Waukesha Confirms: All Roads Eventually Lead Back To Where You Started

WAUKESHA — Darren Kowalczyk, 51, left the Piggly Wiggly parking lot on Grand Avenue at 7:52 a.m. Friday intending to avoid downtown, and returned to the same lot at 8:37 a.m., having successfully avoided downtown by passing through it several times. The 45-minute trip, which Kowalczyk described as "a lot of careful driving," is the seventh such loop the city has documented since County Trunk Highway E reopened Thursday.

Kowalczyk, who works at an insurance office off Sunset Drive, said he had planned to skip both the Broadway crossing and the Newhall Avenue underpass in favor of what he called "a clever middle way" he assembled from memory and one glance at his phone. He made 14 turns, 11 of them deliberate. He estimates he was lost for none of it. "I always knew where I was," Kowalczyk said. "It was just always the same place."

The Route

According to Kowalczyk's account, corroborated by his dashboard-mounted phone, the trip proceeded without incident until the 20-minute mark, when he passed a bank he recognized. At 31 minutes he passed the same bank from the opposite side. By 40 minutes he had stopped attempting to correct course and began, in his words, "letting the grid have its say."

He pulled back into the Piggly Wiggly lot at 8:37 a.m. and parked in the space he had left, which was still open. "I took that as a sign," Kowalczyk said. "I don't know of what."

Store manager Linda Oskowski said the lot has seen an uptick in what she called "returning customers who have not yet shopped." She confirmed staff have begun greeting them the same way as those who arrive for the first time. "Some of them say they'll just run in for a second," Oskowski said. "Some of them just sit in the car for a minute. We've learned not to ask."

The City Responds

County Public Works Director Frank Novotny said the loops are not a malfunction of the one-way street grid but its expected behavior, and that the reopening of CTH E had simply given more drivers the opportunity to observe it. "The downtown grid is a closed system," Novotny said. "What goes in eventually comes out, and in a fair number of cases it comes out exactly where it went in. That's not a flaw. That's continuity."

"What goes in eventually comes out, and in a fair number of cases it comes out exactly where it went in. That's not a flaw. That's continuity."

— Frank Novotny, Waukesha County Public Works Director

Novotny said the seven documented loops this week represent a "modest, well-distributed sample" and declined to say how the county defines a loop, or how it knows about them. Asked whether the county planned any signage to help drivers avoid returning to their starting points, he said a sign reading "You Are Here" had been discussed and set aside on the grounds that "people already feel that."

An Independent Count

Ned England, 70, of Backslide Way, whose lawn-chair monitoring station logs vehicles passing his driveway with a handheld radar gun, said his clipboard shows nine vehicles this week that passed his property twice within the same hour, two more than the county figure. He said he has drawn no conclusion from the discrepancy. "The county counts loops," England said. "I count laps. It's different. A loop you get back where you started. A lap you did it on purpose."

England said one of the nine was a white Buick LeSabre that passed at 7:41, 7:58 and 8:14 a.m. on Thursday, each time at 22 miles per hour, and each time with what he described as "a lot of confidence." He has since added a column to the clipboard for confidence.

Bob Krueger, 72, a retired city Department of Public Works supervisor, said he has reviewed the loop and rates it 8 out of 10. "Anybody can build a street that goes somewhere," Krueger said. "Getting six of them to agree on going nowhere takes coordination. Whoever did this, and I'm not saying anybody did, did it right."

Councilman Gary Puchalski's office said Friday that he could not be reached for comment. A staffer said he had left to look into it, and later said he had returned to the office, having not looked into it.

Back Where They Started

Kowalczyk said he does not blame the city or the reopening of CTH E and plans to try a different bypass Monday, which he has not yet planned. He said he will leave a few minutes early, and that he will tell his office he was delayed by traffic.

"Which is true," Kowalczyk said. "I was in it the whole time."