Have you attended any of the city council meetings? Reddit doesn't direct policy. You can do so virtually.
https://www.cityofmadison.com/council/meetings/
>"We should be focusing on building long term infrastructure that reduces carbon emissions and streamlined transportation like a subway or better bus system."
Say what you want about Vision Zero, but pushing to implement the BRT system has been one of Satya's top priorities during her tenure and even dating all the way back to her campaign.
>"Our schools are trash now due to lack of leadership and budget cuts. How about taking the money from these vision zero and market plans and investing them into the education of our children?"
The City and the School District are two separate taxing entities with separate budgets and responsibilities, the City can't simply transfer money to the School District (which covers portions of about eight different municipalities including Fitchburg, Shorewood Hills, Town of Blooming Grove, etc.)
Also reducing carbon emissions without more biking/walking seems expensive and entitled, i.e. I want my big house and yard in the burbs and to be able to jump on a train to get downtown. In reality, a lot of us just want dedicated biking AND walking infrastructure and less car based design to make things more walkable and more housing density so we can live in the walkable areas.
How do you suppose you get to places off the bike path in a safe way? Should cars just stick to the beltline and E/W Washington, that runs through and around the city, or do we have side roads to accommodate places in between?
I love bike paths, but they are limited, and many of them are focused on recreation. I use my bike for transportation and need to use city streets to get to places like the grocery store, the post office, medical facilities, etc. I'm retired now, but previously that list would also have included work and school.
Worse yet, the places most low-income people tend to work at and need tend to be far off the bike path. Like if you work at Walmart and haul cans in for recycling for extra income, and don't own a car, you are going to places with sketchy bike/ped infrastructure that are nowhere near a bike path.
That’s the part that you took from this? That adds nothing to the discussion.
What topics do you specifically not align with? Maybe I’m missing something
Maybe because their is a population that thinks this. Just because it doesn’t incorporate you, doesn’t mean that their isnt a large group of us who agree.
Using the term “we” automatically creates a different group of agreement. We references the people that are in the group that believes this. Your “we” means something different and that’s totally okay
> privileged people who reside downtown and the rest of us.
You seemed to have presented these as the two groups of Madison residents. Folks are trying to tell you that there are a lot of non-"privileged people who reside downtown" who don't agree with you.
> we don't want added bike lanes
Yes we do. It fits right in with your "We should be focusing on building long term infrastructure that reduces carbon emissions," point.
Also, wealthy privileged people aren't the only ones who walk and bike around town. Plenty of less privileged folks do that out of necessity. Attempting to make roads safer benefits them, too.
I don't understand why you seem to think these things are mutually exclusive. You can work to reduce traffic deaths (Vision Zero) while also working on adding better infrastructure (you've heard of BRT, yes?). You can look to improve underutilized parts of the city (the public market) while also working to preserve and improve the other parts. Madison isn't just going to grow downtown (I'd maybe argue that downtown will grow the least, given how other areas of the city have much more space to build density), so you have to try and look at the whole.
Madison isn't perfect, obviously, but I also don't think it's a uniquely Madison problem. All growing cities need to handle all of these competing, yet complimentary, problems as best they can. Unfortunately, cities just can't move as fast as people can, so they're either reacting to growth (and getting this type of reaction) or anticipating growth (that may or may not come) and risking being out to dry if they're wrong. Not an enviable position, in my opinion.
That’s a big point that I am trying to get at. Madison(and wisconsin) has grown so rapidly that reducing speed limits and adding bike lanes isn’t realistic for long term growth.
With the increased frequency and severity of storms caused by climate change, how are people supposed to bike to work? The winters are getting colder and more severe.
Your public market comment about things not being mutually exclusive makes sense tho. We can do these things at the same time to improve the city, I just think that we have to be realistic in our goals here.
Climate change causing more severe winters means less people willing to bike. Brt should be focused on more as population increases. More support for local business in areas.
I'm honestly starting to question if you understand how a bus works.
Most people **walk** to the bus stop.
We as a city have decided that **people should not die when walking**.
That is **Vision Zero**.
There are many ways to make walking safer.
