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IN THE HEAT OF THE SUMMER
As temperatures rise this week so does the threat of pavement buckling causing a mess in southeast Wisconsin. Pavement buckling occurs when slabs of pavement expand and push up against one another. If the pressure is great enough the pavement can buckle and cause unexpected bumps and dips in the road. So far this year twenty-two state roads have experienced buckling, which can cause havoc on a vehicle, depending on how high the buckle is. If you run over a damaged roadway, it could significantly impact your vehicle’s tires, suspension, and rims.
The backroads are particularly susceptible to buckling, as almost all of them are redone by laying new asphalt over cracked foundations, as is found around almost all county and local roads in the Geneva Lake area. The Wisconsin Department of Transportation (WisDOT) works with the seventy-two county highway departments to provide maintenance on these roads with temporary fixes until a permanent one can be done.
Typically, crews use a jackhammer to remove the loose and broken-up pavement and then patch the area over with temporary asphalt so that traffic can begin using the road again. Later, a permanent patch is placed when traffic and time allow. Buckling is almost impossible to predict, so in areas that look like the road is starting to give way, WisDOT urges drivers to slow down and put all of their focus on the roadway ahead.
The growing enormity of Lake Geneva’s popularity is becoming very nearly a traffic terminal. Even the traffic coming up from Highway 12 and exiting onto Highway 50 in the eastern outskirts of town is significant, followed by the traffic moving north on Edward’s Boulevard. On Saturdays and Sundays in good weather on summer weekends, the traffic is now backed up from the signal at Edwards (where KFC is) all the way up over Catholic Hill, and the second hell to the east beyond it. Soon traffic will. extend all the way down through the signal at Walgreens and that will kind of be it. Complete deadlock looms on the horizon.
What can be done to alleviate this growing problem?
First of all, the problem must be recognized. Then a solution has to be worked out (and not the idiocy of turning northern Edwards into one lane each way road). There are professionals who are hired to look at and then do something about the problem. Lake Geneva has Vanderwall, and the city needs to put them to work on this, right now, before next summer literally ‘buries’ the place next summer. Road rebuilding has been a big cause of some of the hassle of coming to Lake Geneva this year, and a lot of that could have been alleviated by hiring more qualitative companies to do the work, but, in reality, the press of humanity is simply becoming overwhelming.
Tripling parking rates for the tourists would not stop them and then making sure that parking is essentially free for locals and many other groups living around Geneva Lake. Take the extra money and begin hiring more traffic personnel to direct signals and work to prevent the gridlock that is surely coming, one day soon, to the entire downtown of Lake Geneva. Staggering the road work between years would also not hurt and making certain that such road work was done in the spring and fall months with very punitive penalties for running over into the summer. This takes money to do and the businesspeople, residents, and those who make a living in other ways from the existence of what Lake Geneva, the city, really is and must remain, have to afford it. The cost of not taking care of handling this problem is the loss of what Lake Geneva has grown to become.
