FEDS SET DECEMBER DEADLINE FOR I-94 LAWSUIT

Special to the Readers of Milwaukeeworld.com

By Michael Horne

and the MilwaukeeWorld Hound Dog Team

The Federal Highway Administration [FHWA] has set a December 3rd, 2008 deadline for the filing of a "claim seeking judicial review of the Federal agency actions" authorizing the Wisconsin Department of Transportation [WisDOT] to proceed with its plans to widen I-94. The information was included in a Notice of Final Federal Agency Actions on the I-94 North-South Corridor Study in Wisconsin and Illinois .
The notice grants "licenses, permits and approvals" for the project, which has come under attack on many fronts, including those concerned with urban planning issues, transit advocates, environmental advocates, and neighborhood and business groups, particularly in the S. 27th Street corridor where the plan calls for eliminating a popular exit.
The notice includes a public comment form, for those willing to vent on the topic.
The green light for the unfunded $1.9 billion program comes on the heels of a May 23rd, 2008 release from the FHWA itself informing us that Americans traveled 11 billion fewer miles in March 2008 versus March 2007. The 4.3 per cent decline is the "sharpest drop in any month" since the beginning of the Traffic Volume Trends Report, published monthly since 1942. It is the first March drop since 1979 and is the continuation and acceleration of a trend that began in November, 2007.
"That Americans are driving less underscores the challenges facing the Highway Trust Fund and its reliance on the federal gasoline excise tax," said FHWA administrator Jim Ray.
That Wisconsin plans this absurd project just when the funding source is collapsing, and that the Doyle administration shows colossal ignorance of the urgency of Milwaukee's transportation crisis is all the more reason why somebody better get that suit filed by the December 3rd deadline.
Environmental attorney Dennis Grzezinski [Yale '75] talked to the Hound Dog Team this afternoon to see how his plans for a lawsuit are progressing. He said he will be meeting with his client next week and deciding what to do. He said he would not want to be understood as "threatening a lawsuit" at this time, but said a suit "is likely," and if it is to come about, "it will be filed long before December."