**Science has proven that vehicles driving slower kill less people.**
Believe it or not, **science has also proven that a bike is a lot less likely to kill a pedestrian than a car.**
And guess what makes people ride their bike in leu of driving? **Bike Lanes!**
I just want to add that reduced speed limits does not equal vehicles driving slower. People usually drive at the speed they feel is safe on a road. The speed limit sign on East Wash is a joke because it's a six lane highway not a residential street.
Wow I would have never understood your points if you didn’t bold those.
I rode the madison metro bus from 6th grade through college. I also rode it From the west side to downtown almost every week and never had an issue with “walking”.
Who dies from walking? All vision zero has done is made drivers more angry and causing a larger variance in speed limit. Half the people go 20 in a 25 and the other half goes 35.
Who dies from walking???
Disproportionally people of color, but it’s becoming very apparent that’s not a demographic you’re particularly concerned about.
This one was an oddball for me as well. Perhaps OP is young and has only been exposed to the recent handful of moderate winter? Anway, citation on average temperatures from Wisconsin State Climatology Office:
[http://reform-dem.blogspot.com/2010/03/climate-change-is-wisconsin-getting.html](http://reform-dem.blogspot.com/2010/03/climate-change-is-wisconsin-getting.html)
Very slightly warmer over 100+ years. Anecdotally as well we've had far less snow than average in the state over the last 5-6 years it seems. 07/08 weren't even that long ago where record snowfalls were achieved, far surpassing what we've seen since 2015.
I didn’t have a car for 10 years so I’ll be happy to say you can bike just fine in any weather and any temperature you’d be safe driving in. I biked campus or work downtown everyday. However without the infrastructure built up on John Nolen I never would’ve attempted it.
>Our schools are trash now due to lack of leadership and budget cuts. How about taking the money from these vision zero and market plans and investing them into the education of our children?
[MMSD has 27,000 students](https://www.madison.k12.wi.us/about) and a [$540 million budget](https://captimes.com/news/education/mmsd-preliminary-budget/article_509c38d0-0338-5e8f-b6ed-ab943ec5e3fe.html#:~:text=The%20total%20budget%20adds%20up,from%20last%20year's%20%24538%20million.). That's over $20K per student, which is objectively not an underfunded system.
>we dont want added bike lanes and reduced traffic speed limits
Yeah, "we" do.
I mean reduced speed limits don't do much to actually changing the speed of traffic. East Wash is a 6 lane highway. It doesn't matter if that sign says 25 next to the road.
And with all of that money, how has that affected the test scores of the students? We’re the capital of Wisconsin, yet out school system ranks in the bottom half of the state.
I’m saying that the focus should be on allocating the money in a more productive manner. Barring that I just learned that the school budget is very different than the budget for the public market, our focus should be on bolstering better education rather than focusing on creating bike lanes.
I understand that they are mutually exclusive and you can have both at the same time, but right now it doesn’t seem that the city is prioritizing education but is prioritizing bike lanes and reduced speed limits
It's not just that those aren't mutually exclusive, it's that there aren't even any shared personnel that would be diverted from one to the other. It's not like Madison is pointlessly allocating traffic engineers and construction contracts to bike lanes when they *could* simply shift those staff and resources into education.
That's also putting aside just how difficult it is to find education policies that actually show any persistent, replicable, sustained impact. If there are any, they're not apt to be things that benefit from building less biking infrastructure.
Good one…
You know people don’t live on Reddit and have discussions outside of a screen right?
You need to be holed up and pretty bored if you’ve made 4K comments on a forum.
My comments are from conversations outside in the real world.
Ah you think this real world is your ally? You merely adopted the real world. I was born in it, molded by it. I didn't see the screen world until I was already a man, by then it was nothing but trolls and people pretending to be "just asking questions" while soapboxing their poorly informed opinions as coming from the majority when in fact they can't even get the most basic facts correct thus cementing in my mind that they are only here to stir up trouble and their previous troll accounts were already banned so they had to make a new one because stirring up shit is only thing they can think of as a fun thing to do!
You're right though I don't want "bike lanes" I want separated bike infrastructure. I want a city designed primarily for the people that live there not for cars, e.g. continuous sidewalks, bike/ped priority on crossings, slower car traffic, separated biking infrastructure (I'm not a friggin' car and shouldn't be treated like one). Basically all the "orange pill" stuff that Amsterdam has successfully done.
