Freeway Fighters:Pushing Back Against Freeway Expansions

so welcome to on the park bench a public square conversation brought to you by the congress for the new urbanism on the park bench presents interactive conversations with thought leaders in new urbanism and allied industries providing an opportunity for the audience to engage in real time the webinar series is a platform for cnu members to engage debate and collaborate on pressing issues of the day today we're going to talk about freeway fighters pushing back against freeway expansions with dorothy wiley mark noatarsky dennis grozinski and kim mitchell and interviewer myself rob studeville share your thoughts on hashtag on the park bench www.tinyurl.com otpb feedback and register for the coming webinar which is taking place tuesday august sec second as always at 12 noon with author m nolan gray who will discuss his book arbitrary lines how zoning broke the american city and how to fix it urban designer and code expert mary madden will be the interviewer go to cnu.org resources on the park bench for more information and to register like the webinar last week this on the park bench is based on the freeway fighters coalition which brings together more than 70 campaigns from around the us where citizens are fighting freeway expansions or looking to eliminate or cap over existing in city freeways often replacing them with something better like a boulevard or a street grid seeing you helped to found the coalition this past spring you can go to freeway fighters freeway hyphen fighters.org to find out more this week we're going to hear from folks and campaigns in shreveport louisiana southern indiana and milwaukee joining us today again are dorothy wiley and she is president of allendale strong a group in the allendale neighborhood of shreveport that is opposing the proposed interstate 49 that is planned to the heart of their neighborhood mark noatarsky is a retired business strategist current member of cnu and an advocate for climate mitigation and protecting people's land homes and farms he's based in jasper indiana and dennis krasinski is an attorney in milwaukee focusing on public interest law and environmental justice transportation issues have long been part of his practice he's legal chair of the wisconsin chapter of the sierra club and kim mitchell is a planner and architect in shreveport i'm rob steudeville editor of cnu's public square first the panelists are going to present followed by a discussion among the panel and then q a from the audience so please use the q a function of zoom to ask your questions as they occur to you and now i am going to pass this along to dorothy good morning everyone it's good to be here to share today what's going on uh in shreveport with the i-49 inner city connector um today we're going to site first slide is an area view of allendale and shreveport it's 30 blocks 50 new homes were built and two friendship houses this is where i live after hurricane katrina pushed me and my family here in 2005. before interstate 20 the population was 20 000 and now in 2022 it is 5 000 next before 2002 allendale was dilapidated full of drugs and the number one neighborhood for crime miss rosie who is a 50-year plus resident said if you lived in allendale you were considered less than human and that was the manner in which one was treated after 2006 50 homes were built from people all across the country for hurricane katrina evacuees and first-time homebuyers in shreveport next in the early 1980s this zombie freeway was put to rest now it has been resurrected by our mpo who proposed four routes for three and a half miles of the i-49 intercity connector to run over our neighborhood including churches businesses and recreational areas here's a core group of allendale residents that came together after the zombie freeway so that we can improve our knowledge about what these cut through freeways to our neighborhood we are a learning and doing community for alternatives to inner city uh inner city freeways we are for smart investing our position has always been separating local traffic from through traffic and we would do that by building a business boulevard for local traffic and using the existing loop and renaming that loop i-49 next the cost let okay here are some outcomes that we have achieved and are still seeking uh featured on our magazine in shreveport the forum this is miss rosie who shared her story along with other residents about support alternate plans of the i-49 inner city connector and we've also had a highways to boulevard charrette that was done in shreveport and we've also joined a statewide uh coalition called four corners and those five cities that are represented include shreveport monroe lafayette baton rouge and new orleans and we meet every month for mutual support and influence state and local urban transportation policies practices reform we are also part of a nationwide coalition freeway fighters that is convened by the congress for new urbanism we've been meeting for 10 years we've had a march and rally on the courthouse steps we now have a cooperative agreement with the city of shreveport and with uh shreveport public assembly and recreation to save swepco park we've also started a corner store co-op next with the food initiative seed grant which is also part of our national support network next you can find more out about allendale strong on our loopit 49 page we also have our friends of allendale strong facebook page which we currently have over 5 000 followers next we also have a website allendellstrong.org we have podcast series and our first annual report for 2021 is available on our website as well in april of 2021 we requested in elkhart for their travel demand modeling technical files that were used to justify any cog highway plans and after nine months of delay with excuses and attempts to oppose unreasonable requirements in el cog finally decided to provide us with that link and our smart mobility exposed flaws and inaccuracies upon which our louisiana decision makers have long relied on to create a 30 billion dollar backlog of unfunded highway maintenance and a new mega project next so during september of last year alan del strong and community renewal international they co-hosted a book tour for a visit and a presentation