Another day, another report verifies region's dying transit

There's always money enough to write studies about the transit-deprived Milwaukee region

but never enough money or political will to solve the problem.

That why you will find the same old song in the the same old hymnal just updated by the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission, (SEWRPC), as VISION2050.

The report's funding section lays it out:

Currently, the gap between funding and costs—identified in the funding comparison below—solely affects the public transit element. Because of this gap, the transit system recommended under VISION 2050 will not occur without additional funding...

Unless the Region is able to identify a new source of funding for transit, there will be less transit service in 2050 than is currently provided in the Region. The Region’s existing transit service has already declined about 25 percent from the amount provided in the year 2000.

Sound familiar? Look at the lede in this July, 2011 Journal Sentinel budget story:

Less bus service. Higher fares. No more regional transit authorities. No more planning for new commuter rail lines. And dim prospects for new public transit funding.

This is not an accident, as I wrote recently about Walker, GOP Assembly Speaker Robin Vos and their diversion $252 million in state transportation dollars for highway expansion of I-94 near the Foxconn site which they have made sure is not served by transit:

...right-wing GOP WI Governor Scott Walker's foolish blockade of an Amtrak extension from SE Wisconsin to Madison and the rest of Midwestern inter-city rail expansion removed development-based rail connections which would have fed potential employment for high-tech Foxconn should it build a mega-factory in Racine County:

Right-wing GOP WI Governor and shallow ideologue Scott Walker for the narrowest of partisan and self-serving political motives wiped out the federally-funded Hiawatha Amtrak connection between Madison and Milwaukee and south through Racine County to Chicago.

I also wrote [earlier] that right-wing and fellow Walkerite transit foe GOP Assembly Speaker Robin Vos was using the possible Foxconn project's trucking needs to press Walker to fund a faster completion of I-94 re-construction and expansion through Racine County which is Vos' home base and the heavily-rumored site for the Foxconn factory.

In fact, Vos tried to use the state budget law to bar transit funding from reaching any transportation dollars, thus making the transit funding shortfall worse.

Robin Vos, the GOP WI Assembly Speaker, thinks transit funding should be removed from the transportation fund:

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos has pushed for public transit to be funded through the state’s general budget instead of the DOT, saying he considers transit a social program. Gov. Scott Walker proposed such a move in his last budget and Vos said it had the support of Assembly Republicans, but it failed to make it through the state Senate.

This is part of the GOP plan to define "transportation" as roads and highways - - facilitated with the just-approved state constitution highway lobby dream amendment to dedicate gasoline tax revenue to their version of transportation.

And SEWRPC is no stranger to transit deficits, as I wrote in 2012:

I had noted a few days ago the long record of transit disconnections by Waukesha County to Milwaukee...How bad are these disconnections?

Even the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission, isolated in a Pewaukee office park in western Waukesha County has said scarce, now disappearing transit connections for Milwaukee residents make it hard for the agency to meet its workplace diversity goals.

SEWRPC affirmative action reports, such as the 2006-2007 installment, noted transportation-related hiring hassles facing its own agency workers outside Waukesha County, but couched the problems in tentative bureaucrat-speak..."may be...could be a disincentive to potential job applicants, and even threw in this post-recession hoot:

"Moving to Waukesha County in order to take a technical or clerical job at the Commission is an option which may be available to some..."

A second factor regarding the difficulty of hiring nonwhites may be lack of public transportation. The time and expense of commuting to the Waukesha area could be a disincentive to potential job applicants from Milwaukee, Racine, and Kenosha Counties—particularly in view of the pay levels attendant to most of the Commission technical and clerical positions.

But now the problem is deeper: In its 2011-2012 Affirmative action report - - click on the pdf at the bottom of this SEWRPC page - - SEWRPC says:

Transit services have -- at least temporarily -- been terminated by Waukesha County to the Commission’s primary work place in the Waukesha area. Today 33 percent of Commission employees commute from Milwaukee County residences.

Which is exactly what you would expect in a GOP-run state unfriendly to urban, green and other progressive goals.