A coalition of activist groups filed a federal lawsuit Monday against multiple state and federal highway agencies over their plans to expand a portion of Interstate 94 in Milwaukee from six to eight lanes.
The coalition consists of Milwaukee Inner-City Congregations Allied for Hope, or MICAH, Milwaukee Riverkeeper, the Sierra Club’s Wisconsin chapter and 1000 Friends of Wisconsin.
They claim the highway agencies failed to consider all reasonable alternatives to expansion. They also charge the agencies with inadequately analyzing — and not mitigating — the expansion’s environmental, social and health effects on local communities.
The U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration and Wisconsin DOT plan to expand I-94 from six to eight lanes between 16th and 70th Streets in Milwaukee, and to rebuild the Stadium Interchange in a “diverging diamond” format. They also aim to make a number of safety improvements along the stretch of highway, including the elimination of left-hand exits. The project is estimated to cost about $1.75 billion.
Construction is scheduled to begin in 2025.
Plans to expand the stretch of highway have been in the works for over 10 years. A 2017 expansion plan by former Governor Scott Walker’s administration faced a similar lawsuit by MICAH, the Sierra Club’s Wisconsin chapter and the NAACP’s Milwaukee branch, which was dismissed after a funding pitfall scuppered Walker’s expansion. The Evers administration revived the project in 2020.