by chuck marone who is the author and founder of strong towns and in his book chapter eight you got to read it confessions of a recovering engineer is about allendale strong's efforts and chuck's analysis of nl cox i-49 inner city connector misinformation campaign we are thankful for this network and other networks who are supporting us and have given us that support and for the work that is still going on we are very humble and we thank you that we have benefited from it thank you thank you dorothy sorry about that let me i think i'm all set now uh good afternoon everyone my name is uh mark noetarski and like like rob said i'm from jasper indiana which is a southern uh southern area uh of indiana and i'm not gonna say that we have a unique situation here but it is different than a lot of uh freeway expansion or freeway fighter projects that you've seen that are are through cities because we're a very rural area we're very uh um uh farm oriented uh lots of forest area here so um that's just a little bit of background uh the the project that we are fighting that the coalition against the mid-states corridor is fighting is is called the mid-states corridor uh what i'd like to do is uh give you a little bit of uh what the project is about and how the process took place uh how we uh formed the coalition a little bit about our opposition efforts and then uh where we're at today with their their release of the tier one study and what our next steps are that we're trying to do so uh the mid states corridor uh project is a proposed highway to connect i-64 which is down here on the map uh up to i-69 here and what it will do is bypass the town berg jasper and lugodi uh as as primary uh routes there and the interesting thing about this is over since 1980 there have been five other studies that have taken place with proposed routes or bypasses around the towns and every single one of them have concluded not to go forward because of either economic or environmental reasons or both so what's happened is the latest effort uh after it failed a few of the uh uh wealthy business owners that are down in this area along with their political allies um worked on a process and let me go forward we call it the flawed process but what it is is back in 2017 the general assembly and the governor of uh of indiana signed a the indiana senate bill 128 and what this did was allow formation of an rda to be able to raise public and private funds for a tiered study and what it also did by by doing that is there was no general public uh input that would be part of this process so the the photo that you see there is governor holcomb signing uh the senate bill along with senator mesmer who happens to be a business owner in in jasper and at the time representative braun mike braun who is a large business owner in jasper he was a representative and now is a u.s senator along with the business leaders advocating for the project so the gentleman for example standing right behind governor holcomb as as hank menke of ofs and he's kind of the primary driver behind this process so so a little bit uh about what happened in terms of a timeline in 2018 you know once the bill was signed in 2017 2018 the rda was appointed uh which allowed them to go out and raise 7.5 million in funds uh from the private sector and the public sector public sector being the county government and the various city governments uh that allowed uh you know that allowed them to raise the money for the funds um and then they came back in 2020 since they started the study in 2020 they came and gave various public presentations and when these public presentations were held the public thought they would have the opportunity to give input and it really wasn't they it was a public presentation just to tell the public what is going on here and they tried to give us a survey to say we're studying five routes please tell us which one you prefer and they did not allow us to put any no build uh you know you know input into it so a lot of people that attended and we had hundreds of people attended just either didn't fill them out or put on no you know they wrote in themselves no build so at that same time that's when our grassroots group the coalition against the mid-states corridor formed and what has happened since then we started out with just a small group of citizens really and within a short time maybe about a month after forming we got hooked up with a couple of key organizations the hoosier environmental council and the indiana forest alliance and these are these are big groups here in indiana that protect our environment and protect our our forests and like i said earlier uh this proposed route would go through parts of the hoosier national forest and it would create a lot of environmental issues so once they came on board we started gaining a lot of power the syria club of indiana came on board the indiana carson conservancy and and other organizations and that really helped us from the standpoint of they had representation at the state house and up in indianapolis and they were able to focus on meetings with ndot study groups uh different uh legislators unfortunately uh they would always get relegated to you know the junior people and not really the people that are in charge of mdot and and places like that um so we continued our uh our fight uh from from 2020 to 2022 here uh just a little bit of what we have done uh we've held two courthouse rallies uh very successful rallies uh uh we've had solicit solicited petitions we had over uh eight thousand uh now jasper's a town of six thousand uh or if i'm sorry fourteen thousand our our county is forty two thousand and we have solicited over eight thousand uh uh signatures and petition against it uh we've held four town hall meetings in strategic locations that would be affected by this uh route uh and we've developed a website and a facebook page i'll tell a little bit more about that here in a second so where we're at today is the study group uh and ndot announced the uh the results of the tier one study with a recommendation of the preferred route being route p which you see is the one in red on the map uh again that that includes a bypass around jasper huntingberg and loogootee they've held two comment sessions where we were able to uh give the