More news on the ever-increasing use of mass transit across the Country:

U.S. cities are racing to cope with ever-increasing demand on public transportation as gas prices remain at record levels. High gas prices in recent months have had a considerable impact on commuters using public transportation, statistics show.

Even regions that have traditionally resisted giving up cars and have limited access to mass transit are reporting a surge in public transportation use.

From trains and trolleys to subways and buses, the growth encompasses all modes of travel, according to the American Public Transportation Association, a Washington D.C.-based industry group. - CNN

While the nation’s top cities move forward on transit and respond to the needs of their citizens, here in Milwaukee County, the amount of work some of our political leaders are willing to commit to mass transit is limited to sending email letters to right wing radio talk show hosts.

It’s well past time for Milwaukee to move forward on this critical issue.

The Chicago Tribune had an interesting piece I missed last week about how the pressure for extending a commuter rail line from Kenosha to Milwaukee is building from employees and employers alike.

Time for Chicago-Milwaukee commuter line has come, employees, companies say

Chip Brewer, director of worldwide government relations for S.C. Johnson, has said the company cannot always draw top job candidates because Racine is not connected to Chicago or Milwaukee the way communities are in New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco or Boston. He said younger employees want mobility.

“When we recruit people, we would love them to want to live and work and raise families in Racine. And many employees and executives do that,” Brewer said. “Many times you have two wage earners, and for family reasons, or employment reasons, they choose to live elsewhere.” - Chicago Tribune

An excellent example of something I’ve been saying for years now: Younger educated professionals, like myself and my wife, take mass transit into account when considering where to move and raise their families.

In order to draw those people to Milwaukee and Southeastern Wisconsin, we need to be able to compete with cities like St. Louis, Seattle, Denver, and everywhere out East that are light years of ahead of us in terms of mass transit options.

Completing the Kenosha-Racine-Milwaukee commuter rail line would be a step in the right direction, and not just from the perspective of those in Milwaukee.

I had the opportunity to visit St. Louis this past weekend for my brothers wedding reception, and just like in recent trips to cities across the Country like Seattle and San Diego, I was impressed with the level of mass transit options the region offered.

St. Louis’s Metrolink is another great example of a mass transit system that is seeing a huge increase in it’s ridership numbers. It’s ridership numbers from April (the most recent month for which there is data) are the highest in recent history.

It’s bus ridership in April was up 12% and it’s commuter rail line ridership was up 13% in April. Over 2.3 million boardings took place on the commuter rail system in April alone.

I think it’s a safe bet to assume that the increased ridership St. Louis saw on the Metrolink will only increase as gas prices continued to rise through May and June.

Amtrak usage between Milwaukee and Chicago is up over 24% over a year ago.

Amtrak says its passenger train service between Milwaukee and Chicago continues to set ridership records.

For the first five months of the year, the seven daily Hiawatha Service round trips carried more than 281,000 passengers. Amtrak says that’s a 24 percent increase over last year. Chicago Tribune

I can hear the counter argument already… “Maybe Milwaukee’s use of fixed rail is up, but Milwaukee’s situation is different than the one here in …. Milwaukee”.

Imagine if we had a commuter rail line between the two cities like the proposed KRM route between Milwaukee and Chicago?

Can anyone else see the problem in this story about the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Transit Authority choosing not to hire the same consultant I wrote about last week? The one who got paid $30,000 to make the common sense recommendation that increasing routes and lowering rates would actually help Milwaukee County transit?

Other transit authority members contended that Rubin’s status as a rail transit critic, backed by the Libertarian-oriented Reason Foundation and the conservative Wisconsin Policy Research Institute, would give the authority added credibility among Republicans in the Legislature.

Any idea why the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Transit Authority doesn’t hire a “LIBERAL” highway critic who has ties to progressive transit think tanks to provide recommendations for its highway policies?

The real question is why the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Transit Authority pandering to “conservatives” at all with regard to shaping their policy towards mass transit in Wisconsin? Transit policy in this part of the state has been mired in partisan politics for the better part of two decades now, the last thing we need is a continuation of that policy that has yielded exactly nothing for the residents of Southeastern Wisconsin.

Another city is ramping up development of their commuter rail lines.

(Houston) City Council approved an agreement Wednesday with the Metropolitan Transit Authority, giving permission for the agency to build five light rail lines on Houston streets, but also pledging to make sure Metro does the job right. - Houston Chronical

Houston isn’t the most progressive city in the Country by any stretch of the imagination, and yet it’s leaders managed to identify and plan for the needs of it’s residents with regard to their increasing desire for mass transit options.

