DOT: Cuts in Zoo Freeway Plan Wouldn't Slow Near-Term Tosa Projects

Proposed cuts to the state transportation budget for 2013-2015 would include some losses or delays in spending for the Zoo Interchange Project, but would not affect early phases of the plan in Wauwatosa, according to the project's design chief.

Bob Gutierrez of the Department of Transportation said that work in progress and scheduled for Wauwatosa throroughfares should go ahead as planned even if the proposed cuts occur.

As part of a package of spending delays to close a projected $63.5 million deficit in the transportation fund by June 2015, $14 million would come out of the Zoo Interchange Project over the next two years, WISN 12 News reported and Gutierrez confirmed.

But, he said, the DOT would pare that amount out of preliminary work supporting the actual freeway interchange reconstruction, which is still down the road, and not out of the several Wauwatosa projects leading up to it.

"The project team is going to evaluate every aspect of the project," Guitierrez said, including such things as utilities alignment and land acquisition, "but I can assure you it will be part of our Core 1 project.

"Work on Swan Boulevard and Watertown Plank Road would go on as scheduled."

'Sevice interchanges' to be completed as planned

Core 1 refers to the heart of the plan: the great concrete curlicue where Interstate 94 meets Interstate 894/Hwy. 45. The oldest and busiest freeway interchange in Wisconsin is considered long overdue for reconstruction, at a cost of more than $1.7 billion.

But besides the interchange itself, work on all the major approaches, feeders and "service interchanges," north, south, east and west, is necessary to complete the upgrade – and most of that work, in fact, needs to be done first.

Those completed routes will provide the needed detours when the Core 1 interchange reconstruction gets under way, beginning only in 2015 and lasting through projected completion in 2018.

Reconstruction related to the Zoo Project is already completed or now under way on Mayfair Road and its intersections. The West Greenfield Avenue bridge, south of Tosa, has been demolished and is being rebuilt. Work on Glenview Avenue at and north of I-94 is beginning.

Fully budgeted, none of that work will be slowed. Of greater concern to Wauwatosa was reconstruction of the Swan Boulevard and Watertown Plank Road approaches.

That work was scheduled to begin after mid-year but within the upcoming biennial budget – meaning it still could have been cut back or delayed.

'A good day' for Wauwatosa

Called for information and comment, Wauwatosa Public Works Director Bill Porter said he hadn't been apprised by the DOT of where the proposed project spending cuts might occur.

"That's a good day," Porter said when told what Gutierrez had to say.

Any delays in the Swan or Watertown Plank approaches, he said, "would be a very bad day."

Wauwatosa has invested a great deal of time and money into working with the DOT to plan the timeline for the Zoo Interchange Project, much of it critically tied to those two thoroughfares.

Wauwatosa went out on a limb for the DOT in borrowing and beginning to spend more than $12 million against a tax-incremental district for UWM's Innovation Campus before UWM had put shovel to ground on any taxable development. The parkway needed to be completed this year.

Although both the UWM Accelerator and ABB Group projects are now going forward, the main reason for the hurry was the DOT's need to have Discovery Parkway as an alternate north-south route during reconstruction of Swan and Watertown Plank.

Even the Fire Department would be affected. A temporary fire station is being built west of Hwy. 45 to ensure emergency services during major construction. Although the DOT is paying for it, the department has already laid its plans for realigning services. 

Work on Mayfair, Glenview and Greenfield should be complete by mid- to late summer. Work on Swan and Watertown Plank would begin late this year and be complete before the end of 2014.

Watertown Plank will become a full pass-through intersection with a clover-leaf design and no stop lights. Swan, conversely, will no longer interchange directly with Hwy. 45 at all – it will pass over the freeway and curve south to meet Watertown Plank across from Innovation Drive.