the two-minute uh uh you know type of talk about why we oppose of this uh and then written comments were all due by june 14th uh and the next step is that they will take in all of those comments and supposedly announce their final eis decision in early 2020 uh the one thing we did um was we really focused uh a lot of effort on the written comments uh with that period we had during the town hall meetings we had several people that said hey we need we need help with written comments so we set up two workshops to do written comments and we shared tips on writing comments and we actually had a committee of about eight of us that developed uh several different letters covering uh 10 different topic areas and those turned out to be very successful i know for a fact that uh hundreds and hundreds of letters were uh were sent in with comments our next steps uh even though they've announced the uh you know preferred route and stuff and we put in our comments we're not stopping uh we're developing a postcard uh campaign to send to local commissioners and the council and and the political groups uh we're looking at supporting candidates in the next election that are opposed to uh the highway and we're looking into an ad campaign to really expose those that are in office or running for office that's that support uh the efforts um also you know we we want to stop the efforts for any tier two uh funding that takes place so we're trying to set our plan our strategy for that and we're going to continue to engage with the media then we've had a great media presence and support and we want to continue that engagement uh because it really opens up the visibility there so and then finally um a unique situation is is we really want to seek a support from a highway engineer or planner that could help us with you know identifying we tried to come up with alternatives uh and everything and talking with other freeway fighter organizations it seems like they have been able to engage with planners and engineers and stuff and we just we don't have that so that's what we're in the process of looking for right now and that's about all i have we have the uh like i said we have the mid-states corridor facebook page which is not very active we don't have a someone that's just constantly working on that but we have a very active facebook page on start the mid states corridor project thank you thanks mark um stop sharing i can share dennis's presentation good afternoon i'll be presenting some information on the history of pushing back against freeway expansion in milwaukee next slide please as happened in many cities around the country when the interstate highways came to milwaukee they disproportionately destroyed and divided black and latinx neighborhoods removed thousands of homes and businesses encouraged urban sprawl and hollowed out the city in recent decades wisconsin has devoted multiple billions of dollars for rebuilding and expanding the interstate highways and other major highways in and around milwaukee in the same period transit funding and services have declined next slide please there are some reasons for hope milwaukee was actually able to prevent the construction of several freeways that had been planned through the city back in the last century and actually around the the millennium around 2000 milwaukee managed to take down one freeway spur uh which has been redeveloped to great success uh uh in the in the last 20 years more recently in 2012 the black health coalition of wisconsin and milwaukee inner city congregations allied for hope challenged the one and a half billion dollar interchange project the zoo interchange project west of milwaukee their their lawsuit uh the settlement of that lawsuit resulted in about 14 million dollars of funding for bus routes that ended up connecting milwaukee's north side african-american neighborhoods with jobs in several suburbs in waukesha county to the west more recently in 2016 spending a billion dollars to expand three and a half miles of i-94 between that western interchange and an interchange in downtown milwaukee um was approved that approval was challenged by micah by the naacp and the sierra club in federal court when it came time in 2017 uh to defend that decision in court no one one slide back um governor walker instead of presenting information to defend the decision uh he asked the federal agencies to uh withdraw and vacate the decision great victory for the clients no need for a court decision forward one slide please there we are the coalition that opposed the i-94 expansion back in the lead-up to the approval and in 2016 and 2017 has continued in existence and actually has grown that project that quote unquote died several years ago was revived by our new governor in 2020 beginning of 2021 the coalition wrote secretary butter usdot about our their concerns that wisdot was going to use its old outdated 2016 environmental impact statement and sort of rubber stamp it as it decided what to do in the current years shortly after that letter went to washington dc we had about an hour and a half zoom session between coalition members and the acting director of the federal highway administration about a week after that wisdot announced that it would prepare an updated eis the first major victory of the current era the the current project the coalition has been able to engage transportation experts to assist in preparing and presenting an alternative we call it fix at six a plan that would rebuild the highway without adding lanes or expanding the highways footprint and would instead invest a significant amount of the funds in bus rapid transit lines to provide other ways of traveling east and west in the area next slide please here's a westy ot design of the stadium interchange at the middle of that three and a half mile corridor it's where the brewers stadium sits um the interstate runs east west uh highway 175 relatively short freeway stubs to the south sort of the to the left and top corner of the picture and to the right and down towards the towards the north um that interchange would gobble up about 40 at least 40 maybe 45 acres of city for more dead concrete and asphalt next slide please the fix at 6 report again proposing to rebuild without adding travel lanes without dramatically enlarging the