Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley is getting ready to declare a big step forward in the county’s Vision Zero campaign on Tuesday at 9 a.m., saying the county and its 19 municipalities are finally shifting from planning to coordinated action to eliminate traffic deaths and serious injuries by 2037. The announcement will take place at the Milwaukee County Department of Transportation administrative building in Wauwatosa, with municipal leaders, MCDOT staff and community advocates all on hand. It comes after years of crash mapping, public workshops and pilot traffic-calming projects on the county’s so-called corridors of concern. County officials say residents should now expect a mix of signal work, crosswalk upgrades and smaller, targeted redesigns that will roll out ahead of the bigger, long-term road projects.
According to TMJ4, Crowley will say that all 19 municipalities have completed their Municipal Safety Action Plans and that Phase Three of the Complete Communities Transportation Planning Project has wrapped up. TMJ4 also reports the milestone was outlined in a county press statement and that it locks local plans into the broader countywide Vision Zero goal.
What Crowley Is Marking
The milestone follows Milwaukee County’s adoption of a Comprehensive Safety Action Plan that the county says identifies 522 potential safety projects and prioritizes 142 locations for immediate work, according to a Milwaukee County press release. That same release notes that fatal and serious injury crashes rose by roughly 42% in 2020–2022 compared with 2010–2012, framing the new plan as a tool to qualify for federal safety grants and unlock more targeted interventions rather than one-off fixes. County officials stress that the strategy zeroes in on slowing vehicle speeds and protecting people who walk, bike and take transit, making those users a central focus rather than an afterthought.
Funding And Projects To Follow
Milwaukee has already started turning the planning documents into concrete, on-the-ground changes. Local coverage reported that the county secured nearly $25 million in federal SS4A funding in January to support some 67 corridor and intersection upgrades. WTMJ detailed that the grant will pay for high-visibility crosswalks, curb bump-outs, signal improvements and other traffic-calming measures across several municipalities, with county and municipal staff coordinating the work. Officials say this package is the first wave of projects tied directly to the Comprehensive Safety Action Plan and is aimed at cutting the most severe crashes along the county’s priority corridors.
What Residents Can Expect
Municipal Safety Action Plans are built as short, practical menus tailored to each community, covering tools like slow-zone designations, upgraded pedestrian signals, sidewalk repairs and intersection daylighting, according to Milwaukee County’s Complete Communities project materials. The county’s Complete Communities page describes Phase Three as the point where municipalities finalize their local action plans and begin implementation on the ground, and it directs residents to a public Motor Vehicle Collision dashboard that helps flag hot spots. The idea is to pair hard data with neighborhood input so that the fixes land where they are most needed and where they are most likely to save lives.
Next Steps And The Data That Will Guide Them
County staff say the Motor Vehicle Collision (MVC) Dashboard, which was updated last year with a “hotspots” tool, will keep steering which projects get built first, and that the public site is a key planning resource, as FOX6 reported. Officials also say Milwaukee will continue to chase additional federal grants and local partnerships to expand the work while municipalities use their MSAPs to line up smaller, visible safety fixes ahead of larger capital projects. Crowley’s milestone presentation is meant to frame Vision Zero as a countywide standard for how streets are designed and rebuilt in the future, not as a short-term safety campaign that fades away once the press conference ends.
