Transportation Development Association: Business leaders call for more transit in SE Wisconsin

CONTACT: Craig Thompson, TDA Executive Director, (608) 256-7044

MADISON – ESPN has highlight reels. Now transportation policy has one too – courtesy of a just-released video from the Transportation Development Association of Wisconsin. Click here — http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbGdc03A8Xw — to view highlights from remarks made by the CEOs of five of Wisconsin’s best-known corporations as they call for better transit and more jobs in the southeast part of the state.

“What’s most remarkable is that these business leaders say that what their companies really need to expand and bring more jobs to the area isn’t a TIF district or a big tax break – it’s a better transit system,” says Craig Thompson, TDA’s executive director.

In their remarks, the CEOs said that they support the efforts of State Senators Lena Taylor and John Lehman and State Representatives Peter Barca and Tamara Grigsby to get cosponsors of a bill that would address the situation. The deadline for cosponsorship is January 26.

TDA shot the video at a news conference held on Tuesday at the headquarters of Bucyrus International in South Milwaukee. Tim Sullivan, Bucyrus president and CEO, spoke first and noted that the area’s current transit options are too meager to serve the 500 new employees his company wants to add. Sullivan was joined at the news conference by the CEOs of SC Johnson, AT&T Wisconsin, Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance and Roundy’s Supermarkets, along with Governor Jim Doyle, Racine Mayor John Dickert, and the president of Local 430 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.

TDA also produced a video of each CEO’s complete remarks – click here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4an22OP-FI) for Part One and here for Part Two (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3LLzEAFjyI).

For more information on transit in Wisconsin, visit http://www.tdawisconsin.org.