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Wisconsin notes

Started by mgk920, May 30, 2012, 02:33:31 AM

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on_wisconsin

#3250
"Speed does not kill, suddenly becoming stationary... that's what gets you" - Jeremy Clarkson


hobsini2

Quote from: on_wisconsin on July 01, 2021, 07:10:10 AM
^
The preferred alternative for the Stadium Interchange appears to be a SPUI/Stack hybrid:


https://wisconsindot.gov/Documents/projects/by-region/se/94ew-study/final-eis.pdf

https://wisconsindot.gov/Documents/projects/by-region/se/94ew-study/preferred-alternative-v4.pdf
Interesting but I could see this being a nightmare on gamedays. Look how small the area is to merge onto Miller Park Way (I refuse to call it Brewers Blvd) and the exit to Canal St.
I knew it. I'm surrounded by assholes. Keep firing, assholes! - Dark Helmet (Spaceballs)

SEWIGuy

Is it that much different than now?

Anyway, I also don't understand the anti-American Family Field sentiment.  Miller was a corporate sponsor who backed out, and another one took its place.

mgk920

It looks like there are provisions for gameday traffic to/from I-94 that do not involve WI 175/Canal.

I'm curious about how well those two left turn from WI 175 to I-94 will work out.

Mike

hobsini2

#3254
Quote from: SEWIGuy on July 01, 2021, 09:11:06 AM
Is it that much different than now?

Anyway, I also don't understand the anti-American Family Field sentiment.  Miller was a corporate sponsor who backed out, and another one took its place.

I get the reasoning behind naming rights. I just prefer the name to be a real name unless the company had helped in the funding of the stadium as it was being built.
Heinz Field, Coors Field, Busch Stadium, no problem.  Qualcomm Stadium and Guaranteed Rate Field, hell no. 
It will always be Miller Park to me.
I knew it. I'm surrounded by assholes. Keep firing, assholes! - Dark Helmet (Spaceballs)

JoePCool14

Quote from: SEWIGuy on July 01, 2021, 09:11:06 AM
Is it that much different than now?

Anyway, I also don't understand the anti-American Family Field sentiment.  Miller was a corporate sponsor who backed out, and another one took its place.

Along with hobsini's argument, I think part of it is that Miller is a beer company, and American Family is an insurance company. Which brand seems "cooler" and more relevant to the Milwaukee Brewers?

:) Needs more... :sombrero: Not quite... :bigass: Perfect.
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Travel Mapping | 60+ Clinches | 260+ Traveled | 8000+ Miles Logged

SEWIGuy

Quote from: JoePCool14 on July 01, 2021, 01:04:33 PM
Along with hobsini's argument, I think part of it is that Miller is a beer company, and American Family is an insurance company. Which brand seems "cooler" and more relevant to the Milwaukee Brewers?

I get that Miller sounds cooler given the name of the team, but its not as though the Brewers can force MillerCoors to sign a contract.

hobsini2

Quote from: SEWIGuy on July 01, 2021, 02:22:26 PM
Quote from: JoePCool14 on July 01, 2021, 01:04:33 PM
Along with hobsini's argument, I think part of it is that Miller is a beer company, and American Family is an insurance company. Which brand seems "cooler" and more relevant to the Milwaukee Brewers?

I get that Miller sounds cooler given the name of the team, but its not as though the Brewers can force MillerCoors to sign a contract.

The type of brand makes no difference to me. I just want something that sounds like a real name. Chase Field is perfectly fine.
I knew it. I'm surrounded by assholes. Keep firing, assholes! - Dark Helmet (Spaceballs)

triplemultiplex

Quote from: hobsini2 on July 01, 2021, 07:31:04 AM
Interesting but I could see this being a nightmare on gamedays. Look how small the area is to merge onto Miller Park Way (I refuse to call it Brewers Blvd) and the exit to Canal St.

That's a crappy movement as it is.  But only a chump comes in from the west and goes to Canal Street to park.  The lot north of 94 is the same price as the lots east of the river and much faster to get into.  And it's the same distance from the actual ball park.

As for the road name, I think they should've just mashed the words "park" and "way" together so it goes from Miller Park Way to Miller Parkway.  It still goes toward the brewery, after all. ;)
"That's just like... your opinion, man."

thspfc

I-39 north of US-10 in northern Portage County is the first freeway I've ever seen that has no visible lane markings. Seriously. The middle white lines are completely faded.