footprint bringing those freeway spurs to the north and south down into boulevards which is what the city and the county of milwaukee both prefer and spending again some of the money constructing three rapid transit lines and someday when we're much older given our current world eventually an east-west commuter rail line next slide please there are additional reasons for hope currently uh actually fairly recently wisdot has begun considering a six-lane alternative to the eight-lane mega project that it has wanted since about 2012. uh the last go-around it had rejected a six-lane approach is failing to satisfy the project's purpose and need we'll see what they do moving forward but that door to a six lane is at least open more recently just a few months ago with d.o.t agreed to fund a study of the feasibility of converting the north freeway spur at that stadium interchange into a boulevard as the city and county have long requested and as if by a miracle shortly thereafter the milwaukee brewers baseball scheme asked for a similar approach to be looked at for the south freeway spur which is right there adjacent to their stadium about the same time with d.o.t in its most recent newsletter on the project announced that it was considering a diverging diamond interchange which we've been urging for years as an alternative to the monstrous triple decker i don't know what you call it uh that that i showed you the the design of the the downside at the moment is that the suggested diverging diamond that they would like to put there is almost as large in scale as their original interchange design so a door to a better interchange has been opened and moving forward we're going to need to keep pushing next slide please why has the coalition had some success and has some hope for the future one it's a really broad coalition there's a diversity of interests but a united position on the goals coalition includes civil rights minority organizations environmental faith-based health neighborhood organizations land use organizations and transit advocates you know they all come from different perspectives but the the city they would like to see the transportation system they would like to see is all the same they're all united in supporting fixed six rebuild everyone agrees it needs to be rebuilt but no more lanes not a significantly larger footprint what we need is more money for more transit services a broad range of activities different groups and people bring their different skills there's community organizing advocacy education media events social media administrative complaints have been filed objections to our metropolitan planning organization recertification largely focused on on environmental justice on title vi of the civil rights act uh complaints under title vi administrative civil rights complaints have been filed against wisdot which found all sorts of problems with their approach to the civil rights requirements and then year after year year after year and now it's you know quarterly or so filing technical and legal comments to wisdot as the project develops petitioning our elected officials local county statewide and federal and seeking assistance from federal agencies all of this in a very long history of raising and pursuing a whole range of civil rights environmental environmental justice and technical challenges the faulty agency decision making with that i thank you and we'll move on to the panel thank you all very much i really appreciate it um and so i'm going to start with a a general question um see we we heard from your uh you know your campaigns which have been going on uh for uh um quite a quite a long time in some cases um cnu has been uh doing its freeways without futures since uh 2007 um you know new urbanist uh efforts have also been uh going on for longer than that um but um it always seemed like those who were building the freeways seem to have the the momentum the upper hand uh for the last six or seven decades do you all feel that this is changing at all slowly uh we've really in in uh allendale strong we have uh really run up against the conventional wisdom of a broken process and there's just so much momentum that it has dorothy mentioned the we're challenging the technical uh engineering and economic justification and as we do that and learn more about it we you know our challenge is how do we communicate that to decision makers decision makers have been relying on this 50 or 60 or 70 years of modeling that is was always wrong and uh and now it's become cultural form it's really a difficult process uh for change yeah i i agree with uh with kim what he says there but um and it is difficult but i do think uh that they're the the more awareness that has been getting out there um and you know through the media through through everything and really around the past issues because of the practices that have been used uh and more and more of that seems to be exposed now and i think that's helping change it's slow change but i think it's it's starting to help i mean more more people are are pushing back and questioning why are we doing this and want real answers and also i'm sorry i i just like to add because here in allendale we are a learning doing community and because we have learned about what these cut through freeways do the harm that they bring i believe that more people are listening now more so than just saying i'll go go along with the big elite people they're learning along with us what these freeways are doing whether they live in that neighborhood or not and i think that's a big thing a lot of times we do follow our political leaders or our business rep but again if you learn what they do then i think more people uh will adapt to uh maybe they're right this shouldn't be done and they'll know that you know what it's it is about us and not without us i tend to agree my my view is that 20 years ago opposing highway expansions was not simply an uphill battle but was trying to climb a vertical cliff almost impossible and i think it's still a very uphill struggle against powerful forces against large money against entities that have an interest in continuing to build but for a number of reasons the the climb isn't as steep now it is possible to make headway part of it is uh newer generations of engineers who've