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Permalink Reply by Barry Niel Stuart on November 17, 2011 at 11:02am

When John Norquist was mayor in Milwaukee, we never had a bike/ped co-ordinator.  When Tom Barrett took over as mayor of Milwaukee, We not only got a bike/ped co-ordinator in Dave Schlabowske, but we got more progress in one year of Barrett than in 16 years of John Norquist.  We now have miles of bike lanes, bike racks on MCTS buses, and have test ridden the Hoan Bridge over the mouth of the Milwaukee River.  We're pushing to get a permanent route over the Hoan connecting Downtown directly with Bay View.  We hope to get a new bike/ped co-ordinator to take over from Dave and keep Milwaukee rolling in the right direction.  Our current mayor has managed to use his ability to get consensus to accomplish progress.  Too many times, John Norquist infuriated the very people who were to be called on to carry out his wishes.  Tom Barrett's management style encourages the people who carry out his programs to buy into those programs. 

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Permalink Reply by John Greenfield on November 17, 2011 at 11:29am

Barry,

Just got off the phone with Dave Schlabowske, with whom I organize the annual Frozen Snot Century ride. Dave is now serving as communications director for the Bike Federation of Wisconsin (BFW), after his stint as Milwaukee bike coordinator. Before that he was the BFW's Milwaukee program coordinator, striping lanes and installing parking racks as a consultant to the city for a year or two under Norquist.

While Dave says Norquist was a bike-friendly mayor, Norquist believed that an in-house bike coordinator was unnecessary because all city engineers should be considering bikes and pedestrians in every project anyway. However Dave believes it worked better to have a city employee who specialized in bike facilities to advocate that bikes be accommodated in city projects, and to be available as an info source for engineers.

For example, as a consultant, if Dave noticed that a road was being resurfaced or a bridge was being rebuilt, he would remind the project managers to re-stripe existing bike lanes or add bike-friendly decking to the bridge, and the engineers generally did what he asked. But after he became an employee he didn't have to worry as much about keeping track of these projects because the project managers would automatically approach him to check out their plans and make sure they were bike-friendly.

Thanks,

John Greenfield

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