MilWALKee Walks programs 2025
This continues our series of blog posts for Pedestrian Safety Month. In this post, we’re sharing the programs the we do at MilWALKee Walks and how those help our county became a better, safer place to walk.
Check out our previous posts to learn more about trends and patterns in pedestrian safety in Milwaukee for Pedestrian Safety Month:
- Trends in pedestrian safety in 2025
- Where pedestrians are being hit throughout the county and how city projects are impacting those risks
- What patterns do we notice in pedestrian-involved crashes around the fall, Halloween, and vehicle sizes.
Crosswalk Actions
For years we have been helping neighborhoods organize crosswalk actions. There are public demonstration events that remind drivers and pedestrians of all the rights and responsibilities everyone has in the public right of way.
- Pedestrians have the right to cross at any crosswalk (marked or unmarked) and drivers have the responsibility to yield to them.
- Pedestrians have the responsibility of obeying pedestrian signals and drivers have the right to drive the speed limit, while being aware of other road users.
And everyone should remember that streets are a shared space and we need to be mindful of one another!
If you want to participate in a crosswalk action, go to our events page to learn about upcoming opportunities If you would like to organize your own crosswalk action, reach out to Rachel to chat more.
Walk Audits
When the city, county, or state transportation departments are planning a new project, they are generally required to ask for public input. Often, there is a dynamic at these meetings where residents struggle to express their dreams to experts. Many residents don’t know about the pedestrian infrastructure and traffic calming options that could be beneficial in their neighborhoods. To help with this, we collaborate with neighborhoods to organize walk audits to bring together stakeholders, walk the street together, and give residents tools to advocate for their neighborhood.
These audits often raise voices from communities that aren’t considered when designing streets.
In 2025, we conducted walk audits in several Milwaukee neighborhoods, including Lincoln Park, Uptown, and Rufus King. We partnered with the City of Milwaukee DPW, Independence First, 1000 Friends of Wisconsin, and the Friends of Lincoln Park for these walks. We also like to invite local elected officials and other decision makers whenever possible.
We often draw from the AARP’s Walk Audit Tool Kit, a great resource to focus our observations and guide discussions.
Summer Playfields
This summer we teamed up with our colleagues at run the Mobile Bike Repair events and the Milwaukee Recreation to engage kids and families in pedestrian safety programming while they were getting their bike fixed or enjoying free meals from Milwaukee Recreation summer meal locations.
We played games, chatted with parents, and talked to kids about their experiences walking in the neighborhood. Street safety matching cards and a street sign scavenger hunt were two of our most popular activities!
One of the best questions we asked kids was “What’s on your dream street?”
A block party, bounce house, daycare, garden and dogs? I want to live on that street!
Paint the Pavement
Painted streets and sidewalks are a fun and low-cost way to increase safety safety while building a sense of community and place. MilWALKee Walks partners with community groups and residents to identify intersections that would benefit from community art to help direct attention to crosswalks and other traffic calming infrastruture. The City of Milwaukee DPW has created a Paint the Pavement program to streamline the process for this type of street art. We hope to see programs like this expand throughout the county!
This is a portion of a large project completed at a new traffic circle at S 37th St and W Scott St in Milwaukee’s Silver City neighborhood. S 37th St is a new bike boulevard and traffic calming along the street makes the route safer for everyone!
How to learn more?
Learn more about MilWALKee Walks, the Bike Fed’s pedestrian Safety program here! Learn more about the work we do and get involved with some of our events.
Click here to read a summary of Milwaukee County’s 2024 pedestrian fatalities. You can also explore our interactive map, showing where pedestrians and bicyclists have been involved in motor vehicle crashes.