learned from some of the experience some of it's the experience of places that have taken down freeways and have found wonderful developments redevelopments occur and have found that people are still able to get around without expanded highways here in milwaukee i've dealt now with four directors of our regional planning organization our mpo and each of them has been better than the previous one you know each of them now they're much younger than i am and i think it's both they've gotten younger and i've gotten older but they've gotten better and better and there's a greater understanding of the need and role for public transit i think there's a greater willingness there and in the planning industry the planners are much better than the engineers um and then the other reason for hope is that at least currently the federal administration is much more favorable to transit is much more favorable to looking at things other than massive expansion of highways particularly in urban areas and much more attentive to the civil rights and environmental justice implications of expanding highways particularly in urban areas where minorities are usually concentrated in in our country so there's hope and uh dennis you mentioned some uh some things that were like sort of positive alternative cnu is always uh focused on uh not just you know in opposition to in city highways although there is plenty of reason for that but also what could be there as an alternative and i wanted to uh to ask you all about um how do you kind of balance being opposed to something with support for something other than a freeway a positive vision for the future you know it was it was interesting and i've talked to dennis about this that as we formed our learning community in allendale one of the people we reached out to was john norquist who was the mayor of milwaukee who really led the effort to block one and tear one down and he told us don't just be against you must be for something for an alternative and that led us to to really the research to see well a business boulevard is what we need we need to slow traffic down we want to create wealth and we've got a loop and so that became a real focus for us and congress for new urbanism was really you know you'd already had the uh the freeways without futures and the highways to boulevards movement and so that was a a big part of our early learning was you know looking at those other cities and yet there's one an important thing we've discovered in allendale that i really think the nation needs to embrace a little more is that the planning for freeways does as much harm as the building of them and allendale and the freeway fighters when they organized all the dots on the map you begin to see there are more places like shreveport where the threat has caused the population loss that dorothy shared with you and the disinvestment and that's a much easier thing to heal than having to tear down bull and it seems a better place to start because the message is stop expanding freeways let's heal those areas because we can get more for our money that way so allendale strong has focused a lot on the acts of healing and as well as just the uh you know the resistance or the alternative to a freeway rob i think from my perspective that's an interesting question and you you look at uh you look at our area and again being rural area uh and people you know we've had uh you know the city this the town of uh jasper has done some amazing things some investments and and is really thriving and same thing with huntingberg and you're doing all this great infrastructure within towns and stuff that are attracting people here and everything and then you know what we have said with the with the coalition is um you know we want we want we're all behind what we call smart economic growth sustainable economic growth and what happens because we've we've cited study after study that shows when a highway is put in around and bypasses mid mid and small sized towns the type of harm it does to the local businesses to the small businesses and then the additional expense that uh they you know that the cities and and the counties have to pick up once once a highway is is done continued maintenance and all all the other extra police uh that type of thing so um yeah you know it's it's been we're sitting there saying there are alternatives there there are we have we have shared with them that there are existing roads and routes that can you can make improvements on and be just as effective right now the the study with the mid states corridor by putting in a more than a billion dollar 54-mile highway is going to save five minutes of travel time from jasper to indianapolis and that's what their purpose and need is focused on is travel time saved um so we're sitting there and the other side of it is we point out the environmental issues that are gonna are gonna happen i mean uh everyone looks at our area and says hey we got this great manufacturing base and we do for for a small rural community people ignore the agribusiness and the agribusiness here is down in southern indiana is the second largest agribusiness in the state of indiana and this highway will take away what is it uh like 1800 acres of farmland so you know so we continue to focus on hey there are there are better ways and less costly ways and less destructive ways to get the end result that everyone is looking for and would be satisfied that's how we try to stay positive on it and i just look just like to add mark what you're saying uh a positive just like kim say a business boulevard you know what you got the motor vehicles they're not excluded from anything then you think about the bike lanes the walkways the communal uh green space so everyone is included so it's just not only for the vehicles but it could be a friendly community where everyone is uh getting something out of that business boulevard um i'm going to ask a question from the q a and probably go back to some questions that we can uh that are on that list but um uh somebody is writing from uh provo aaron from provo utah and we're fighting a proposed new freeway interchange and road widening project from i-15 into the center of the city the road will be widened from two to five lanes and take all the homes from some from some side of the