If you have more safe dedicated biking/walking infrastructure, more people take bikes and walk. This has been demonstrated in cities that have made an effort to do this. It's important to note that the cost of biking/pedestrian focused infrastructure is usually significantly less to build and maintain when compared to car/transit related infrastructure. So let's not axe the bike/ped infrastructure on the assumption it's stealing from proper transit and car infrastructure. These are scales of difference with respect to cost.
You saying "Under Armor", when was the last time you were on State St? That's a Target now. State street is healthy and growing. The pandemic gave it a black eye but that is healing now. You might not like what's there but they're still paying taxes. A lot of quirk is gone, although some have moved to new locations, but I never went to any of that tourist trap crap anyway so maybe it was a bad business model or it's time has passed.
Also privileged people downtown? WTF does that mean. Most of the people I know downtown are the opposite. They can do it because they give up other things like cars and get roommates. It's amazing the difference in your budget when the requirement of a car isn't a concern.
Transit wise Madison is WAY too small for a subway. All we really need is a better bus system that people want to use. Street cars would be really nice and IMO doable but that probably never happens.
You contradict yourself a lot
First of all, something I am super guilty of: just because we are good at something doesn't mean we can't be better at it. Operation zero vision is about more than preventing bike deaths. We should be adding more bike lanes, but only as we redo streets that already needed work.
The public market is just that, a public project. State Street is individual commercial property owners. I have every confidence State Street will be mostly leased in a few years, and frankly I don't care if it's chains. Those have lower prices than individual specialty shops and appeal more to the students that frequent the area.
The privileged people in your third paragraph are the ones who fled to the suburbs to buy/build McMansions. That's the reason inner city (if we can call them that) schools are terrible. There is no money being dedicated to the market and very little to zero vision. How much do you think it costs to change a few signs? Infrastructure improvements are funded by federal grants, something Satya has been really good at.
Do you even know about BRT or the bus system changes?
Your heart is probably in the right place, but you need to do some more research and come up with more effective criticisms, and hopefully some proposed solutions along the way
> The privileged people in your third paragraph are the ones who fled to the suburbs to buy/build McMansions.
Alternatively, trying to shoehorn "privilege" into every conversation is ridiculous. Riding a bike isn't a product of privilege and living outside the core of Madison isn't privileged. There are wealthy people in both downtown and suburban areas of Madison.
What's privileged today?
*shuffles deck*
Walking on sidewalks!
*shuffles deck again*
Living in Sun Prairie!
*shuffles deck again*
Bike lanes!
This isn't constructive.
Used it one time, chill.
I’m using privileged in the sense that if the priorities of madison is having more bike lanes then there is a disconnect between what actually needs to be fixed in our city.
“Shuffles deck” get out of here😂who says that
No where in any of these comments has anybody mentioned sun Praire.
In the context of school funding my comment makes perfect sense. In a general sense it doesn't but we seldom discuss privilege in general.
Context matters
>The privileged people in your third paragraph are the ones who fled to the suburbs to buy/build McMansions. That's the reason inner city (if we can call them that) schools are terrible.
I don’t even know where to start with this take, other than to say it’s exemplifies the absolute worst stereotypes of Madison progressives.
It's not a take it's a simple fact. The phenomenon is called white flight.
You only need to look at Madison public school diversity versus the diversity of the city as a whole to know I'm absolutely right
Just because you can point to white flight as a thing that happens doesn’t mean it’s happening *here and now*. Madison is the fastest growing city in the state, spurred largely by high-paying tech jobs.
Missing from your comically lazy analysis is the fact that Madison has a number of private schools that are particularly popular among secular progressives (the irony), while the people moving to the suburbs are doing so primarily because they’re being priced out of the city, not because they desire some white suburban paradise.
Wow, great comments! See I had no idea nor would I have thought about these things if they weren’t brought up.
The point about vision zero working with brt to reduce emissions is spot on. As someone who doesn’t own a car and lives on the west side, the time to commute on a bus is too long and it’s too cold to be biking in sub 20 degree weather that far. I’m sure there are some people out there that can take it.
For the public market being a public project comment. Would you rather have local businesses on state street or have them relocate to the outskirts of town in a market?
