While an oversized speed hump on West Historic Mitchell Street has gotten the most attention lately, it’s the reckless driving in general in the neighborhood that has Nancy Bush concerned.
Bush, who has served as the street’s Business Improvement District executive director for over 18 years, has watched traffic drive down Mitchell Street thousands of times.
One thing she’s noticed? Vehicles driving down the street have only gotten faster, louder and created more stress.
“Speed, of course, is the greatest problem,” Bush said. “That does bring on accidents.”
Just Monday night, a car struck and killed a pedestrian on Mitchell at 11th Street.
Police say the driver of that car stayed on scene and is cooperating with investigators.
Last month, a speeding car crashed into two businesses, a nail salon and a hair salon, on Mitchell Street near South 10th Street.
Bush said both salons are currently out of business and the building is boarded up. Contractors had to remove everything from both buildings due to the extent of the damage.
In an effort to help pedestrians cross Mitchell Street and combat speeding, the Milwaukee Department of Public Works installed a raised crosswalk on Mitchell Street at South 10th Street.
The crosswalk heaved, causing it to rise higher than anticipated. The unusually high crosswalk drew complaints across social media, with some claiming it caused damage to their cars.
The city is now working on repairs.
While that particular crosswalk drew the ire of many, there are some who want to see more traffic calming measures near the Mitchell Street corridor. Others want more police enforcement.
Mitchell Street needs more traffic calming measures, some say
Bush said she likes the raised crosswalk but wants to see another traffic calming bump on Mitchell Street closer to South 13th Street. She thinks it could help slow traffic all down the corridor and not just where the hump is.
“One isn’t enough when you’re looking at 10, 12 blocks of speeding traffic,” Bush said. “As soon as cars went over it, they speed up again, including the motorcycles.”
Lisa Albright also watches cars slow down at the crosswalk outside her office window at the Gerald Ignace Indian Health Center, just for cars to speed up again after they clear it.
“If they want to slow down traffic and keep pedestrians safe, they need to do better than this,” Albright said.
Albright doesn’t think traffic calming and signs telling people to slow down will work. She thinks the city needs to set up speed traps and pass out more tickets to create a reputation that speeding isn’t accepted near Mitchell Street.
DPW said it targeted the South 10th Street and West Mitchell Street intersection as part of a pedestrian safety project, including to help students at St. Anthony School Milwaukee cross the street.
St. Anthony School President Rosana Mateo said they want a speed hump near their campus at South 9th and West Maple streets, one block south of Mitchell Street. She said it would help students cross the street in the morning and to walk to the gymnasium, which is in a separate building across the street.
“We want to make sure that we are having our students be safe when they’re crossing those streets,” Mateo said. “Sometimes people don’t drive safely around here.”
How does DPW decide where to place speed bumps?
The hump at South 10th Street and West Mitchell Street is a raised crosswalk, said Tiffany Shepherd, marketing and communications officer for DPW. They are one of several traffic calming measures the department installs around the city.
DPW takes crash data and resident requests into consideration when it’s placing raised crosswalks and speed humps on Milwaukee streets, especially when there’s an opportunity to implement traffic calming measures into a full redesign of a street.
When deciding how tall to make a hump, DPW looks at the speed it wants drivers to ride, pedestrian needs, the street’s design and the typical traffic patterns on that street, Shepherd said.
The latest effort to fix the crosswalk on South 10th Street began Friday, said Sarah McClanahan, DPW marketing and communications director. She said crews were saw-cutting onsite, which is the first step in the process of removing the raised crosswalk.
DPW closed the intersection Tuesday, as crews work to repour the curb, gutter and raised crosswalk. The intersection will reopen after Aug. 4, McClanahan said.
Alex Klaus is the education solutions reporter for the Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service and a corps member of Report for America, a national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues and communities. Report for America plays no role in editorial decisions in the NNS newsroom.
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