US 12 fan

#3260
I noticed that Highway 158 now at ends at Highway 32 in Kenosha. As somebody who grew up in Kenosha and still goes there from time to time, for the longest time it ended at 6th Avenue at the stop sign with the flashing red light. To be fair, it never made much sense to me that it didn't end at Highway 32. But apparently this has been changed. Does anybody know when they did this? 

p.s. But they still need to take down the 158 East sign. If you're driving on Highway 32 on Sheridan Road, you can still see it.

Big John

^^Check your links.  They are referring to e-mail.

JoePCool14

Quote from: US 12 fan on July 03, 2021, 04:47:36 PM
I noticed that Highway 158 now at ends at Highway 32 in Kenosha. As somebody who grew up in Kenosha and still goes there from time to time, for the longest time it ended at 6th Avenue at the stop sign with the flashing red light. To be fair, it never made much sense to me that it didn't end at Highway 32. But apparently this has been changed. Does anybody know when they did this? 

p.s. But they still need to take down the 158 East sign. If you're driving on Highway 32 on Sheridan Road, you can still see it.

There's still an End 158 sign east of WI-32, so I'm not too sure what's going on there.

https://goo.gl/maps/PXNHBFgUvaGmBL8S9

:) Needs more... :sombrero: Not quite... :bigass: Perfect.
JDOT: We make the world a better place to drive.
Travel Mapping | 60+ Clinches | 260+ Traveled | 8000+ Miles Logged

hobsini2

Quote from: JoePCool14 on July 05, 2021, 11:56:16 AM
Quote from: US 12 fan on July 03, 2021, 04:47:36 PM
I noticed that Highway 158 now at ends at Highway 32 in Kenosha. As somebody who grew up in Kenosha and still goes there from time to time, for the longest time it ended at 6th Avenue at the stop sign with the flashing red light. To be fair, it never made much sense to me that it didn't end at Highway 32. But apparently this has been changed. Does anybody know when they did this? 

p.s. But they still need to take down the 158 East sign. If you're driving on Highway 32 on Sheridan Road, you can still see it.

There's still an End 158 sign east of WI-32, so I'm not too sure what's going on there.

https://goo.gl/maps/PXNHBFgUvaGmBL8S9
Maybe it had something to do with the Harbor being at the end of 52nd St,
I knew it. I'm surrounded by assholes. Keep firing, assholes! - Dark Helmet (Spaceballs)

Big John


SEWIGuy

Quote from: Big John on July 08, 2021, 05:52:28 PM
Mason St  (WI 54) bridge in Green Bay stuck in open position indefinitely: https://fox11online.com/news/local/downtown-green-bay-bridge-experiencing-mechanical-issue

So I hadn't heard about this until you posted this, and I live about two miles away. (Been on vacation and disconnected this week.)

Apparently this happened just a few minutes after we went over on Tuesday. We saw the ship it was lifting for too.

galacticskyway

Long time lurker, first time poster here. I live in northern Chicagoland at the moment, but my whole life, I've spent a lot of time visiting family in / exploring Wisconsin and I've always gotten the impression that there are a lot of roads in Wisconsin for which I just don't get the rationale. The Burlington Bypass is probably the largest and clearest example of this. Here is one of my all-time favorite threads (tho a small one), and it sums up the thoughts I had on the Burlington Bypass before even having found the thread; I thought about posting on it but it's so old I thought this thread might make more sense: https://www.aaroads.com/forum/index.php?topic=3744.0

One of the replies on that old post says that some 80% of the traffic he saw using the bypass ended up going towards downtown Burlington anyways. Anyone know whether that is still / was ever the case?

Quote from: I-39 on June 02, 2017, 01:08:37 PM
Quote from: GeekJedi on May 31, 2017, 07:05:14 AM
I also think it's easy to look at these projects simply by predicted AADT, however a lot of the roads referenced had geometry and safety issues as well. For example, in Burlington, there are railroad tracks that cut through downtown. Even now when there's a train, the backups are enormous. Or, as peterj920 mentioned, 141. While it's pretty quiet during the week, the traffic on the weekends during the summer can be dangerous. Yes, those roads could have been upgraded to lesser facilities, but combine that with the traffic projections, and it makes sense. Often it's easier (and less expensive in the long run) to do it "big" the first time, than to go back and upgrade later.

That's the issue that I have with that report. It spends a lot of time looking at traffic projections, but not any of the other issues that make these projects unique.

