🚗 Mayor doesn’t want Beltline expansion

🚗 Expand the Beltline? Not So Fast, Says City Officials.

• Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway and a majority of city council members have introduced a resolution opposing a proposal from the Wisconsin Department of Transportation to add an additional lane to the Beltline.
• Such an expansion is the most radical option among many in a study by state officials over how to deal with growing traffic on the highway, which doubled from 60,000 cars per day in 2012 to 127,000 cars per day in 2022.
• Other ideas include extending the flex lane, expanding on and off ramps, and adding bike and pedestrian infrastructure to make it easier to cross the Beltline. Opponents of expansion, like Rhodes-Conway, say it would increase neighborhood traffic and pollution.
• 🎧 Dig deeper: We talk about the Beltline pushback on the Friday news roundup on today’s City Cast Madison podcast. We also enthuse about the new vendors coming to the Madison Public Market, and host Bianca Martin talks to Madison rapper and educator Rob Dz, who will be back on stage this weekend following a medical scare. Listen up! [ 🔒WSJ, 🎧 City Cast Madison]

🚨 Madison Police To Review Abundant Life Response

• The Madison Police Department has requested a formal review of how it handled the Abundant Life Christian School shooting in December 2024. The department is partnering with the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services and the National Policing Institute to conduct the review, which will include a look at 911 call logs, police videos, incident reports, and media coverage.
• “This review is not about blame,” Chief John Patterson said, but to help Madison and other cities learn how best to respond to such tragic incidents. A critical response team has conducted several voluntary focus groups with ALCS community members and others, and will conduct more in February, Patterson said.
• Related: How has Madison changed since this tragedy? [City of Madison, 🎧 City Cast Madison]

🛠️ New Apprentice Training Center To Open on East Side

• Madison’s population is growing, and along with more people comes the need to build places for them to live and work. To meet the demand for more skilled labor, Associated Builders and Contractors of Wisconsin is planning to open a 36,000-square-foot apprentice training center on City View Drive.
• The building will feature eight new classrooms and 6,200 square feet of laboratory space, enough for ABC-WI to support 500 apprentices. The facility is expected to open this fall. [WMTV]

Meet Porkchop! Porkchop’s person is a foster for 9Lives Rescue, and calls Porkchop her “foster fail.” “He arrived at my house at just a few days old (with his 5 pork-themed foster sibs), and he said he wasn’t goin’ anywhere. Now he’s almost 3, and he’s my bestie. He does not, in fact, work out, but he does enjoy wrestling his sibs Hootie and Cosmo.”