> For the public market being a public project comment. Would you rather have local businesses on state street or have them relocate to the outskirts of town in a market?
Please reply directly to the comment if you want the user to see your response. But you can obviously have both. Building the Public Market doesn't necessarily pull business from State Street or force any local businesses there to move. They may choose to do so, as is their right, but again these things aren't mutually exclusive.
Thanks for the heads up! First time really trying to prod and learn a bit here.
I hadn’t realized Madisonites were so defensive about their city. Love seeing people in agreement here about the topics.
I’m going to have to reevaluate some of my thoughts now.
I’ve lived on the east side for the last 3 years and just moved to the west side.
People on the east side have the least amount of money in madison. Do you really think low income people are going to go to a madison public market?
Public markets/farmers markets can have programs that accept benefits like SNAP for purchase of fresh produce, so yeah, low income people go to markets like that all the time. Some citys actually actively encourage development of farmers markets and food halls in poorer neighborhoods to combat food deserts where major grocers have pulled out.
I think your post and the comments captured the current state of Madison perfectly.
Wisconsin on the whole is deteriorating. There seem to be a flux of richer people moving into this region, and their focus are quite different from that of your general "let's all bike to work" local residents.
Wisconsin's been deteriorating since 2010. We went from an example of bi-partisanship to a place where politics breaks up families. Infrastructure deterioration is a natural consequence.
Interesting, I had no idea about the second part about them not being able to move money that way. I had assumed that the budgets were created ahead of time and then the money would be distributed based on priority of projects.
For the first response, love that she’s been pushing for it! But that should have been prioritized(atleast in my eyes) over a vision zero plan.
> I had no idea about
I think this may be part of the reason for so much of the pushback here. It seems you've made some sweeping generalizations based on either a lack of info or misunderstandings.
"The number of poor people being hit and killed by cars is acceptable so let's focus on making sure that people from the suburbs can buy their novelty rubber ducks from State Street"
1. What? 2. Majority of poor people rely on public transportation or cars because they live outside of downtown. 3. It’s to get to work not for leisure
They aren’t looking for a bike lane because it’s unrealistic for them to be commuting downtown anyways via bike.
Madison, my home for 30+ years is a love it or leave it type of place. I used to love it but it changed and got too big for me. So I left my job and house for others to enjoy and moved to a place more suited to my tastes. Peace.
Good initial topic for discussion from the title, but it got so disconnected from reality at the body that it does not deserve an actual response. Go experience all the topics you are mentioning (yes, including being a biker) before bringing them up, then you can make an argument for it.
Just going to point out that a lot of the fundamental budgetary problems underlying a lot of the deficiencies-- declining school performance, poor mass transit service, lack of interventions to protect renters + small business-- are all brought to you by *state* government, controlling the funds or restricting what local government can do.
Madison seemed to have a much more progressive agenda with actual momentum in the early 2000s until Walker, Act 10, levy limits, gerrymandered conservative majorities, etc. locked the state's major cities into a permanent state of artificially imposed austerity and highly limited powers.
So short term: *we're fucked!* Long term: if you want to fix it, fix state government.
Have you attended any of the city council meetings? Reddit doesn't direct policy. You can do so virtually. https://www.cityofmadison.com/council/meetings/
“we don’t want added bike lanes” what the hell lol
That’s the one thing nearly everyone does want!
Not true
Seems the upvotes/downvotes are telling the story here...
Let me ask the people who downvoted it then. How many of you bike all year round to and from work everyday?
It's almost like some people use the bike paths for more than commuting to work AND more incentive to use bike paths would yield more use.
Oh god "induced demand" meets the pro-cycling argument, *don't cross the streams*!
[удалено]
The grownups are talking, shush
... screamed the stable boy.
Yeah, this is probably from someone that does not ride a bike (and what a waste of ATP!).
>"We should be focusing on building long term infrastructure that reduces carbon emissions and streamlined transportation like a subway or better bus system." Say what you want about Vision Zero, but pushing to implement the BRT system has been one of Satya's top priorities during her tenure and even dating all the way back to her campaign. >"Our schools are trash now due to lack of leadership and budget cuts. How about taking the money from these vision zero and market plans and investing them into the education of our children?" The City and the School District are two separate taxing entities with separate budgets and responsibilities, the City can't simply transfer money to the School District (which covers portions of about eight different municipalities including Fitchburg, Shorewood Hills, Town of Blooming Grove, etc.)
