups advocate for walkable neighborhoods with safe and accessible streets.

Armed with clipboards, visibility vests and umbrellas, small groups from Webers filled out worksheets as they looked for signage, bus stops and shelters, crosswalks and cracked pavement, and used a speed gun to track cars zooming down the street.

“I think a lot of people know (about speeding), but I didn’t really catch how, like, even the lines on the street aren’t really there anymore, how the tactile areas for wheelchairs and stuff like that is barely there anymore, that you can’t see the speed limit half the time,” Hall said.

Designing the audits

Joyce Tang Boyland is a board member of the Wisconsin chapter of Congress for the New Urbanism and a Strong Towns volunteer.

She said the primary goal of the audits is to build capacity for groups to engage in street design and transit planning, as well as share resident perspectives with elected officials and government workers.

“The idea is that we give people experience with doing this thing that they can do later on their own, and they can send it to the city or the county or use the information that they gather to send specific feedback to different entities,” Boyland said.

Boyland applied for a $2,500 microgrant from AARP with a plan for groups in at least three neighborhoods to conduct four to six walk audits and follow-up meetings that identified and acted on barriers to taking the bus.

“People see things on the street that otherwise might not get noticed,” she said.

In addition to Teens Grow Greens, Boyland also reached out to different community groups and organizations near congregate housing for older adults since the grant has a special emphasis on adults age 50 and older.

Resident groups conducted walk audits of the Fond du Lac Avenue, Center Street and 27th Street intersection with Metcalfe Park Community Bridges. The School Sisters of St. Francis looked at the 27th Street and Greenfield Avenue intersection and Clarke Square neighbors did another section of Greenfield Avenue near César E. Chávez Drive.

Residents of the Lincoln Court building audited the intersection of Howell and Lincoln avenues in Bay View.

Riding the bus

During the Metcalfe Park follow-up meeting at the Dr. Wesley Scott Senior apartments, a small group of residents boarded the PurpleLine at 27th and Wright streets using pre-loaded Milwaukee County Transit System bus cards.

On the bus ride north to Bayshore Mall and back, the group talked with the bus driver about the route, learned about transfers and bike racks, identified busy intersections and chatted about how the neighborhoods changed.

“They’re making it easier for people who ride a bike and ride a bus, definitely,” said Patrice Gransberry, a volunteer with Metcalfe Park Community Bridges who used to be a bus driver.

She said that busy traffic and cars trying to get through the lights make crossing the street at main intersections unsafe.

She also wants crosswalks to be more visible, especially at night.

“I think those crosswalks need to be lit up more with that yellow paint, not white paint,” Gransberry said.

Boyland said the ride helped familiarize residents with the bus system, which is cheaper and can be more convenient than the paratransit system, which requires 24-hour advanced notice.

“A lot of people know about paratransit and use paratransit who actually could still use the regular bus,” Boyland said.

Emma Lawrence, a resident of the senior apartments, said she doesn’t normally ride the bus.

“But that was a good ride,” she said. “I enjoyed it.”

Learning about other projects

All the walk audits and follow-up meetings have been very different, as has been the level of transit ridership, but one fun part has been sharing knowledge and resources between groups, Boyland said.

In Clarke Square, the follow-up meeting involved taking another walk on Mineral Street to learn about potential intersection accessibility changes to South 16th Street.

Before riding the bus, Metcalfe Park residents talked with Danya Littlefield, senior transportation planner with the city of Milwaukee Department of Public Works, about the 414 in Motion plan. The city is developing 414 in Motion as its first citywide transportation and mobility plan and is gathering input about priorities and big ideas for transportation.

The Webers Greenhouse group members learned how to contact their representatives and built wooden Bill’s bus benches, named after transit advocate Bill Sell, with the help of Strong Towns volunteers.

Each neighborhood will receive a couple of benches and decide which bus stops to place them at, Boyland said.

She said that addressing street and transit problems can take a long time, so the benches are a way to make visible progress.

“This is something that they can do if they wanted to sort of make an immediate impact,” Boyland said.

Her hope is that the project helps more people get and stay involved in efforts to make Milwaukee’s streets safer and more accessible.

“I definitely think doing this is like an eye opener that, like, oh, we deserve better streets for everyone,” Hall said.

For more information

Learn more about AARP’s walk audit toolkit by viewing the Free Publication: AARP Walk Audit Tool Kit

Meredith Melland is the neighborhoods reporter for the Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service and a corps member of Report for America, a national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues and communities. Report for America plays no role in editorial decisions in the NNS newsroom.