Apps for Milwaukee

The open government data movement is a global effort to increase government transparency, civic participation and innovation through public access to municipal data. In the age of the ubiquitous software application (app) for use via personal computer or mobile device, governments around the world are profiting from the creativity of tech-savvy citizens by making data available for the development of useful apps. Since 2008, several U.S. cities, including Washington D.C., San Francisco, and, most notably, Chicago, have started to share government data and even sponsor competitions to encourage the creation of innovative local apps.

Could open government data improve quality of life in Milwaukee? Perhaps Chicago’s experience will help answer that question. Apps for Metro Chicago, which launched on June 24th, is currently accepting submissions for the first of three rounds of competition. The first round seeks apps aimed at improving transportation in the Chicago metro area, with subsequent rounds focusing more broadly on solving community problems and improving services. With $50,000 in prizes, the public will help to choose the winners by voting for the apps they believe are most useful.

Apps for Metro Chicago is the first competition of its kind to involve four levels of government: the City of Chicago, Cook County, the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning, and the State of Illinois. Together, these governments have made more than 175 data sets available to the public in an open format. These data sets range from municipal service requests to hospital information to neighborhood demographics.

Chicago’s competition is also unique in its emphasis on rewarding civic value. The judges will grant bonuses for participants who partner with a business or nonprofit to solve a real, local problem. As the competition’s website states, “the key to winning this contest is to demonstrate that you have created something useful for our community.”

In addition to rewarding community partnerships in the judging phase of the competition, Apps for Metro Chicago is actively helping to connect community organizations looking to solve specific problems with citizens with the skills to create apps. Metro Chicago Information Center (MCIC), the research and consulting group coordinating the competition, is working to make these kinds of connections. One interesting partnership is a collaboration between a local industrial retention initiative and an app developer to write a truck routing app that takes into account weight limits, clearances, road blockages, and other factors to improve the efficiency of distribution.

The accessibility of government data in Milwaukee certainly would impact the replication of a similar competition here. The City of Milwaukee has COMPASS and Map Milwaukee, useful web-based tools that provide municipal data on local demographics, property, crime, traffic accidents and more. These applications allow Milwaukeeans to query information and create maps, but the data is not in an open format and thus cannot be easily reused and shared. The Nonprofit Center of Milwaukee also makes a limited number of data sets available for public use, including information on neighborhood demographics, crime, and geography. Their Data Center also provides technical assistance to the public to help make the data easier to understand and utilize.

One Milwaukee-specific app that has already been developed is the Milwaukee County Transit System (MCTS) bus tracker, which estimates bus arrival times. It can be downloaded for iPhone or Android mobile phones. While certainly a useful tool, the bus tracker tool bases its estimates on set route schedules and could be improved by utilizing the GPS technology already used by MCTS buses to report arrival estimates in real time. Similar real time apps have been created in many U.S. cities, including Chicago.

If the city, county, and other government bodies opened their data sets to public use, the possibilities could be endless. Judging by developments in other cities, it is possible to imagine apps that allow us to find out what’s happening in Milwaukee neighborhoods on a given day along with information on where we can park our bicycle or car nearby, report potholes on our streets and receive notification of repairs, or keep us updated on how our representatives at all levels of government vote on important issues.

With resources like COMPASS, Map Milwaukee, and the Nonprofit Center of Milwaukee’s Data Center, Milwaukee is in a good position to take the next step by making more municipal data available in an open format. Creatively using such data could be a simple and cost effective way to make government more useful to today’s tech-savvy citizenry.

MillerCoors leases headquarters space in Milwaukee region

One way of looking at MillerCoors' announcement of its new headquarters location is that the company decided to stay in the Milwaukee region after all. Their new headquarters in the West Loop area of downtown Chicago would place them exactly 1 hour and 4 minutes by high-speed rail from downtown Milwaukee. This is currently less time than it takes to drive from downtown Milwaukee to the M7 region's border.

It seems that MillerCoors executives were cognizant of the potential for a high-speed link when they considered possible Chicago locations. It was reported that one of the key reasons for MillerCoors' choice of 250 S. Wacker was that it is was close to public transportation. No doubt, the public transportation they speak of is the proximity to Union Station which is exactly one block west of the new MillerCoors headquarters. Amtrak and Metra both stop at Union Station.

MillerCoors executives might have also become aware of the Amtrak re-authorization bill that President Bush signed into law on Oct. 15th, 2008, which raises the specter of more federal funding for high-speed rail in the Midwest. Assuming the authorization is fully funded in upcoming appropriations bills, Milwaukee could have a high-speed rail connection into downtown Chicago within five years, placing the two city centers 1 hour and 4 minutes apart. This improvement would shave 25 minutes off current Amtrak service and is considerably faster than the average drive-time of 1 hour and 30 minutes between the two cities.