street and flood provo with even more cars etc all the bad things and what advice would you offer those that are fighting urban road widening which is essentially the same as freeways we call it something different is there you know do you see this as part of of the same trend and uh or uh would they use some of the same uh techniques uh that you're using to to uh fight such a project i would say yes uh you know there may be some differences if it's all local money uh you know the some of the federal uh issues or federal uh legal remedies aren't aren't available but it's a similar kind of situation it's political organizing it's uh local advocacy it's working with the local the county the state officials um [Music] you know getting people to understand what they're losing and you know five lanes are simply going to mean the people are driving through faster making it far more dangerous for people on either side of what suddenly uh you know they want a new jersey five part of utah you know um it's you know safety it's air pollution it's not going to make it easier or safer for people to visit the businesses downtown in fact it's probably going to be the absolute worst because those businesses are going to find themselves you know more or less on a a freeway even if it doesn't look like a freeway it's going to act like a freeway if you've got all those lanes people are going to drive like maniacs you know you're uh you're dealing with this system that listens through the standards that they adhere to and so uh i would encourage early on start preparing yourself to challenge the technical issues and since we're a part of this network of freeway fighters the consultant that we're using norm marshall also works in austin austin is a great example of what the technical information began to reveal uh through that work they re began to realize well uh txdot wants to increase a hundred thousand vehicles per day in the most congested part of the city it's going to be disastrous so the the research and technical modeling that is is new modeling not the old modeling that the current standards adhere to but the new modeling showed well 80 of that traffic is actually going less than two miles they would really be better off to to take the street grid that that's quite an important revelation that needs to be pushed because we all have learned about induced demand and the build it and you will come mindset of drivers that create this congestion and so that that's important to have be armed with that kind of information when you do what one of the options in austin is we want to put in a boulevard get rid of i-35 and force that 20 percent to use the loop and uh and so that's you know i i would just encourage that because our challenge is we have to change those standards because this system it's amazing how deaf they are and mark it was it was a little funny to dorothy and i to hear you talk about the five routes and same exact playbook that we've had to deal with and uh and one of our colleagues and our statewide coalition amy steli wrote a recent article saying i've cracked the code and that that's a little bit of it just recognizing this pattern behavior that we're all working against and it's so great that we've gotten out to realize we're not alone in this and we are part of a growing network it's it's really fun and it's uh encouraging i mean dennis mentioned it was not it's still an uphill battle i mean um they come in with all their resources and all of their experts and they often have studies they have traffic studies they do and they spend millions of dollars on those studies i mean you know you've had to deal with this obviously um you know how do you uh how does a grassroots organization then build a case uh you know if you see that there really needs to be other things that would be better for your community um other alternatives considered how do you build a case for that when you don't necessarily have the you know uh whatever money a million dollars or hundreds of thousands of dollars to do a traffic study it's uh it's david versus goliath um we've in milwaukee we've had the the privilege to work with um a former new jersey uh transportation official planner um who you know for for very modest sums uh last go-around on the i-94 expansion put together the first version of fix at i don't think we we had figured out to call it that uh back then um or maybe it was ten thousand dollars um his heart was in the fight um and i'm i know we got much more value than that from his work um and this go around he updated the fix at six and brought it up to speed for a similar expenditure um and you know we're looking for his help as we move towards you know a draft and then final environmental impact statement um in the previous uh litigation that i've been involved in we didn't have uh you know sort of a dedicated traffic expert uh though you know one of our one of our coalition members um [Music] a thousand friends of wisconsin has had you know a traffic staff person who is very helpful uh to the other attorney and i in the zoo interchange case helped make us smarter than just being lawyers we learned and i mean i've done a case challenging a state highway where once i was after after suing them and getting access to the files as i was able to look at all the data and recognize that they did not actually follow the methodology that they said they were following they came up with two different numbers they had state statements in their policies statements in the environmental impact statement that this is what they would do when they have two numbers that's not what they did um you know and and that was one of the number of reasons that the federal judge in that lawsuit said this decision is not supported by facts and reasoning go back to the drawing board um i mean by that time i had 10 years of doing traffic and highway cases but i never went to school for for traffic um so some of it's getting into the nuts and the minutia some of it's finding help rob i was going to add to that we started with only relationships and it was very apparent that all the resources are on the side of convention of the conventional process all the consultants all the money and that as a group of citizens who are not uh not respected because they're not viewed