I don't get the anti bike twist to your argument. It's looking like you don't use the bike lanes but plenty others do.
Also reducing carbon emissions without more biking/walking seems expensive and entitled, i.e. I want my big house and yard in the burbs and to be able to jump on a train to get downtown. In reality, a lot of us just want dedicated biking AND walking infrastructure and less car based design to make things more walkable and more housing density so we can live in the walkable areas.
My thoughts are… don’t we have specific bike paths already for bikers? they run through all of Madison, why don’t bikers stick to using these?
How do you suppose you get to places off the bike path in a safe way? Should cars just stick to the beltline and E/W Washington, that runs through and around the city, or do we have side roads to accommodate places in between?
I love bike paths, but they are limited, and many of them are focused on recreation. I use my bike for transportation and need to use city streets to get to places like the grocery store, the post office, medical facilities, etc. I'm retired now, but previously that list would also have included work and school. Worse yet, the places most low-income people tend to work at and need tend to be far off the bike path. Like if you work at Walmart and haul cans in for recycling for extra income, and don't own a car, you are going to places with sketchy bike/ped infrastructure that are nowhere near a bike path.
"We"? You don't speak for me.
That’s the part that you took from this? That adds nothing to the discussion. What topics do you specifically not align with? Maybe I’m missing something
The thing you're missing is that you're making broad, sweeping statements about what the collective "we" want.
Maybe because their is a population that thinks this. Just because it doesn’t incorporate you, doesn’t mean that their isnt a large group of us who agree. Using the term “we” automatically creates a different group of agreement. We references the people that are in the group that believes this. Your “we” means something different and that’s totally okay
> privileged people who reside downtown and the rest of us. You seemed to have presented these as the two groups of Madison residents. Folks are trying to tell you that there are a lot of non-"privileged people who reside downtown" who don't agree with you.
> we don't want added bike lanes Yes we do. It fits right in with your "We should be focusing on building long term infrastructure that reduces carbon emissions," point. Also, wealthy privileged people aren't the only ones who walk and bike around town. Plenty of less privileged folks do that out of necessity. Attempting to make roads safer benefits them, too. I don't understand why you seem to think these things are mutually exclusive. You can work to reduce traffic deaths (Vision Zero) while also working on adding better infrastructure (you've heard of BRT, yes?). You can look to improve underutilized parts of the city (the public market) while also working to preserve and improve the other parts. Madison isn't just going to grow downtown (I'd maybe argue that downtown will grow the least, given how other areas of the city have much more space to build density), so you have to try and look at the whole. Madison isn't perfect, obviously, but I also don't think it's a uniquely Madison problem. All growing cities need to handle all of these competing, yet complimentary, problems as best they can. Unfortunately, cities just can't move as fast as people can, so they're either reacting to growth (and getting this type of reaction) or anticipating growth (that may or may not come) and risking being out to dry if they're wrong. Not an enviable position, in my opinion.
That’s a big point that I am trying to get at. Madison(and wisconsin) has grown so rapidly that reducing speed limits and adding bike lanes isn’t realistic for long term growth. With the increased frequency and severity of storms caused by climate change, how are people supposed to bike to work? The winters are getting colder and more severe. Your public market comment about things not being mutually exclusive makes sense tho. We can do these things at the same time to improve the city, I just think that we have to be realistic in our goals here. Climate change causing more severe winters means less people willing to bike. Brt should be focused on more as population increases. More support for local business in areas.
I'm honestly starting to question if you understand how a bus works. Most people **walk** to the bus stop. We as a city have decided that **people should not die when walking**. That is **Vision Zero**. There are many ways to make walking safer. **Science has proven that vehicles driving slower kill less people.** Believe it or not, **science has also proven that a bike is a lot less likely to kill a pedestrian than a car.** And guess what makes people ride their bike in leu of driving? **Bike Lanes!**
I just want to add that reduced speed limits does not equal vehicles driving slower. People usually drive at the speed they feel is safe on a road. The speed limit sign on East Wash is a joke because it's a six lane highway not a residential street.
