Meetings and Updates Week of June 5th

posted June 4, 2023

Plan your new trip now on Google Maps, the Transit App or at mymetrobus.com. Otherwise, contact Metro's customer service center at (608) 266-4466 or [email protected]. Call center hours will be extended next week! Starting Thursday, June 8, representatives will be available from 5:30 am until 10:00 pm. Extended hours are expected to last through Friday, June 24 or as call volumes warrant.Metro staff are now visiting transfer points (which are closing), stop locations and out riding buses to answer questions and help plan trips. Look for Ride Guides in bright yellow vests. Ride Guides will be out on the street first thing on June 11 to help passengers get where they need to go on Metro's newly designed routes.

Couldn't make it to the May 23rd or June 1st neighborhood meetings with WisDOT about potential Interstate highway design alternatives on the East Side of Madison? No worries, I wrote another post with a recap, check it out.

Here's a message from the City's hard-working Streets Division staff: With warmer weather comes an increase in large item pickup. Here's a review of how large item pickup works now.

More from the City's Streets Division:

"Salt routes" are the streets of Madison that we plow each time it snows, and apply salt to as weather allows. By policy adopted in the mid-seventies, this high level of service is reserved for the major thoroughfares, which are the roads used by Madison Metro, those around schools, hospitals, police & fire facilities, and other important connector streets. Salt routes make up just under 40% of all of the traffic lanes within the City.

In response to Madison Metro changing their routes, we re-evaluated our salt route network. If Madison Metro is no longer using a street for a bus, then it is likely that the street would no longer meet the standards to be a salt route. In this process, we gave our entire network a hard look to remove streets from the salt routes where we could, and made a few small additions. Our re-routing process removed roughly 85 traffic lane miles total from all of the salt routes for this upcoming winter and retained approximately 740 traffic lane miles. This reduction amounts to a 10% change from this past winter, which means we will spread around 500 fewer tons of salt on our roads during a normal winter.

Public streets not designated a salt route are plowed when at least 3" of snow accumulates on them and the storm is at or near its end. Since these roads are not salted like the main thoroughfares, they will have a hard pack of snow and ice on them after plowing. Sand is applied later where needed to enhance traction.

These District 3 streets are no longer on the salt route (but will still be plowed according to the policy described above): Apollo Way, Argosy Court, Dominion Drive, Inwood Way, Jupiter Drive, McLean Drive, Merryturn Road, Neptune Court, North Thompson (around the Hiestand neighborhood), North Walbridge Avenue, Open Wood Way east of Inwood, Severn Way, and Wittwer Road. North Star Drive north of Dominion Drive will be added to the salt route, joining the southern stretch of North Star which was already on the salt route.

I’ll post this information again this fall when our attention turns back to staying safe on the roads during winter weather.

The Common Council meeting will take place on Tuesday, June 6, 2023 in hybrid format. Agenda items includes recognizing and commemorating June 19, 2023, as Juneteenth in Madison, Wisconsin; accepting the final report of the Farmland Preservation Task Force; a resolution adopting a Public Participation Plan for the City of Madison Comprehensive Plan Interim Update (2023); and more.

On Tuesday June 6th and Wednesday June 7th, the Wisconsin Department of Transportation (WisDOT) Southwest Region is hosting two public involvement meetings for the Madison Beltline Planning and Environment Linkages (PEL) Study. The meetings will provide an update on the status of the study and gather input.