The reduction in Miller's corporate presence will leave a void in Milwaukee. Though not entirely gone, their philanthropic support and the tertiary economic activity that Miller brought to the community will be missed. We should not, however, write off all secondary economic activity from the MillerCoors relocation. Milwaukee, with its cheap housing, amenity-rich downtown and a pending high-speed rail link, would be positioned to gain more than its fair share of investment over the next few years. The Wisconsin Department of Transportation estimates the development potential that occurs as a result of high-speed rail at between $152-$227 million in increased downtown development. In tough budget times, such an increase in tax base would be welcomed by Milwaukee governments.

A high-speed rail link could also foster housing and employment market equilibrium in the Chicago-Milwaukee mega-region. That's a fancy way of saying that Chicagoans would find it easier to migrate north to take advantage of Milwaukee's cheaper housing and Milwaukeeans would find it easier to migrate south to find more lucrative and more plentiful job opportunities. Recent Public Policy Forum research finds that this migration is already taking place with nearly $400 million in net personal income being claimed by new M7 residents who had lived in the Chicago region the previous year. Conceivably, rail improvements linking the two regions would only serve to encourage more Chicago households to make the move north.

In the end, high-speed rail is far from a panacea. The start-up costs are steep and the operation of such service will likely require ongoing public investments. In fact, an M7 economic renaissance may not even require a high-speed train, but it surely will require the recognition that Chicago is our partner in growing a livable mega-region with a diversity of housing, transportation and employment options.

Rail or no rail, Chicago and Milwaukee are cities that are increasingly seen as two parts of one whole. MillerCoors executives understand this. Do we?

Postscript: If the topic of regional transportation improvements piques your interest, sign up to attend the Public Policy Forum's Luncheon on December 4th as we explore the prospect for regional transit. Click here for more details.

What if Milwuakee went to bat for Chicago?

Here's a twist. Milwaukee lobbying for investment in Chicago. A recent Sun-Times editorial, suggests that leaders in large metro areas (like Milwaukee and Chicago) should band together and lobby the federal government for more investment to spur metro economic growth.

The editorial states that Chicago's train yards would be a good place to start:

"At the heart of the nation and on the shores of Lake Michigan, Chicago's location makes it the third largest intermodal port in the world, after Hong Kong and Singapore. Almost $1 trillion of our nation's freight moves through this region annually, and freight volumes are expected to increase 80 percent or so in the next 20 years. Yet trains often must slow to a crawl through northeastern Illinois and northwestern Indiana because technological and physical updates to tracks and rail yards are long overdue. Businesses are losing money due to delayed deliveries, and drivers are experiencing more traffic jams on local roads. The federal government's response has been to spread surface transportation funding around like peanut butter, rather than investing strategically in major national rail hubs, ports and gateways, like Chicago."

What would be the rationale for politicians in Southeastern Wisconsin to go to bat for federal investment in Chicago's train yards? Simply put - the more goods that Chicago imports, the more goods that southeastern Wisconsin can distribute.

The Milwaukee region is a natural hub for distribution and logistics. In fact, the M7 has identified "distribution" as a regional export driver - with the region currently playing host to 10,386 distribution jobs paying an average wage of $50,815. Not bad.

Our region is emerging as a distribution hub because of ample land and lower costs. Just look at yesterday's news that Illinois-based Coleman Cable, will expand into a 502,000 sq. ft. building and bring with them 75 jobs for their warehousing and distribution functions. The company states:

"...the Pleasant Prairie location will allow the company to consolidate distribution facilities and reduce costs, while simultaneously...providing first-in-class logistics, delivery and customer service."

The Coleman Cable expansion news follows the announcement by Uline Inc. that it will move its headquarters, R&D and distribution functions from Illinois to Wisconsin by 2010 - adding 1000 jobs to the Milwaukee region.

Despite our market advantages and recent "wins" in the distribution game, can we really expect our region's leaders to expend their political capital south of the Wisconsin border?

It's possible. The most recent precedent for Wisconsin going to bat for Illinois is Milwaukee's recent embrace of Chicago's 2016 Olympic bid. On the state level, Wisconsin also recently joined an effort last year to win a federally funded, state-of-the-art coal gasification plant for southern Illinois.

In the end, cooperative lobbying efforts could translate a Chicago gain into Milwaukee growth.

How green is my alley?

This summer the City of Milwaukee Comptroller's office found that the replacement cycle for the city's streets and alleys was several years longer than their predicted useful life. For alleys, the replacement cycle was found to be 272 years, or 4.5 times the useful life of an alley. The response from the Mayor was to hasten the replacement cycle, which garnered general agreement and support.