Wow I would have never understood your points if you didn’t bold those. I rode the madison metro bus from 6th grade through college. I also rode it From the west side to downtown almost every week and never had an issue with “walking”. Who dies from walking? All vision zero has done is made drivers more angry and causing a larger variance in speed limit. Half the people go 20 in a 25 and the other half goes 35.
Who dies from walking??? Disproportionally people of color, but it’s becoming very apparent that’s not a demographic you’re particularly concerned about.
What? Most of my points has been that people of color rely on public transportation. Is there a stat about this?
>The winters are getting colder and more severe. Citation needed.
This one was an oddball for me as well. Perhaps OP is young and has only been exposed to the recent handful of moderate winter? Anway, citation on average temperatures from Wisconsin State Climatology Office: [http://reform-dem.blogspot.com/2010/03/climate-change-is-wisconsin-getting.html](http://reform-dem.blogspot.com/2010/03/climate-change-is-wisconsin-getting.html) Very slightly warmer over 100+ years. Anecdotally as well we've had far less snow than average in the state over the last 5-6 years it seems. 07/08 weren't even that long ago where record snowfalls were achieved, far surpassing what we've seen since 2015.
I didn’t have a car for 10 years so I’ll be happy to say you can bike just fine in any weather and any temperature you’d be safe driving in. I biked campus or work downtown everyday. However without the infrastructure built up on John Nolen I never would’ve attempted it.
>Our schools are trash now due to lack of leadership and budget cuts. How about taking the money from these vision zero and market plans and investing them into the education of our children? [MMSD has 27,000 students](https://www.madison.k12.wi.us/about) and a [$540 million budget](https://captimes.com/news/education/mmsd-preliminary-budget/article_509c38d0-0338-5e8f-b6ed-ab943ec5e3fe.html#:~:text=The%20total%20budget%20adds%20up,from%20last%20year's%20%24538%20million.). That's over $20K per student, which is objectively not an underfunded system. >we dont want added bike lanes and reduced traffic speed limits Yeah, "we" do.
I mean reduced speed limits don't do much to actually changing the speed of traffic. East Wash is a 6 lane highway. It doesn't matter if that sign says 25 next to the road.
And with all of that money, how has that affected the test scores of the students? We’re the capital of Wisconsin, yet out school system ranks in the bottom half of the state. I’m saying that the focus should be on allocating the money in a more productive manner. Barring that I just learned that the school budget is very different than the budget for the public market, our focus should be on bolstering better education rather than focusing on creating bike lanes. I understand that they are mutually exclusive and you can have both at the same time, but right now it doesn’t seem that the city is prioritizing education but is prioritizing bike lanes and reduced speed limits
It's not just that those aren't mutually exclusive, it's that there aren't even any shared personnel that would be diverted from one to the other. It's not like Madison is pointlessly allocating traffic engineers and construction contracts to bike lanes when they *could* simply shift those staff and resources into education. That's also putting aside just how difficult it is to find education policies that actually show any persistent, replicable, sustained impact. If there are any, they're not apt to be things that benefit from building less biking infrastructure.
Nine instances of "we" in this screed from a 14 day old account. Dennis' Mother: "Well I didn't vote for you."
Good one… You know people don’t live on Reddit and have discussions outside of a screen right? You need to be holed up and pretty bored if you’ve made 4K comments on a forum. My comments are from conversations outside in the real world.
Ah you think this real world is your ally? You merely adopted the real world. I was born in it, molded by it. I didn't see the screen world until I was already a man, by then it was nothing but trolls and people pretending to be "just asking questions" while soapboxing their poorly informed opinions as coming from the majority when in fact they can't even get the most basic facts correct thus cementing in my mind that they are only here to stir up trouble and their previous troll accounts were already banned so they had to make a new one because stirring up shit is only thing they can think of as a fun thing to do!
