When Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson was elected to office in 2022, he declared reckless driving a public safety crisis. He has now been named one of the leaders of the first-ever Mayors Institute on Pedestrian Safety.
Mayor Johnson and eight other mayors from across the country will meet with national experts to talk solutions to their pedestrian safety challenges. He shares his plans for keeping Milwaukee pedestrians safe.
Last year, there were around 78 crashes involving people who were walking, which resulted in 25 fatalities and 63 serious injuries. In response to this systemic pattern and direct calls from the community, Mayor Johnson proposed turning Milwaukee into a Vision Zero community.
"One of the things that folks out in the neighborhoods of Milwaukee requested of us in this process was to become a Vision Zero community. And so I led the effort to have Milwaukee become a vision Zero community," says Johnson.
"[We] fully adopted my proposal and we're working — actively — right now to hire a Vision Zero director. Now in Vision Zero, when we became a Vision Zero community, we became only the second such community in the state of Wisconsin to do that."
Milwaukee is the largest city represented in the institute and is one of two Wisconsin cities included. The other city is Madison, whose leader is Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway. The leaders were selected earlier this month and will virtually meet to explore solutions to reckless driving over the next six months.
_