Philly follows the national trend of double digit increases in the number of riders on it’s mass transit systems:

Spurred largely by soaring fuel prices, ridership on commuter rail lines is up here and around the country.

On SEPTA Regional Rail, that’s 2.8 million more trips, or an 11 percent increase, over last fiscal year. And on the 14-mile PATCO High-Speed Line, average weekday ridership is 35,138, up fron nearly 33,000 a year ago.

Philadelphia Inquirer

The outdated infrastructure that we rely on provides a great opportunity for us to not only create jobs, but to truly rebuild America from the ground up:

The 70th Street bridge will remain closed to traffic for an undetermined time after a 3-foot hole developed due to the harsh winter and increased traffic in recent years because of work at Hart Park. The 74-year-old bridge has not been repaired since 1970.

The bridge in question, which I used often, hasn’t been repaired in nearly 40 years. That’s the majority of it’s lifetime.

Another day, another story about double digit increases in transit usage.

This one caught my eye because we just came from a week long trip to Seattle and I commented back then about impressive transit system the Seattle-Tacoma area not only had in place, but was expanding.

According to Sound Transit CEO Joni Earl, ridership has increased over last year by double digits in two of its major transportation services — ST Express Buses and Sounder Commuter Rail — during the first quarter of this year.

“We’re seeing tremendous demand,” said Earl during Tuesday’s noon Tacoma City Council study session. “The public appetite is quite high.” - Tacoma Daily Index

How about that. Both bus and commuter rail are seeing surges in ridership, which makes sense. Giving people choices is a critical step to gaining acceptance.

That’s in direct contrast to Milwaukee County’s policy over the last decade which has provided fewer transit choices for it’s residents through service cuts and timid transit policy.

That’s one of many reasons that the population of the Seattle-Tacoma is booming, businesses are relocating there, and those valued “young professionals” everyone wants to lure are raising their families there.

Metro areas across the Country are not only seeing massive increases in the number of people using buses, the growth in light, commuter, and fixed rail transit is exploding as well.

Soaring gas prices are pushing more Americans to take public transit, with streetcars, trolleys and other light rail experiencing a 10.3 percent increase in ridership for the first quarter of the year. Washington Post

On a national level, this an extremely encouraging trend. More people utilizing mass transit opportunities in their communities means relieved highway congestion, less pollution, decreased oil consumption, and increased job opportunities and increased economic development.

On a regional level, again, it’s disappointing that Milwaukee and all of Southeastern Wisconsin aren’t able to reap many of those same benefits that the rest of the major metropolitan areas in the United States are now realizing.

An interesting but not completely surprising follow up to yesterday’s post about Milwaukee not being able to meet the increase in demand for mass transit that $4.00+/gallon gasoline is creating.

In an interview this morning on the Jay Weber show, one of the right wing talk shows that commonly give him free air time to practice hitting soft balls, County Executive Scott Walker expressed his opinion that he doesn’t necessarily think increased ridership on Milwaukee bus routes is a good thing.

Walker says that if demand for mass transit in Milwaukee (people wanting to ride the bus) exceeds demand (seats on the bus), that would essentially be a bad thing.

As a resident of Milwaukee County, this is deeply troubling to me, and I’m sure others feel the same way as well. The top elected official in our County is publicly saying that he considers more transit riders than we currently have the capacity to serve would be a bad thing. If we only have 20,000 seats available, he reasons, demand for anything more than that is bad. Coming from Walker, however, this is par for the course.

Throughout his tenure as County Executive, he’s done everything in his power to cut existing transit options, and Milwaukee County has fallen from one of the best transit operations in the Country to one of the worst as a result.

Imagine if the CEO of Midwest Airlines were to claim that he didn’t want more people riding his airplanes. He only wanted to sell as many tickets as he had seats on his airplanes… customer demand be damned. Scott Walker and the anti-transit crowd in Wisconsin, who like to think of themselves as “pro-business” wouldn’t ask a company like Midwest Airlines to do something so ridiculous, would they?

Of course not. Because it’s called, among other things, progress. Investment. Long term planning. Foresight. And I don’t know of a business owner who wouldn’t want to have the “problem” of making additional capital investments to gain more customers and increase revenue.

That’s how businesses grow revenue. How ridiculous would it be for the Midwest Airlines CEO to say, “Well we’ve only got 10 planes, so we’re going to cap growth there despite demand from our customers…”? It’s harmful to Milwaukee and irresponsible to it’s residents.

And that’s exactly how our County Executive sounds now when he’s trying to rationalize his “no growth” policy towards mass transit in Milwaukee County.

Irresponsible.