I agree there are other reasons for highway upgrades, but I think they could have been addressed with lesser upgrades (in some cases such as US 10 west of Stevens Point, WIS 26, Burlington Bypass, etc) without plowing in a major four lane divided highway that is freeway or near freeway-grade. For example, some of those routes could have gotten by with an improved two lane highway or a five lane undivided road with traffic lights or roundabouts. Is it ideal? No, but freeway and high-quality expressway-grade highways are expensive to maintain, and I think those should have been saved for the backbone routes.

Granted, like I said, while I think some of their points are well-taken, I do not agree with everything. Ultimately, these kind of people want everyone to live in cities and use public transit. That's not gonna happen. Whether they like it or not, highways are here and will be here for a long time.

So it sounds like a lot of the problems that were causing traffic in the first place in Burlington still exist. I feel like bypass might have made more sense if there were an effort to address some of the issues downtown. Now of course I'm no traffic engineer, but I can spot a number of places where it at least seems that flow could be addressed in some pretty obvious ways. Plus, isn't the point of a bypass not just to route traffic around a congested downtown but also to relieve that downtown congestion, like the Hwy 26 upgrades are supposed to do? It seems like it hasn't achieved one of the major goals of a bypass because there wasn't funding or an advanced plan to address those major problems. And once they addressed downtown traffic, would the bypass have been necessary? I have my doubts that there is truly all that much thru traffic using that thing, and even more doubts that the thru traffic was the key problem to begin with.

Plus, let's address the fact that this is a near-freeway grade expressway that runs at 55mph, and has 10mph exit ramps, plus two lights at two of the most major intersections on the bypass. For a project that's meant to address long-term increases in traffic projections, it sounds like it was designed more to be a highway-on-the-cheap compared to a project like Hwy 26. It'll need to be rebuilt to safer standards with interchanges replacing the lights, plus diamonds replacing all those jughandles, if it wants to address long-term increases in traffic.

I actually disagree with a lot of the ideas that 26 should have been a super-two at most, or that the project was not yet necessary. I totally get who's using 26, and I think it's also an important alternate for other highways when they're congested or under construction. Plus even if you only build it out to a super-two, it'll probably need to be upgraded to a four-lane long before the end of the lifecycle anyway so you may as well just lay the roadbeds now. I've driven it a number of times, and I think it's a relatively well thought-out and designed project.

I don't see that same logic at play with the Burlington bypass. The only thru-traffic it seems you're likely to get is people going between Racine and Elkhorn/Interstates, which I doubt is enough people to justify building a bypass, especially when that comes in lieu of improving local roads. Plus, according to Google Maps (not the greatest source but still), for drivers taking it beginning to end, it's 3.2 miles longer, has the same travel time during rush hour, and is slower off peak. Which is even worse considering those existing major problems downtown. It kinda gives me the feeling that it was more meant to get the support of some constituency with a cool new road, but from what I heard on threads, the locals didn't support it strongly. Maybe the road-planning "elites" just went down the list if metro/micropolitan areas in Wisconsin by population, and wanted to give all the bigger ones bypasses/expressways, even if some of them had to be done on the cheap? I don't know.

Personally, if I were road planning king, I would have done a number of projects to address downtown traffic flow, then maybe saved some land for either a bypass or green belt long in the future. Unless I'm missing something, this seems like a clearly unnecessary project to me.

SEWIGuy

Yeah the problem with the Burlington bypass is that very little traffic went *through* Burlington to go anywhere. It's pretty much off the beaten path at the intersection of three state highways in the middle of a triangle formed by I-43, I-94 and WI-50.

thspfc

I've never been on the Burlington bypass, but looking at Google Maps it does seem like a poor effort from WISDOT. Similar to the Whitewater bypass, which is an odd crossover between expressway and normal two-lane road, yet you can't even call it a Super 2 because there are several intersections. I'm guessing that WISDOT anticipated more growth in that area than what has actually happened since the bypass was built in the late 2000s.

JoePCool14

It's definitely a weird road. I drove on the eastern half of it earlier this year for fun and it was pretty dead. The quality of the "interchanges" indeed leaves a lot to be desired.

Probably best to just leave it as it is unless traffic volumes increase. If they somehow don't by then time the road needs repair, maybe convert into a Super-2 to reduce costs.

:) Needs more... :sombrero: Not quite... :bigass: Perfect.
JDOT: We make the world a better place to drive.
Travel Mapping | 60+ Clinches | 260+ Traveled | 8000+ Miles Logged

galacticskyway

Quote from: thspfc on July 12, 2021, 05:07:39 PM
I've never been on the Burlington bypass, but looking at Google Maps it does seem like a poor effort from WISDOT. Similar to the Whitewater bypass, which is an odd crossover between expressway and normal two-lane road, yet you can't even call it a Super 2 because there are several intersections. I'm guessing that WISDOT anticipated more growth in that area than what has actually happened since the bypass was built in the late 2000s.

