Skip to Content
Streetsblog New York City home
Log In
Climate Change

Earth Day Resolution: Stop Building Projects Like the Zoo Interchange

4:07 PM EDT on April 22, 2014

zoo
false

Leading up to Earth Day, the New York Times ran an editorial, "Time Is Running Out," lamenting the lack of urgency in the United States to prevent a very urgent problem: catastrophic climate change. Today, Brad Plumer at Vox explained why it may be too late to keep average temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels -- the threshold that climate scientists have been warning about.

There are many steps we'll have to take to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But one of them is most definitely this: America has to stop spending billions on projects like Wisconsin's Zoo Interchange and start getting serious about building places where people can get around by walking, biking, and taking transit.

The Zoo Interchange embodies America's broken transportation spending system, which former US DOT official Beth Osborne described on Atlantic Cities today as "an entitlement for state departments of transportation to allocate for their own priorities."

This single highway interchange, aimed at reducing delays for suburban car commuters in the nation's 30th largest city, costs more than total federal spending on walking and biking annually.

The Zoo Interchange carries 300,000 cars per day. It is "Wisconsin's oldest and busiest interchange," according to the state. A big part of Wisconsin DOT's justification for the Milwaukee interchange is "safety." According to WisDOT, there were an average of 2.5 collisions a day on the interchange between 2000 and 2005 and nine were fatal.

By comparison, according to the 2009 National Household Travel Survey, Americans make about 112 million walking trips daily. About 4,000 pedestrians are killed annually on American roads.

And yet, Wisconsin will spend more on this one sprawl-inducing highway project than the feds spend each year on all walking and biking projects combined.

Clearly, our priorities are out of whack -- way out of whack.

Total federal spending for biking and walking amounts to about $2.61 per capita. If the cost of the Zoo Interchange were divided by every man, woman, and child in the United States, the cost would be $5.39. It's important to note that state and local funds will pay for most of this project. Still, our sources tell us that Zoo Interchange planners hope to get 20 percent of the cost from the federal government, or $344 million.

Meanwhile, advocates fought tirelessly to protect $822 million in funding for biking and walking in the last federal transportation bill.

And here's the sad fact. The Zoo Interchange isn't all that special. It's a very expensive interchange, but it belongs to the same club as Louisville's $2.6 billion Ohio River Bridges project or Cleveland's $300 million Opportunity Corridor. Almost every region of the country has a road project that appears just as dubious.

We won't succeed in the fight against climate change if keep throwing billions of dollars down the sinkhole of car dependence and sprawl.

Stay in touch

Sign up for our free newsletter

More from Streetsblog New York City

The Explainer: What’s Next for Congestion Pricing?

Let's run through the major issues still looming over New York City's first-in-the-nation congestion toll.

December 4, 2023

Monday’s Headlines: Congestion Ahead Edition

Good news: We're not going to start our week with our typical ascent on our long-legged steed to criticize the Times for its flawed, car-centric coverage. Plus other news.

December 4, 2023

Elon Musk’s Cybertruck is the Perfect Killing Machine

The Cybertruck represents a lot of what's wrong with the U.S. transportation system — even as it purports to address those problems.

December 4, 2023

Highway Boondoggles 2023: Salt Lake Shenanigans

Plans for a major freeway expansion based on over-inflated traffic projections are a wrongheaded way to deal with the region’s rapid population growth.

December 3, 2023

Cycle of Rage: Mayor is Failing the Leadership Test on Congestion Pricing

Purely for political and self-serving purposes, Mayor Adams is attacking congestion pricing — and, in doing so, is undermining the implementation of a program that he has long claimed to be a "strong" supporter of.

December 1, 2023
See all posts