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The City of Milwaukee is asking to delay environmental review of the Zoo Interchange project after concerns arose over state plans to install extra-wide shoulders on six-lane sections of Interstate 94. The shoulders are wide enough to later be converted into lanes. City officials had previously opposed widening the freeway to eight lanes within the city.

On Thursday, Cecilia Gilbert, spokeswoman for the city Department of Public Works, said the city would be asking the state Department of Transportation to extend the deadline for submitting public comments on the plans from April 4 to May 3 to allow more time for the Common Council to respond. It meets next on April 12. Gilbert said the department will be finalizing its own comments today and submitting them to the state by the April 4 deadline.

Zoo Interchange (photo by AA Roads)

Among Milwaukee aldermen, the Zoo Interchange has become a particularly hot topic in recent days. Michael Murphy, whose district contains the interchange, learned recently that state plans for rebuilding it include constructing 18-foot shoulders (freeway shoulders typically range from 10 to 12 feet) along the medians leading in and out of the interchange on I-94.

Past plans for rebuilding the interchange called for expanding I-94 from its current six lanes to eight between 70th and 124th streets. But after public hearings in 2009 in which Murphy and other city officials criticized the plans for demolishing too many homes (up to 39) and area businesses, DOT devised the “Reduced Impact Alternative” plan it now favors.

But Murphy worries the extra-wide shoulders signal the DOT’s intention to ultimately expand I-94 to eight lanes. “We don’t support going to eight lanes in this corridor,” he says, adding that he’s investigating what federal or state approval would be required to convert the shoulders into lanes. “What is the process for getting feedback from constituents in my district?”

Rebuilding the Zoo Interchange is a top priority for the DOT and Gov. Scott Walker, who included $225 million in his proposed 2011-13 state budget to accelerate the project. It’s undergoing environmental review, and after the current public comment period closes, DOT will draw up a “preferred alternative” to present to the Federal Highway Administration for approval. Actual work on the freeway isn’t scheduled to begin until 2015.

michael murphy

The interchange is the busiest in the state, and the redesigned interchange will stand for several decades after it’s complete. Tim Anheuser, an engineering consultant to the DOT from Milwaukee’s Kapur & Associates, says the extra lanes are not needed immediately, but adds, “We don’t want to preclude something happening after 20 years.”

Bob Gutierrez, Zoo Interchange project manager for the DOT, says the shoulders were widened “not to preclude an additional lane in the future to meet a level of service that’s acceptable.”

Anheuser says striping the lanes immediately and opening them to traffic wouldn’t mesh well with the rest of the interchange design as planned by the Reduced Impact Alternative.

It does displace fewer homes, just eight residences, all of them apartments in a single apartment building that would be demolished along with three businesses on Highway 100. The plans would also cost $1.7 billion instead of $2.3 billion, the cost of the eight-lane plan previously considered by the DOT.

And despite the lower cost, the plan would also include significant improvements to roads feeding traffic to the Milwaukee Regional Medical Center, home to Froedtert Hospital, the Medical College of Wisconsin, the Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin and the Milwaukee County Mental Health Complex. Highway 100 would be expanded from six to eight lanes between I-94 and Watertown Plan Road, which runs along the north side of the Regional Medical Center and the Milwaukee County Research Park. Work on widening Highway 100 and other routes near the interchange would begin in 2013.

The Reduced Impact Alternative still calls for widening U.S. Highway 45 and I-894 to eight lanes between Lincoln Avenue and Burleigh Street.

Gutierrez says the design “gets us our level of service, reduces the impacts and really meets the spirit of what we heard in the 2009 hearings.”

Noting that the DOT is still taking public comments on the plan, he declined to comment on the possibility of using smaller shoulders on I-94.

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