Telcos Worry Milwaukee Streetcar Project Will Derail Facilities
A planned two-mile Milwaukee streetcar project has upset Wisconsin telcos, they said in a petition filed Monday with the Wisconsin Public Service Commission (http://xrl.us/bniu8f). AT&T Wisconsin, Time Warner Cable, the Wisconsin Cable Communications Association (WCCA), tw telecom and Windstream are objecting to the municipal transportation network’s desire to force utilities to move facilities at their own expense and wants the Wisconsin PSC to declare it unreasonable and unlawful for “the City to require public utilities through any ordinance, resolution, regulation, agreement, requirement or future order to modify or relocate their facilities without compensation from the City to accommodate the Streetcar Project and that any such regulations are unreasonable and void,” the petition said.
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"It’s a hell of a mess,” said Milwaukee Eighth District Alderman Bob Donovan, an outspoken critic of the downtown streetcar project. The utilities “absolutely” have a legitimate concern in their petition and are, among others in the city, “holding the bag here for some pipe dream of the mayor,” Donovan told us. It would be “a huge public works mistake for the city to move forward with this” and fraught with many questions, such as who’s going to operate it, he said.
The Wisconsin PSC declined to comment because the issue is still proceeding, a spokesman said. He expects the commission to address the petitions in mid-September. Milwaukee hopes to begin operating its streetcar network by fall of 2014 and is still very much in planning phases, according to the project’s website (http://xrl.us/bniu9p).
"The issue is the ability of a municipality to require a telecommunications provider, video service provider or electric utility to pay for facility relocation costs where the municipality is acting in its proprietary capacity in constructing a facility like a street car,” WCCA Executive Director Thomas Moore told us. “As the trade association for Wisconsin cable providers, WCCA has members located across the state interested in this issue who could be financially impacted by the Milwaukee streetcar project or by similar projects pursued by other municipalities.” Moore said WCCA has been active in the streetcar project from early on, since 2011.
AT&T Wisconsin said it has long fought this issue and pointed out that the proposed streetcar route runs adjacent to AT&T’s switching center on Broadway Road. “This unprecedented underground relocation” of the switching center would have “adverse consequences on vital telecommunications services for consumers and businesses throughout the State of Wisconsin while this massive relocation of existing and working telecommunications circuits and services is conducted to accommodate the current streetcar route,” AT&T told the PSC March 14 (http://xrl.us/bnivid). The telco had asked Milwaukee officials to reroute the streetcar network in July 2011 and worried there would be relocation costs running to “tens of millions” of dollars, according to a letter submitted with the March petition. The switching center is “literally the nerve center from which AT&T provides telecommunications service to downtown businesses, hotels, restaurants, etc.,” the telco said in March, calling the center “the most important communications office in the State."
The telcos defend their role in the community and attempt to establish why a government cannot do this to its utilities. “It cannot be disputed that the occupation of municipal rights-of-way by telecommunications providers serves and is vital to the public health, safety, and welfare,” the companies said in Monday’s petition. “For example, without telecommunications service, there would not be a 911 system for citizens to use in the case of an emergency. As our lives and businesses become more dependent on broadband services, it is essential that telecommunications carriers have access to the rights-of-way that allow them to provide those services, free of unreasonable municipal regulation."
Other utilities and individuals have expressed major concerns throughout the process. Wisconsin Electric Power Company and Wisconsin Gas, LLC and American Transmission Company LLC and ATC Management Inc. also filed a joint petition Monday asking the PSC void Milwaukee’s actions and spoke of high relocation costs (http://xrl.us/bnivor). It is “unlawful for the City to require the Utilities to relocate or modify their facilities at their own expense,” individual petitioners said in a Monday petition (http://xrl.us/bnivoz).
"The Public Service Commission will have to make a determination,” Donovan said about the telcos’ petition. Either way the commission decides, the alderman said he sees the result as bad for his constituents -- either in higher utilities rates or higher taxes. He would prefer to use the millions of dollars for roads or to improve the buses, he said, noting there is “no grassroots desire” in Milwaukee to create a streetcar network.