The Hop's new lakefront extension, which started limited Sunday service a few months ago, opens fully at noon on Thursday, April 11.
After a mid-morning ceremony officially opening the new transit concourse at The Couture development on Lincoln Memorial Drive, The Hop's new L-Line, which adds three stops, opens fully Thursday at noon.
Limited service began last autumn.
“This is a milestone years in the making and we couldn’t be more excited to finally provide streetcar service directly to Milwaukee’s lakefront,” Milwaukee Commissioner of Public Works Jerrel Kruschke said recently.
“The new transit concourse in the Couture will be a transformative resource for public transit in the region and a tremendous asset to our riders, who can now access all that Milwaukee’s lakefront has to offer in a safe and convenient manner. We’re looking forward to an extremely busy and exciting summer for Milwaukee and The Hop.”
The service was previously limited by construction at The Couture, where the covered concourse – which will also serve MCTS' Bus Rapid Transit – is a stop for The Hop.
The L-Line is a nearly 2-mile route that includes five existing streetcar stops along the Milwaukee/Broadway corridor and three new stops along a new spur connecting to Milwaukee’s Lakefront.
The extension was funded in large part by a Federal TIGER (Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery) grant awarded to the City of Milwaukee in 2015.
The new segment will, importantly, loop in lakefront attractions like Veterans Park, Milwaukee Art Museum, Discovery World, Betty Brinn Children's Museum and the Henry Maier Festival Park into the streetcar system.
MCTS’s CONNECT 1 BRT is scheduled to begin service through the Couture transit concourse on June 2.
Complete route information, timetables, maps, riding information, a video on the L-Line and more are online at thehopmke.com/l-line.
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he lived until he was 17, Bobby received his BA-Mass Communications from UWM in 1989 and has lived in Walker's Point, Bay View, Enderis Park, South Milwaukee and on the East Side.
He has published three non-fiction books in Italy – including one about an event in Milwaukee history, which was published in the U.S. in autumn 2010. Four more books, all about Milwaukee, have been published by The History Press.
With his most recent band, The Yell Leaders, Bobby released four LPs and had a songs featured in episodes of TV's "Party of Five" and "Dawson's Creek," and films in Japan, South America and the U.S. The Yell Leaders were named the best unsigned band in their region by VH-1 as part of its Rock Across America 1998 Tour. Most recently, the band contributed tracks to a UK vinyl/CD tribute to the Redskins and collaborated on a track with Italian novelist Enrico Remmert.
He's produced three installments of the "OMCD" series of local music compilations for OnMilwaukee.com and in 2007 produced a CD of Italian music and poetry.
In 2005, he was awarded the City of Asti's (Italy) Journalism Prize for his work focusing on that area. He has also won awards from the Milwaukee Press Club.
He has be heard on 88Nine Radio Milwaukee talking about his "Urban Spelunking" series of stories, in that station's most popular podcast.
