City of Madison
Proposed design for Madison bus rapid transit station
Kenneth Casper's concept for Madison's bus rapid transit stations won first place in a design competition run by the city.
Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway has pulled off a major victory with her bus rapid transit project. There’s no reason to mess it up over two stations and a few hundred feet.
It’s not just bus rapid transit that Rhodes-Conway has achieved. It’s rapid process she’s accomplished, as well. This will be among the most massive improvements in transit in city history and she got it through the city’s laborious process in less than a couple of years.
She has benefited recently from a friendly administration in Washington, but the key to her success was accomplished while Donald Trump was still in office. The mayor proposed, and successfully lobbied the city council, for a $40 annual city vehicle registration fee, sometimes called a wheel tax. That not only solved her 2020 budget woes (in a budget passed in November 2019 before the pandemic hit), but it provided the permanent local revenue stream needed to run the system.
The council also unanimously approved an initial route that teed up the go-ahead for planning and federal funding that should result in groundbreaking for the initial 15-mile route from East Towne to West Towne next year. As a guy who fought in vain for a streetcar system that would have been about one-fifth the length, I have to be impressed.
But here’s the thing. There will be about 30 stations along that 15-mile route and only two are controversial. Those two stations would be on upper State Street. The business improvement district there, representing about 500 downtown businesses, recently sent a letter to the mayor asking her to reconsider those two locations. According to a story in the Wisconsin State Journal, a subset of that group, calling itself No BRT on State Street, has offered an alternative plan that would put the stations on Gorham and Johnson streets instead.
City staff and the mayor have pushed back, saying that the council has already approved the initial route and that rejiggering it could push the project back by a year and even endanger federal funding. I’m skeptical of that. It sounds to me like city staff tossing up barriers to avoid doing something it just doesn’t want to do.
As is often the case with this administration, it’s not clear whether the mayor is running the bureaucracy or the bureaucracy is running the mayor, but I suspect it’s more the latter than the former. Over eight years as mayor I learned that Madison staff is highly competent, but that there are times when you just have to say, “Ya know what, folks? I appreciate your advice, but I got elected and you didn’t, so we’re doing it my way.”
If the mayor asked staff to make the system work without State Street stations they’d find a way to make it work.
The mayor should ask them to do just that because, overall, I think the business groups and longtime downtown Ald. Mike Verveer, who is on their side, have the stronger case. The stations would be 50 feet long and 10 feet wide and the platforms would be raised. They would, in fact, block views of some storefronts and, in general, just be out of keeping with the scale of what is a relatively narrow street. In addition, the buses themselves would be 60 feet long and run at frequent intervals. The whole package runs the risk of being pretty disruptive to a retail street. And it can’t make that much difference to a 15-mile, 30-station system to move two stations a few hundred feet.
Finally, given all the summer events on upper State, the businesses point out that the system would have to be rerouted some 70 times a year anyway, so an alternative route has to be in the plans even if the two State Street stations remain. Why not make the alternative stations the regular stations and evaluate them after a year or two of operation? If it turns out that the staff concerns were warranted, then consider moving them back to State Street.
State Street is the heart of the city. It needs to be treated with great care all the time, but especially now as it recovers from over a year of pandemic shutdown and a summer of protest and looting last year.
Downtown businesses and Verveer are being reasonable. They strongly support BRT, just not two of 30 station locations. Rhodes-Conway deserves credit for a historical achievement. There’s just no reason to insist on every detail.
