Highway 45 Northbound through Zoo Interchange: CLOSED

This is a transportation disaster.

From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

State authorities closed the bridge that carries traffic northbound on Highway 45 through the Zoo Interchange shortly before 11 a.m. Friday, fearing that overweight trucks could collapse the deteriorating span.

Roughly 42,000 vehicles a day will be detoured off the major northbound route for nearly two months, until a replacement for the bridge can be finished. Work on that started in January, as part of an emergency project to replace three bridges found in need of immediate replacement.

An inspection of the Highway 45 bridge on Thursday night revealed that cracks in the concrete supports had widened and lengthened. With the new information, Wisconsin Transportation Secretary Frank Busalacchi ordered the roadway closed on Friday morning.

"This is a public safety action," said Ryan Luck, construction director with the Wisconsin Department of Transportation. "There's no room to gamble on this."

...The full closure of the Highway 45 bridge is another dramatic step taken to address the ongoing deterioration of the Zoo Interchange, a major connection point in the southeastern Wisconsin freeway system. It is the busiest interchange in the state, handling about 350,000 vehicles per day and serving as a key route for trucking and tourism travel to the Fox Valley and northern Wisconsin.

The full reconstruction of the interchange, now roughly 50 years old, has been pushed back for several years. At one point, the work was scheduled to start in 2012, but Gov. Jim Doyle pulled the funding for necessary engineering work in the 2009-'11 budget and the project now has no definite starting point.

Meanwhile, inspections detected dangerous cracking and deterioration of three bridges in the summer of 2009, and the DOT imposed weight limits on the three spans. They then acted to replace them, under an emergency contract awarded to Milwaukee Constructors LLC.

The replacement bridges, which will be temporary, cost roughly $15.3 million.

That work started in January and is scheduled to be completed by Memorial Day.

Memorial Day?

Although the closure is temporary, it will take months to remedy the problem. Worse, the replacement bridges, a $15.3 million remedy, is only temporary.

What a mess!

Scott Walker issued this press release in response:

Scott Walker, Milwaukee County executive and candidate for governor, released the following statement:

“It is amazing that Governor Doyle and Mayor Barrett can advocate spending $810 million on a new "high-speed" rail line while the state government cannot event fix one of the busiest interchanges in Wisconsin. Years of raiding the Transportation Fund and years of Milwaukee politicians like the Mayor fighting work on the East-West corridor have now led to a crisis that will have a negative impact on commerce.”

Exactly.

Doyle and Barrett support spending close to a billion dollars for a useless train, yet they have failed to support maintaining the busiest interchange in the state.

That's a major failure.

It's inexcusable.

In 2005, Tom Barrett voiced his opposition to funding for the Zoo Interchange.

Read his June 28, 2005 letter.

Barrett wrote to Sen. Dale Schultz and Sen. Judith Robson:

Let's get agreement on our transportation priorities, before throwing $38 million at the highway engineers without a plan for what a successful interchange and freeway system will look like. Unlike the Marquette Interchange, the Zoo Interchange will stand long enough for us to resolve these issues.

Not good.

Those words are coming back to bite Barrett.