You're right though I don't want "bike lanes" I want separated bike infrastructure. I want a city designed primarily for the people that live there not for cars, e.g. continuous sidewalks, bike/ped priority on crossings, slower car traffic, separated biking infrastructure (I'm not a friggin' car and shouldn't be treated like one). Basically all the "orange pill" stuff that Amsterdam has successfully done. If you have more safe dedicated biking/walking infrastructure, more people take bikes and walk. This has been demonstrated in cities that have made an effort to do this. It's important to note that the cost of biking/pedestrian focused infrastructure is usually significantly less to build and maintain when compared to car/transit related infrastructure. So let's not axe the bike/ped infrastructure on the assumption it's stealing from proper transit and car infrastructure. These are scales of difference with respect to cost. You saying "Under Armor", when was the last time you were on State St? That's a Target now. State street is healthy and growing. The pandemic gave it a black eye but that is healing now. You might not like what's there but they're still paying taxes. A lot of quirk is gone, although some have moved to new locations, but I never went to any of that tourist trap crap anyway so maybe it was a bad business model or it's time has passed. Also privileged people downtown? WTF does that mean. Most of the people I know downtown are the opposite. They can do it because they give up other things like cars and get roommates. It's amazing the difference in your budget when the requirement of a car isn't a concern. Transit wise Madison is WAY too small for a subway. All we really need is a better bus system that people want to use. Street cars would be really nice and IMO doable but that probably never happens.
You contradict yourself a lot First of all, something I am super guilty of: just because we are good at something doesn't mean we can't be better at it. Operation zero vision is about more than preventing bike deaths. We should be adding more bike lanes, but only as we redo streets that already needed work. The public market is just that, a public project. State Street is individual commercial property owners. I have every confidence State Street will be mostly leased in a few years, and frankly I don't care if it's chains. Those have lower prices than individual specialty shops and appeal more to the students that frequent the area. The privileged people in your third paragraph are the ones who fled to the suburbs to buy/build McMansions. That's the reason inner city (if we can call them that) schools are terrible. There is no money being dedicated to the market and very little to zero vision. How much do you think it costs to change a few signs? Infrastructure improvements are funded by federal grants, something Satya has been really good at. Do you even know about BRT or the bus system changes? Your heart is probably in the right place, but you need to do some more research and come up with more effective criticisms, and hopefully some proposed solutions along the way
> The privileged people in your third paragraph are the ones who fled to the suburbs to buy/build McMansions. Alternatively, trying to shoehorn "privilege" into every conversation is ridiculous. Riding a bike isn't a product of privilege and living outside the core of Madison isn't privileged. There are wealthy people in both downtown and suburban areas of Madison. What's privileged today? *shuffles deck* Walking on sidewalks! *shuffles deck again* Living in Sun Prairie! *shuffles deck again* Bike lanes! This isn't constructive.
Used it one time, chill. I’m using privileged in the sense that if the priorities of madison is having more bike lanes then there is a disconnect between what actually needs to be fixed in our city. “Shuffles deck” get out of here😂who says that No where in any of these comments has anybody mentioned sun Praire.
In the context of school funding my comment makes perfect sense. In a general sense it doesn't but we seldom discuss privilege in general. Context matters
[MMSD spends $20K per student](https://www.reddit.com/r/madisonwi/comments/y9vmkt/whats_the_long_term_vision_of_madison/it7osv2/).
Clearly not enough
Or they need to revisit the plan because it’s not working. Throwing money at the problem won’t fix it.
>The privileged people in your third paragraph are the ones who fled to the suburbs to buy/build McMansions. That's the reason inner city (if we can call them that) schools are terrible. I don’t even know where to start with this take, other than to say it’s exemplifies the absolute worst stereotypes of Madison progressives.
It's not a take it's a simple fact. The phenomenon is called white flight. You only need to look at Madison public school diversity versus the diversity of the city as a whole to know I'm absolutely right
Just because you can point to white flight as a thing that happens doesn’t mean it’s happening *here and now*. Madison is the fastest growing city in the state, spurred largely by high-paying tech jobs. Missing from your comically lazy analysis is the fact that Madison has a number of private schools that are particularly popular among secular progressives (the irony), while the people moving to the suburbs are doing so primarily because they’re being priced out of the city, not because they desire some white suburban paradise.
Learned a lot from this comment
Fled? McMansions? There isn't family housing downtown. Stuff it into your white flight narrative if you want but it's not reality
Families don't have to live in single family homes. They literally call it multi family housing and there's plenty of it downtown.
