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Wisconsin DOT Scraps Study for Interstate Expansion

The primary focus now is to improve, maintain and preserve what the department has.

(TNS) -- The Wisconsin Department of Transportation has stopped studying a potential expansion of interstate highways from Madison to Wisconsin Dells, a sign the department may be downsizing its road-building ambitions in the face of mounting budget pressure.

The move appears to foreclose any near-term efforts to expand a corridor that carries growing volumes of traffic, much of it tourism-based, from southern Wisconsin and Illinois to Wisconsin Dells and other points north and west.

In February the department said the corridor would experience “significant problems” from traffic congestion if it is not expanded.

Work on environmental studies of the corridor, which began in 2014, ended Friday, according to a statement from the DOT and federal highway officials. The announcement attributed the move “to recent and ongoing re-prioritization of major transportation projects.”

One of the studies looked at adding new lanes to Interstate 39-90-94 from Madison to Portage, or building a parallel freeway to relieve traffic from that stretch of the interstate. The other examined a possible expansion of I-90-94 from Portage to Wisconsin Dells.

The studies also looked at less-ambitious options such as fully reconstructing, but not expanding, the interstates or simply preserving and maintaining them.

Such studies typically are prerequisites for highway projects to secure federal funding.

The DOT, responding to a Wisconsin State Journal inquiry Wednesday, acknowledged the move means “we are no longer considering expansion” of the corridor.

It follows testimony from Secretary Dave Ross to lawmakers last week in which he said the department must “right-size design” as it tries to reconcile a growing imbalance between the availability of transportation revenue and demand for it.

“The cancellation of these two studies makes sense for us at this time,” DOT spokeswoman Patty Mayers said in a statement. “The primary focus now is to improve, maintain and preserve what we have.”

‘Back to square one’

On its website, the DOT said the study was prompted by “growing traffic volumes, crash numbers, and roadway and bridge deterioration” on the corridor.

“If no improvements are made, the majority of (the) corridor will have significant problems from reductions in travel speeds and recurring breakdowns in traffic flow,” the study said.

Patrick Goss, director of the Wisconsin Transportation Builders Association, said the announcement means it could be more than two decades before an expansion of the corridor will occur. That’s based on how long other road-expansion projects have taken to complete from the time at which lawmakers approved them.

“This project, with this (announcement), goes back to square one,” Goss said.

DOT recently underwent a management shakeup in which Ross succeeded former Secretary Mark Gottlieb. The department also was dinged by state auditors in January for dramatically underestimating the cost of highway projects by failing to account for inflation, among other factors.

State lawmakers and Gov. Scott Walker also are grappling with how to address a transportation-funding shortfall in the next state budget. Without spending or revenue changes or new borrowing, the shortfall would be nearly $1 billion for the next two years alone, according to the state’s nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau.

The DOT currently is expanding I-39-90 from the Illinois line to Madison from four to six lanes. Walker noted that in responding Wednesday to the department’s announcement of the canceled study.

“We’ve stepped it up in the past from the state line up here (to Madison). We think that’s incredibly important,” Walker said.

Backlash to ‘reliever’

The DOT has spent about $3.5 million on the studies, Mayer said. She said stopping them now will save the department $5 million, part of which will go toward a new study of replacing the interstate’s bridges over the Wisconsin River.

Mayers said some of the data collected by the previous studies can be used in considering how to replace the bridges.

State Rep. Keith Ripp, R-Lodi, chairman of the Assembly Transportation Committee, applauded the DOT announcement. Ripp’s Assembly district includes much of the corridor that was studied.

Ripp spokesman Matthew Rohrbeck said many of Ripp’s constituents opposed construction of a “reliever” freeway that would have paralleled I-39-90-94 on the east — running through Poynette and DeForest, and possibly Sun Prairie — before reconnecting to I-94 just east of Madison. The study examined four possible routes for a reliever freeway.

“We had a lot of constituents that did not like a lot of the reliever options because it would’ve affected where they lived,” Rohrbeck said.

Dane County Executive Joe Parisi acknowledged concern from rural residents about the reliever freeway concept in a statement that said DOT’s decision to rule out that option “preserves countless acres of the some of the most valuable farm land in the state.”

Zach Brandon, president of the Greater Madison Chamber of Commerce, said expanding the interstate is “an economic necessity in part due to the increasing number of logistics companies in the Greater Madison region.”

“Without a comprehensive long-term vision from the state for funding transportation in a sustainable way, it is not surprising that projects like these are being delayed,” Brandon said.

©2017 The Wisconsin State Journal (Madison, Wis.) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.