Milwaukee County hopes new application will yield federal money for rapid transit project

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Milwaukee County officials working on a proposed $45 million bus rapid-transit system say they have high hopes that a revised application for the project will secure them a federal grant later this year.

The county is looking to build a rapid-transit line along some of Milwaukee and Wauwatosa’s busiest east-west running corridors. Supporters of the project say it will connect major employers in downtown Milwaukee to their counterparts in places like the Milwaukee Regional Medical Center.

Current development plans would rely on a Federal Transit Administration Small Starts grant to pay for the majority of the project. An additional $9 million would come from the county as part of a required “local match.” The county applied for the grant last year, and received the FTA’s approval in September to begin preliminary work on the project.

But county leaders learned recently that the rapid-transit system won’t be receiving grant money this time around. Although disappointing, the news probably did not come as much of a surprise.

Before handing out a Small Starts grant, the FTA typically requires the completion of an environmental review, the selection of a preferred project route and significant progress on design and engineering work.

With those requirements in mind, Dan Boehm, managing director of the Milwaukee County Transit Service, told a group of County Board members this week that he is hopeful the county will receive a grant after submitting a revised application to the FTA this year. The revised application is due in September.

Boehm’s comments came on Tuesday as he was presenting the latest news on the rapid-transit project to the county’s Transportation, Public Works and Transit Committee.

Ever since FTA officials agreed to let the bus rapid-transit proposal enter the “project development” stage, they have been giving local officials reasons to be hopeful, said Brendan Conway, a spokesman for the Milwaukee County Transit System.

“As we work on fully gathering all of that (information) we believe our updated application has a very strong chance of approval,” Conway wrote in an email on Wednesday. He added that it usually takes most governments a couple of years to receive a Small Starts grant.

After securing that preliminary federal approval, the county brought on a team of consultants — including Los Angeles-based AECOM and Kansas City-based HNTB — for design and engineering work. Another firm, Minneapolis-based SRF, is performing an environmental assessment of the proposed project area.

Boehm said that once the needed design work is 90 percent finished, the county will be seeking further approvals from Wauwatosa and Milwaukee. The county also plans to hold two public informational meetings on the project in June.

Current design plans would have the bus rapid-transit system’s route start in downtown Milwaukee, go west through the city using Wisconsin Avenue and Bluemound Road, then turn north onto 95th Street toward the Milwaukee Regional Medical Center and come to an end at a park-and-ride lot off Swan Boulevard in Wauwatosa.

The system would help cut down on commute times by taking advantage of features such as dedicated lanes and raised platforms at bus stops.

County officials are working on the rapid-transit system amid worries that a new hole will soon be appearing in their transportation budget. Republicans in the state Assembly have put forward a proposal that, among many other things, would strike down Milwaukee County’s new $30-a-year wheel tax. The proposal would further prevent local governments from adopting wheel taxes that were not first approved in referendums.

The county enacted its wheel tax last year. Actually an annual local vehicle-registration fee, the tax was meant primarily to shore up the county’s 2017 transportation budget. Although most of the revenue generated by the new tax is meant to pay for transit operations, roughly $1.9 million is supposed to be used in both 2017 and 2018 for the bus-rapid transit project, said Steve Kreklow, Milwaukee County budget director.

Should the wheel tax eventually be blocked by the state, and should the county find it can’t fill the resulting $1.9 million hole in its budget, the FTA grant application could be rejected because the rapid-transit project would no longer have a local match.

At least one other option is open to the county, although it may be even less certain than an FTA grant.

Brian Dranzik, director of the county’s Department of Transportation, told County Board members they were also looking into possibly receiving money from the state. In this scenario, the state would deem the rapid-transit project to be a means of mitigating traffic during a planned expansion of Interstate 94 west of Milwaukee County’s downtown.

The future of that expansion project is still uncertain, though, added Dranzik. Gov. Scott Walker’s proposed 2017-19 transportation budget would not provide money for the I-94 expansion.