The Joint Committee on Finance just wrapped up on a presentation from WISDOT Secretary Mark Gottlieb on Transportation.
Points of interest: Gottlieb contends that eliminating complete streets will not eliminate bicycle projects on state roads – it will provide them “more flexibility”. He claims local communities have complained to him about being forced to investigate adding bicycle projects. According to Gottlieb, the cuts to transportation alternatives were justified by saying it is just not a priority now – what is the priority is the backbone routes of the state highway system. Co-Chair Nygren requested that Gottlieb present him with a list of bicycle revenue generation tools used by other states. Our own Representative Chris Taylor fired a few questions off at Gottlieb, mostly along the lines of the WISPIRG/Sierra Club materials on unneeded highway projects they published recently. Gottlieb countered most of her provocative lines of questioning by citing data used to meet WISDOT objectives, and suggesting that projects are scaled back to meet the minimum requirements outlined in their objectives. On a personal note, I was disappointed that Rep Taylor chose not to delve into the problems with the objectives themselves. Engineers are great at gathering data, and often weak at looking at the big picture (take it from a software engineer), so it makes little sense to attack the work of an engineering department on the data gathering.
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