County Trunk Highway E Reopens Monday; Local Detour Businesses Face "Sudden Abandonment" As Traffic Returns To Primary Route

WAUKESHA — Waukesha County's three-week emergency repair closure of County Trunk Highway E is scheduled to end Monday, September 14, when the road reopens to through traffic for the first time since crews shut it down for culvert work in mid-August. For the nine businesses that spent three weeks absorbing the detour, the reopening is being treated less like good news and more like an eviction notice with a start date.

The detour, which routed CTH E traffic onto a two-mile stretch of county road normally used by residents, farm equipment, and the occasional Culver's delivery truck, has quietly become the busiest corridor in that part of the county. Businesses along it are now bracing for what several owners have taken to calling, without apparent irony, "the falloff."

Peterman's Diner: 156 Extra Covers A Day

At Peterman's Diner, the detour's single biggest beneficiary, breakfast traffic is up 34 percent since the closure began, an average of 156 additional customers a day according to figures manager Frank Dulaney, 61, keeps in a spiral notebook behind the register. Dulaney said he began adjusting the diner's egg order in the closure's second week and has not looked back.

"I mentally budgeted three more weeks," Dulaney said Tuesday, refilling a carafe he now refills roughly 40 percent more often. "I ordered the eggs like it was permanent. I hired a girl. Her name is Ashley. She's good. I don't know what I tell Ashley on the 15th."

"I mentally budgeted three more weeks. I ordered the eggs like it was permanent."

— Frank Dulaney, manager, Peterman's Diner

Dulaney said he plans to retrain staff for normal volume starting the weekend before the reopening, a process he described as "the opposite of training," and that he has not yet decided whether to keep Ashley on reduced hours or lay her off entirely once the detour traffic reverts to its regular, pre-closure trickle of eleven regulars and one man who orders dry toast and sits for four hours.

The Shell Station's 8 Percent

A Shell station roughly a quarter mile down the detour route reported gasoline sales up 8 percent over the closure's duration, a bump station manager Priya Anand, 34, attributed almost entirely to drivers who "didn't know this station existed" before being rerouted past it three weeks ago. Anand said several of those drivers have since become regulars, buying gas, lottery tickets, and on at least four occasions, a full rotisserie chicken from the station's newly installed hot case.

"We're going to lose some of them back to the Kwik Trip on the highway," Anand said. "Not all of them. Some people just like us now. That's a real thing that happened. I can't undo that by reopening a road."

The Survey

A Waukesha business owner survey circulated informally along the detour corridor last week found that nine establishments, including Peterman's, the Shell station, a nail salon, and a taxidermy supply outlet that reported an unexplained 12 percent increase in foot traffic it "cannot otherwise account for," expect daily traffic to drop 30 to 40 percent by September 16, two days after the road reopens.

Diane Vandehey, 61, who chairs the county fair planning committee in an unrelated capacity but was reached for comment as a longtime resident of the detour corridor, said she has watched the phenomenon before, following a 2019 bridge closure on a different county road. "Businesses get used to it," Vandehey said. "Then the bridge reopens and everybody acts surprised, like traffic patterns are a personality trait instead of a road being closed."

What Comes Next

Waukesha County Public Works confirmed the September 14 reopening date is firm barring a final inspection failure, and said no further closures are planned on CTH E through the end of the year. A spokesperson said the county does not track, and has no plans to begin tracking, the economic impact of detours on adjacent businesses, calling it "outside the scope of the culvert."

Dulaney, for his part, said he intends to keep the extra egg order in place through at least September 20 "just in case people remember us," and that Ashley has been informed of the situation "in general terms." Asked what those terms were, Dulaney said he told her the diner was "busy for now," a phrase he acknowledged, after a pause, "does not really commit to anything."