OUR PLACE
It’s no secret that traffic in Lake Geneva has always been a struggle, and it’s expected to get worse.
With the Highway 50 road construction project expected to start in February 2027 and last approximately two years, maneuvering downtown is a concern. The Business Improvement District and the city are trying to come up with ideas and get a plan in place to help with the travel issues. The BID has presented the idea of trolleys in the city in the past and even went as far as researching what that looks like as there are a lot of moving parts to make this happen. There’s the purchase of trollies, staffing to operate service, financial commitments to fund the operation, location and housing of the trollies, and much more.
The city has joined in the effort to help make traveling through and in Lake Geneva a little easier. The city council did discuss the potential purchase of two Trollies from Jones Bus Service, which are for sale right now. Of course, before the purchase can be made, more thought needs to be done, and the city would need a concrete plan to jump on this opportunity. As of right now, the city has a deadline for proposals from qualified transportation providers to operate a seasonal trolley transport system for the 2027 and 2028 summer tourism seasons. Submissions were due by May 24, 2026. It will be interesting to see how many proposals were submitted and the costs involved.
Whatever decision is made, it needs to be done fast, as the Jones Trollies have other interested buyers, and used trollies in good condition do not go up for sale often, and the road construction on Highway 50 will be here before we know it, and downtown is going to need some help staying vibrant and inviting.
Entering the year 2027 and the reconstruction of Lake Geneva.
The side construction projects outside the coming thick corridor of construction to be driven through Lake Geneva’s heart like a wooden pike through the chest of Dracula are not just a broken disgrace but an exercise of inattentive incompetence. Poorly marked warning signs, few if any directions on where to detour or how to do it everywhere and nowhere. Streets and corners where orange barrels are all over, but no workers are to be found for days, sometimes weeks on end. Add to this the tattered states of almost all the side and parallel streets that will surround the long two-year thrust of the coming pike into the city’s chest.
The city administrator and many other appointed employees of the city took big raises earlier this year, but the roads have seen almost no money filed toward them at all. There’s a new and virtually useless police boat with a pier and the rest that goes with having such a great, expensive, and nautical male work toy. The city’s once highly touted and very expensive automatically operated traffic lights, all of them, are blinking green, red, and yellow lights of frustrating mirth. Artificial Idiocy.
Why has the city’s money gone into projects and people who are going to do nothing to help the city recover from two years of having its heart torn asunder and then slipped back into its tattered chest cavity? What about the businesses that are going to be severely impacted by this coming project? Is there any money set aside for them so they can make it through two summers of total sales discontent, if there are any sales at all? Not on your or their life.
If complaints are filed or voiced by unhappy and discontented public at not televised (of course) public meetings, then the Lake Geneva city administrator will offer a solution. He’ll ask for another raise.
