East Center Street, passing through the Harambee Neighborhood, will see traffic calming and safety improvements in the coming years.
The traffic improvement project, which is in the early stages of gathering community feedback, will stretch part of Center Street from Humboldt Boulevard to Teutonia Avenue, and along Teutonia Avenue from Center Street to Locust Street.
The goal is to give pedestrians and cyclists security when traveling along the high-traffic corridor.
Preliminary ideas mirror previous projects by the City of Milwaukee Department of Public Works, with features like raised crosswalks, bike lanes and bump-outs, or curb extensions.
The officials from the city’s public works department said that a comprehensive plan for the project will be released in 2026.
The construction is set to begin in 2027.
Community members are encouraged to provide feedback on the project and attend outreach meetings.
The project is part of a larger plan to improve traffic safety and increase transportation options for residents from Milwaukee’s north and west sides, according to Danya Littlefield, senior transportation planner with the Department of Public Works.
The improvements will be broken into four categories: crash reduction, pedestrian safety, cyclist safety and better access to the city bus system.
To achieve this, Littlefield and the others working on the project would like to implement raised crosswalks, protected bike lanes, bus-boarding islands and bump-outs.
The improvement project will pass five schools, and by the end, students should have the ability to safely walk or bike to class along an improved Center Street, Littlefield said.
“We do want to make sure we’re making it safe for people, no matter what, you know, mode they need to commute,” Littlefield said.
According to preliminary designs, parking should still be available along the corridor.
Currently, the area is known by the city to have a high number of car crashes and a high rate of reckless driving.
Similar projects to the Center-Teutonia multimodal improvement project showed significant decreases in reckless driving and an increase in traffic safety.
The North Avenue improvements from Prospect to Humboldt saw a 32% decrease in speeding in general and a 50% decrease in drivers going more than 10 miles per hour over the speed limit.
The project on West Highland Boulevard from Vliet Street to 13th Street saw a 44% decrease in crashes with none being serious or fatal.
West Galena improvements from North 35th Street to North 40th Street saw a 75% decrease in crashes and a 17% decrease in speeding.
The next public meeting for the Center Street project is scheduled for April 2026. A location has not yet been announced.
Questions about the project can be submitted to move@milwaukee.gov. Comments can be added to the interactive map on the project website.
Everett Eaton covers Harambee, just north of downtown Milwaukee, for the Journal Sentinel’s Neighborhood Dispatch. Reach him at ejeaton@gannett.com. As part of the newsroom, all of Everett’s work and coverage decisions are overseen solely by Journal Sentinel editors.
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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Public Works seeks community feedback on Center Street improvements
Reporting by Everett Eaton, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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