as smart enough to understand the transportation system it's a real struggle and uh and we persevered by this idea of learning and doing became an attractive force and we did finally put together some funding but it's encouraging now we had a conversation with epa and they are trying to reinvent technical assistance so there's somebody waking up and saying well this isn't fair if we got citizens who are trying to be heard they're doing their homework we feel like we know more than the transportation experts in some areas so it's uh we probably need to continue that message we need to get citizens resources and we've now seen a grant program that'll go directly to neighborhood organizations so those are hopeful indicators but we we can't not recognize that we need more resources for those citizens who want to learn and shape their community i should really probably some people are viewing this and they're wondering even you know how do you begin how do you build a coalition uh um uh you know how do you get where you have uh today if they're if they're just beginning out on a process um you know i'm done in the bush i mean i could cover a little bit of that i i think i've covered a little bit in the in the uh presentation but again we started out as uh just probably a dozen people residents getting together to say this is not right what can we do start planning start recruiting other people and that's when again we formed the coalition and uh started uh with local media and then like i said the word got out and we somehow got connected with the bigger organizations that were also learning about it and wanting to you know expose everything that's going to be wrong with it so it just it built from there and once we had those couple organizations then other other organizations like the sierra club and stuff uh just joined us uh and so we get together every month uh and talk about what you know what more we can do going forward is there like a number of people that must be involved or another organization before they start taking you seriously wow i you know what i would say uh not necessarily it's like our voices are not being heard but again uh for us in allendale we were only a group of citizens residents i don't know anything about transportation but again because i lived there i was an advocate for my neighborhood then you know i would just say i don't know what i'm doing but god sent people who knew here's kim mitchell there are many other he's an architect and planner you know and every time i just get a little tired and frustrated my ram in the bush comes it's just like i don't know what to do but here we have uh when people see that we are promoting something that they want then i believe that those people come in because we're caring you know we're prioritizing things and that's how the diversity comes in so that you know we could start helping each other it's not just one person's idea but it's many that come in and just start helping with this so i just want to say i am just so thankful and grateful for all the people that have come in and the thing about it there are more people on the outside of the neighborhood that have come in to help you know with allendale and i just like to say you know your city is only as strong as your weakest neighborhood and by all those people coming in and just looking what do we want how can we do more of this you know good things are emerging out of allendale what's going on so we've gotten into i mean we've had attorneys lawyers uh transportation planners there was chuck marone smart mobility so we had all types of people that were coming in you know to promote what we seen but again when the transportation i say our engineers see hey they don't know nothing about this we're just gonna go do what we want to do but that's not so even though they didn't want to hear our voice but as others came in who knew what they were talking about they start teaching us and that's what i love about this learning doing community because we all come together with all our different thoughts and ideas and we put them together to make it work we're at an hour right now and i wanted to let people know that um the the video will be posted tomorrow um if we have a few minutes to continue to talk uh we can we can uh answer a few more questions dennis you go ahead were you going to say something um uh well this probably is a question that is uh best directed to you anyway bruce asks how much does the discovery process help is the threat of discovery as well as the threat of the lawsuit's outcome important the the kind of lawsuits that are generally available particularly for for federally funded projects do not as a general rule involve discovery uh other than the the agency needs to as part of a a lawsuit under the the environmental impact statement law ultimately during the lawsuit needs to disclose to the court and to the plaintiffs their entire administrative record all of their files regarding the project and there there generally are not depositions there are generally not uh trials it's it's a lawsuit based on paper um based on paper arguments paper documents um i think there were a half a million the equivalent of half a million pages of paper that got filed electronically in the zoo interchange case um and my other lawyer colleague and i worked our way through that to see what was there to see what wasn't there um you know we had identified our issues you know earlier on as the project developed and we looked for information that either killed our arguments or supported them and um you know in part i think because the agencies are so sure of themselves and maybe so arrogant and so complacent about they know how to do things and they'll do them their way um that they cut corners uh they disregard information that is fatal or dramatically undermines their reasoning process and their conclusions um you know and and we were able to convince the federal judge in that zoo zoo interchange case that their air pollution analysis was completely bogus that the assumptions that they were using were completely divorced from reality that the environmental impact statement utterly failed to look at the cumulative impact of billion dollar after billion dollar after billion dollar project expanding one segment of the