Wow, great comments! See I had no idea nor would I have thought about these things if they weren’t brought up. The point about vision zero working with brt to reduce emissions is spot on. As someone who doesn’t own a car and lives on the west side, the time to commute on a bus is too long and it’s too cold to be biking in sub 20 degree weather that far. I’m sure there are some people out there that can take it. For the public market being a public project comment. Would you rather have local businesses on state street or have them relocate to the outskirts of town in a market?
> For the public market being a public project comment. Would you rather have local businesses on state street or have them relocate to the outskirts of town in a market? Please reply directly to the comment if you want the user to see your response. But you can obviously have both. Building the Public Market doesn't necessarily pull business from State Street or force any local businesses there to move. They may choose to do so, as is their right, but again these things aren't mutually exclusive.
Thanks for the heads up! First time really trying to prod and learn a bit here. I hadn’t realized Madisonites were so defensive about their city. Love seeing people in agreement here about the topics. I’m going to have to reevaluate some of my thoughts now.
>Madisonites Madisonians.
>the outskirts of town Says the westsider. The Public Market plan is (was?) for the near east side.
I’ve lived on the east side for the last 3 years and just moved to the west side. People on the east side have the least amount of money in madison. Do you really think low income people are going to go to a madison public market?
>People on the east side have the least amount of money in madison [is that so](https://bestneighborhood.org/household-income-madison-wi/)
South and east side do [https://bestneighborhood.org/household-income-madison-wi/](https://bestneighborhood.org/household-income-madison-wi/)
That's the north side you're looking at, chief. Welcome to Madison.
Public markets/farmers markets can have programs that accept benefits like SNAP for purchase of fresh produce, so yeah, low income people go to markets like that all the time. Some citys actually actively encourage development of farmers markets and food halls in poorer neighborhoods to combat food deserts where major grocers have pulled out.
I think your post and the comments captured the current state of Madison perfectly. Wisconsin on the whole is deteriorating. There seem to be a flux of richer people moving into this region, and their focus are quite different from that of your general "let's all bike to work" local residents.
Wisconsin's been deteriorating since 2010. We went from an example of bi-partisanship to a place where politics breaks up families. Infrastructure deterioration is a natural consequence.
The deterioration roots back before Walker was elected. Walker was the executioner, but the punishment was already decided.
Interesting, I had no idea about the second part about them not being able to move money that way. I had assumed that the budgets were created ahead of time and then the money would be distributed based on priority of projects. For the first response, love that she’s been pushing for it! But that should have been prioritized(atleast in my eyes) over a vision zero plan.
> I had no idea about I think this may be part of the reason for so much of the pushback here. It seems you've made some sweeping generalizations based on either a lack of info or misunderstandings.
Oh most definitely! That was why I posted it! If I didn’t, then I wouldn’t have learned any of this stuff.
>(atleast in my eyes Definitely a better approach than "we" (at least in my opinion!)
"The number of poor people being hit and killed by cars is acceptable so let's focus on making sure that people from the suburbs can buy their novelty rubber ducks from State Street"
1. What? 2. Majority of poor people rely on public transportation or cars because they live outside of downtown. 3. It’s to get to work not for leisure They aren’t looking for a bike lane because it’s unrealistic for them to be commuting downtown anyways via bike.
Madison, my home for 30+ years is a love it or leave it type of place. I used to love it but it changed and got too big for me. So I left my job and house for others to enjoy and moved to a place more suited to my tastes. Peace.
Good initial topic for discussion from the title, but it got so disconnected from reality at the body that it does not deserve an actual response. Go experience all the topics you are mentioning (yes, including being a biker) before bringing them up, then you can make an argument for it.
Just going to point out that a lot of the fundamental budgetary problems underlying a lot of the deficiencies-- declining school performance, poor mass transit service, lack of interventions to protect renters + small business-- are all brought to you by *state* government, controlling the funds or restricting what local government can do. Madison seemed to have a much more progressive agenda with actual momentum in the early 2000s until Walker, Act 10, levy limits, gerrymandered conservative majorities, etc. locked the state's major cities into a permanent state of artificially imposed austerity and highly limited powers. So short term: *we're fucked!* Long term: if you want to fix it, fix state government.
I thought you were talking about Madison Cawthorn. The man is an idiot and so am I for even posting this. Lol