Yeah I've never driven the Burlington Bypass either but I spent some time on street view trying to figure out what the design philosophy was.

I've driven the Whitewater Bypass a number of times and I actually it's a neat road, they avoided overbuilding it I think. From the looks of some of the bridges, it seems like they bought ROW for an expressway, but don't want to bother building it unless volumes increase, or until Illinois finally puts up that 53 extension. Tho if they ever do finally put up that Fort Atkinson Bypass for 12, which they should in my opinion, turning the Whitewater Bypass into an expressway bypass won't be too far behind I suspect.

SEWIGuy

Quote from: galacticskyway on July 12, 2021, 09:52:44 PM
Quote from: thspfc on July 12, 2021, 05:07:39 PM
I've never been on the Burlington bypass, but looking at Google Maps it does seem like a poor effort from WISDOT. Similar to the Whitewater bypass, which is an odd crossover between expressway and normal two-lane road, yet you can't even call it a Super 2 because there are several intersections. I'm guessing that WISDOT anticipated more growth in that area than what has actually happened since the bypass was built in the late 2000s.

Yeah I've never driven the Burlington Bypass either but I spent some time on street view trying to figure out what the design philosophy was.

I've driven the Whitewater Bypass a number of times and I actually it's a neat road, they avoided overbuilding it I think. From the looks of some of the bridges, it seems like they bought ROW for an expressway, but don't want to bother building it unless volumes increase, or until Illinois finally puts up that 53 extension. Tho if they ever do finally put up that Fort Atkinson Bypass for 12, which they should in my opinion, turning the Whitewater Bypass into an expressway bypass won't be too far behind I suspect.


I believe the Fort Atkinson bypass is off the board.  Not happening.  And that's fine.

The problem with the Whitewater bypass is that it was built initially without stoplights, which lead to a couple of terrible accidents.  It is serviceable now, but still not great.

skluth

I guess Wisconsin was building a bunch of budget bypasses back in the day. The US 8 Rhinelander bypass is another budget bypass. Traffic demands may not ever increase enough for a freeway, but it would have been good to at least make sure the ROW existed for not only four lanes but interchanges. They've actually allowed homes along US 8 which is ridiculous.

thspfc

Quote from: JoePCool14 on July 12, 2021, 07:54:58 PM
It's definitely a weird road. I drove on the eastern half of it earlier this year for fun and it was pretty dead. The quality of the "interchanges" indeed leaves a lot to be desired.

Probably best to just leave it as it is unless traffic volumes increase. If they somehow don't by then time the road needs repair, maybe convert into a Super-2 to reduce costs.
I wonder how long it would take a downgrade to a Super 2 to pay for itself due to the reduced maintenance costs thereafter.

thspfc

Quote from: galacticskyway on July 12, 2021, 09:52:44 PM
Quote from: thspfc on July 12, 2021, 05:07:39 PM
I've never been on the Burlington bypass, but looking at Google Maps it does seem like a poor effort from WISDOT. Similar to the Whitewater bypass, which is an odd crossover between expressway and normal two-lane road, yet you can't even call it a Super 2 because there are several intersections. I'm guessing that WISDOT anticipated more growth in that area than what has actually happened since the bypass was built in the late 2000s.

Yeah I've never driven the Burlington Bypass either but I spent some time on street view trying to figure out what the design philosophy was.

I've driven the Whitewater Bypass a number of times and I actually it's a neat road, they avoided overbuilding it I think. From the looks of some of the bridges, it seems like they bought ROW for an expressway, but don't want to bother building it unless volumes increase, or until Illinois finally puts up that 53 extension. Tho if they ever do finally put up that Fort Atkinson Bypass for 12, which they should in my opinion, turning the Whitewater Bypass into an expressway bypass won't be too far behind I suspect.
The current design of the Whitewater bypass makes it the most dangerous kind of road in the world in terms of serious accidents: relatively busy rural two lane highway with a high speed limit (55) and numerous intersections. WISDOT has spent loads of time and money upgrading highways like that recently. The WI-23 project that is going on now, WI-26, WI-29, US-12 between Madison and Wisconsin Dells, US-10 between Stevens Point and Marshfield, WI-50 east of Lake Geneva, and I'm sure there are others. So it beats me as to why they chose to create another one of those roads.

The Fort Atkinson bypass isn't needed and isn't going to happen.



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