interstate system in and around milwaukee after another never really addressed what's the impact of that on how quickly people can get to these richer whiter out of county suburbs what's the impact of that on people moving out there hollowing out the city taking jobs and population and you know we we expected that they they weren't going to do a better job on the i-94 three and a half mile segment um we never got to see the half million or so pages because instead of providing them to us and the court they ran away they said oh we won't do this project we got a question from ann in texas that i think some of you may be able to relate to but the dot has just presented a preliminary public uh meetings and presented proposals with preferred options and the uh uh the perception among most of the public is that this is a done deal and that you know um it's uh you know how how do you like get people to fight if they think oh you know they're doing it and they've presented it um it's gonna happen um how do you turn that around well i just want to make a comment about that um i'm just going to say this just as a advocate for my neighborhood it's never a done deal we've been doing this for 10 years okay wonder why the deal has not been done well for one reason is that we continue to fight we press on we have a voice now and you know when other people are coming in with you to advocate with you against the same thing okay just like smart mobility what happened they found out flaws and inaccuracies and they're always saying that oh we're at another stage no you're still back at stage one because that needs to go back and be completed i mean they're gonna say it's a done deal because they want to wear you out with resistance but again like i'd say don't allow them to wear you out this is where i am for 10 years when my arms get tired god sends me a aaron and a herb and a ram in the bush to uh come back and be strong and the thing about it you got to know what you've been called to do again like i say i don't know anything about transportation but i've learned so much about it they can't wear me out because there is someone else who always has my back so uh don't let them okay just okay if it's a done deal for them it's a done deal you all go somewhere and sit down and let us continue to do what we need to do and you really have to be careful about playing by their rules that's the pro their rules are the problem and it it's uh you know the lessons from david and goliath is that david changed the rules of engagement and so that's a bit of the challenge how do we figure out how to change the rules it's it's a great question and and i encourage everything and the one thing i always say is you just got to keep fighting like hell to to keep the word out i mean we we get that every day when we go around and talk to people they're like well we can't do anything about it it's a done deal and it's like no it's not a done deal and here are the reasons why it's not a done deal yes i agree the way it's structured they're making you want to feel like it is a done deal it is never a done deal and that's why we say you know we unfortunately in our situation had to wait for the draft eis to come out which was a 418-page study with 2246 addendum pages and we had to go through that and identify every single thing that was a conflict and misinformation and put that in a summary that we can share with people to say it's not a done deal here's why and here's why we're challenging it still um how much do do your campaigns cost uh like like you know or is it all volunteer and and you get things donated uh i mean people might be interested in that because it sounds like you know if there's a lawsuit if there's a consultant coming in like smart mobility it could cost some money um at least to bring them in but ours in terms of our grassroots campaign we've been uh you know we've been fortunate oh we don't have you know we don't have a lawsuit or anything that that we're doing so we don't have the expense but it's been all uh a lot of volunteerism and a lot of donations and we're not talking our campaigns haven't been thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars but uh you know we'll get uh we'll get support like i said from the hoosier environmental council from the sierra club uh you know when we're doing things uh not not only monetary support but volunteer support from them to help us out with the things i talked about the town halls the uh written camp you know written comment workshops the uh uh courthouse rallies those type of things um so and then we use again we use the media a lot we use them that's free they love stories about this and we we take as much advantage as we can well ours has been really all pro bono uh and but we did uh attract some philanthropic support and some small donors too that allowed us to engage norm marshall uh which you know we we worked for a long time to get in that position to do that but it but uh it is amazing when we get uh we've had a lot of pro bono legal support and at one time we had 13 uh four of those local and most of them from across the state we've had environmental law clinic at tulane at yale and one in new hampshire that have offered different levels of support we'd love to be filing the lawsuit but we've not gotten our pro bono legal to say that it was time to do it got more encouragement out of dennis and then than someone else that that nepa awaits because they're using the draft eis excuse for us too as to why they're even trying to hold federal highways is trying to hold up the civil rights investigation waiting on uh a draft eis when we know the process is the problem here folks that's where the civil rights harm is coming and so we're now asking for a multi-agency look at that civil rights investigation rather than just federal highways okay well you know i think that we can probably um uh call it a day and uh we um i really appreciate uh um all of your participation um it was great to hear from from your points of view and what's going on in [Music] in your campaigns in shreveport indiana and milwaukee and i also wanted to thank everybody who participated and and uh signed in um and uh once again um have a great day and thanks so much if thanks yeah thank you for having us thank you okay bye