As he looked at the highway recently from the side of a newly constructed overpass, he said the project offered the promise of economic growth for his city. And then you get into Wisconsin and it's ca-chunk, ca-chunk, ca-chunk."Ĭunningham’s group began pushing to add lanes to I-39/90 nearly a decade ago. "You get to Illinois and it's just three lanes of really smooth traffic heading down to Chicago. "It's funny, when you cross the Wisconsin border, there might as well be a sign saying here's where the modern highway infrastructure ends," said Dan Cunningham, vice president of the group Forward Janesville. Chunks of concrete and rebar litter some ditches. Construction equipment sits dormant for winter. It’s flat, well-lit and finished.Īs drivers cross the state border on their way to Wisconsin, they immediately merge to a four-lane highway. The Illinois side of the interstate is six lanes of concrete, three lanes in each direction. Not everything state government does is easy to grasp, but people notice roads, and in the case of I-39/90, drivers headed north from Illinois can see firsthand what a few years and a few billion dollars will do for a state when it comes to building highways. Shawn Johnson/WPR Wisconsin’s Front Porch I think we have to take one step back and maybe ask ourselves if all the money we're throwing into these huge projects is actually necessary."Ĭonstruction equipment sits mostly dormant for winter along I-39/90. "This is a pattern that we're seeing all across the state. "It's not just isolated to this project," said Ashwat Narayanan, the transportation policy director for 1000 Friends of Wisconsin, an environmental group that has long scrutinized big highway projects. That doesn’t even include a $550 million rebuild of an interchange in Madison. The project was estimated in 2011 to cost $715 million, but a recent audit found that in just five years, costs has grown to $1.2 billion. Walker used a section of the highway near Edgerton as his backdrop in 2016 to announce the DOT’s latest budget, signaling that even at a time when the state transportation dollars were scarce, the widening of I-39/90 from four lanes to six would remain a priority.ĭespite today’s hyper-partisan political climate, Republicans and Democrats have both managed to agree on the plan to widen this stretch of interstate.īut at a time when the state finds itself struggling to pay for roads, the I-39/90 project is one of many that have been plagued by cost overruns. Amy Loudenbeck in 2016 after yet another press conference, this one featuring Gov. "It’s incredibly important to the district I represent in Rock County and also to the rest of the state," said Republican state Rep. "It’s a way for agricultural and manufactured goods to get to market," said then-Wisconsin Department of Transportation Secretary Mark Gottlieb in 2012 at a press conference celebrating the start of the project’s construction. Scott Walker holds a 2016 press conference next to I-39/90 to introduce the DOT's latest budget.
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