Browsing: Economy and Infastructure

With fewer passengers and mostly empty seats, it’s time to shut down the Hop, Milwaukee’s $128 million streetcar.

Despite a much ballyhooed second line added last April, ridership on Milwaukee’s financially challenged streetcar, the Hop, last year was still nearly 30% below that of pre-COVID 2019.

Rep. David Steffen and Sen. Julian Bradley are circulating a joint resolution supporting expansion of nuclear energy production in Wisconsin.

Port Washington’s announcement of another billion-dollar data center project in southeastern Wisconsin is focusing attention on the challenge of meeting the voracious energy needs of this new economic opportunity.

Wisconsin’s economy is thriving under free market reforms, many aided by Badger Institute research and advocacy.

Small nuclear modular reactors are a big deal for Wisconsin, given our developing AI economy and Gov. Evers’ Clean Energy Plan.

Facing a $5 million bill to run the free streetcar known as The Hop next year, Alderman Scott Spiker wondered if a huge increase in handing out parking tickets is the funding answer.

Government overregulation is imperiling the start of a $1 billion plan to expand broadband service to the hardest-to-reach places in Wisconsin.

Wisconsin is nearing the end of what Gov. Tony Evers proclaimed “Clean Energy Week,” and the Badger Institute offers ample reading on the subject.

A federal report this month is touting two Wisconsin nuclear power plant sites — one operating, one shut down — as attractive locations for installing new nuclear electric generating plants.

How do other states without an income tax fund essential services? Under what circumstances would this be feasible in Wisconsin?

America’s energy grids are strained, and Michigan is reconsidering nuclear’s role in meeting consumer demand. Wisconsin, too, should take note.

If everything works out as under-promised, Microsoft will make the biggest single technology investment ever in the state of Wisconsin — a transformative infusion of billions of dollars to develop more than 1,500 acres in Racine County.

Wisconsin will need to build 200,000 housing units by 2030 to accommodate all the people who want to live and work here. Sheboygan County is a microcosm of the problem — but on the forefront of a possible solution.

Data centers chug electricity like undergrads drink beer, and the advent of artificial intelligence — which uses, we’re told, about 10 times the electricity as conventional searches — makes power demand soar.

Wisconsin is handing out almost $79 million in federal funds to private businesses to build charging stations for electric vehicles at a make-or-break moment for both the EV and charging station industries.

Show your progressive friends the facts and ask this: If you’re not willing to pay to fight climate change, who do you think should?

What if Wisconsinites were told they couldn’t heat their houses by burning fossil fuels in a furnace, the way about 4 out of 5 Wisconsin homes do now? What would that cost us?

Free-market reforms are driving prosperity and fostering human flourishing in the Dairy State. This unmistakable trend is evident in state economic indicators from recent decades, a hopeful story that can instill pride in all Wisconsinites.

The population of Eau Claire County, now approximately 108,000, has grown almost 10% just since 2010. A little farther west, just across the St. Croix River from Minnesota, St. Croix County has grown 15%.