Interestingly, the New York Times reported this week that the City of Chicago is also focused on replacing alleys:

Chicago has decided to retrofit its alleys with environmentally sustainable road-building materials under its Green Alley initiative, something experts say is among the most ambitious public street makeover plans in the country. In a larger sense, the city is rethinking the way it paves things.

This initiative was prompted by the fact that its hundreds of miles of aging alleys needed replacement. Says Janet Attarian, the project's director, “The question is, if you have to resurface an alley anyway, can you make it do more for you?”

Chicago has found that the answer is yes. They will now pave all alleys in such a way as to filter rainwater, reduce run-off, and recharge groundwater, while reducing heat retention in the summer and reflecting heat in the winter. The cost? About the same as traditional paving, divided between materials (porous concrete) and labor (creating a stone filtration layer).

Milwaukee would be smart to consider making a similar investment in its alley infrastructure. Things to investigate: Would the cost of porous paving be more than traditional paving? Would the maintenance costs differ significantly? Would the useful life spans differ significantly? If the answers to all these questions are "no," green alleys could be a feasible option for our city, as well.

Just released - Income migration report

Income drain highlights Chicago’s value to M7
Milwaukee region loses $1.3 billion

A new Public Policy Forum study has found that households moving out of the Milwaukee region from 2001-2006 took with them $1.3 billion more in personal income than newcomers to the region brought in.

The report estimates the income drain has resulted in $105 million in lost tax revenue and thus a greater tax burden on those who remain in the region. But it also shows that the region is a big beneficiary of income moving from the Chicago area. In fact, southeastern Wisconsin’s only income gain comes from northern Illinois. Plus, Chicagoans brought with them higher average annual incomes ($47,880) than Wisconsinites who moved into southeastern Wisconsin ($34,124).

Sources of net personal income gain to the region include Lake, Cook, McHenry, DuPage, Will, and Kane counties in northern Illinois. Those six counties represented almost $400 million in income coming to the region during the period, 2001-2006.

Only Kenosha and Walworth counties in southeastern Wisconsin experienced net personal income gains last year. Kenosha attracted more than $30 million and Walworth was far behind at a little more than $3.2 million.

The primary beneficiary of the region’s income loss has been the rest of Wisconsin ($491 million), particularly the counties immediately ringing southeastern Wisconsin ($211 million), including Rock, Jefferson, Dodge, Fond du Lac, and Sheboygan counties. Other top beneficiaries of the region’s income drain include Florida ($328 million), Arizona ($132 million), and Minnesota ($62 million).

Of the regions studied for the report, only the Phoenix area had a net income gain, of 1.6%, last year. Arizona’s Maricopa County (in which Phoenix is located) was the biggest recipient of southeastern Wisconsin income, at $107 million.

The Chicago and Minneapolis-St. Paul areas lost 1.0% ($2 billion) and 0.7% ($518 million), respectively, of their total personal incomes. The Madison area almost broke even, but still lost 0.1% in personal income. Southeastern Wisconsin’s loss was 0.9%.

Income data for the study came from the Internal Revenue Service and the U.S. Census Bureau.

Milwaukee, the bedroom community

Governor Doyle's proposed biennial budget calls for additional spending to grow Milwaukee's economy. Undoubtedly, this spending package will face intense pressure from out-state legislators looking to secure goodies of their own. Can't blame them for that, really.

But according to a recent blog post by Neal Peirce, one of our nation’s foremost writers on metro issues, our second-tier cities (for those of you still living in 1950's Milwaukee, I hate to break the bad news, but our fair city is now decidedly "second-tier" in the pantheon of large US cities) are entirely justified in seeking "more generous state aid for hard-pressed city governments" based on new research by The Brookings Institution.

According to Mr. Peirce, more state investment in a city like Milwaukee is warranted by Milwaukee's proximity to Chicago. Basically, Chicago has stifling traffic congestion, high housing costs, and a seemingly unsustainable and sprawling land-use pattern. Milwaukee, by extension, would be the next logical place to accommodate Chicago's growth. Milwaukee has the existing infrastructure, a large and growing immigrant labor force, a solid existing housing stock, and attractive quality of life amenities.

In other words, invest in Milwaukee to help it become Chicago's newest, largest, and most economically diverse bedroom community.

The Brookings report and Mr. Peirce's commentary should please supporters of both the proposed KRM train line and Gov. Doyle's spending plan for Milwaukee.

Then again, do we really want Milwaukee to become Chicago's newest bedroom community? Let's save that topic for another post.