CTH E Finally Reopening Sept. 14; Locals Report 'Crushing Sense Of Normalcy'

WAUKESHA — County Trunk Highway E reopened to traffic on Sept. 14 after six weeks of emergency repair work, restoring the most direct commuting route between the city's west side and downtown. Commuters who spent the closure rerouting through downtown via the Newhall Avenue underpass say they are, on paper, glad to have their old road back, and are also, in practice, not totally sure what to do with themselves now.

The closure forced west-side drivers to choose between the Broadway railroad crossing and the underpass at Newhall Avenue, and a sizable share settled into the underpass route within the first two weeks and never really left it. Six weeks is long enough, several commuters said, to stop thinking of a detour as a detour and start thinking of it as simply the way home.

A Route They Didn't Ask To Love

Craig Dembski, 47, who commutes from the west side to a claims office off Sunset Drive, said he adopted the Newhall route in the closure's first week purely out of necessity and was surprised to find, by week four, that he preferred it. "There's a stretch past the elementary school where the light timing just works," Dembski said. "You catch it right, you don't stop once. I never had that on CTH E. I had trains."

Dembski said he drove the newly reopened CTH E on Tuesday for the first time since mid-summer and described the experience as "fine, technically," but reported an unmistakable sense that something had been lost. He has since mapped a backup alternate route, distinct from both CTH E and the Newhall underpass, which he says he intends to keep in reserve "in case they close it again, or in case I just need it."

"I'm not saying I want it to close again. I'm saying I already know what I'd do if it did, and there's a comfort in that I wasn't expecting."

— Craig Dembski, 47, commuter

The Numbers Agree

Ned England, 70, of Backslide Way, said his lawn-chair monitoring station tracked a 23 percent increase in morning traffic volume past his property over the course of the closure, a figure he attributes to detour traffic overshooting the Newhall underpass and cutting through his block before rejoining the grid. England, who documents neighborhood traffic patterns with a handheld radar gun from his driveway most weekday mornings, said the data was collected "the same way I've always collected it," and that he has no immediate plans to stop now that the road has reopened.

"Volume's already coming back down, but slower than I'd have guessed," England said, reviewing a clipboard of morning readings from the past ten days. "There's a lag. People don't unlearn a route the day the sign comes down. I've got the numbers on that going back to the Sunset Drive resurfacing in 2019, if anybody wants them. Nobody's ever wanted them."

Not Everyone Is Going Back

County Public Works confirmed CTH E is fully reopened with no further closures planned this year, but at least a handful of former detour drivers say they intend to keep using the Newhall route regardless, citing the light timing, the lack of trains, or simply an unwillingness to disrupt a routine six weeks in the making. Dembski said he expects to alternate "for a while," though he acknowledged this may just be a longer way of saying he hasn't decided.

"Everybody down here got very calm about traffic for a month and a half," Dembski said. "Now the fast way's back and it kind of feels like being handed your old job back after you took some time to figure some stuff out. Good problem to have, I guess. Still a problem."