County Highway E Reopens After Three-Week Emergency Closure; Drivers Approach With Caution

WAUKESHA — Waukesha County reopened County Trunk Highway E to traffic Thursday afternoon, ending an emergency closure that began August 24 and lasted 24 days, a span the county's own announcement rounded to "three weeks" and that commuters, by most accounts, did not round at all. Repair crews removed the last barricade at 2:40 p.m. Drivers began using the road again almost immediately, at speeds a county traffic counter put at an average of 29 miles per hour in a 45 zone.

"I've driven it twice now and I'm still not convinced the potholes are actually gone," said Marcus Chen, 61, owner of Chen Hardware & Supply, which sits along the CTH E corridor and which lost, by his own count, roughly a fifth of its weekday traffic during the closure.

Three More Trips

Chen said he made his first trip on the new surface Thursday evening in his 2016 Ford F-150, at a speed he declined to give but described as "a respectful one." He made his second Friday morning, this time keeping his eyes on a spot roughly 400 feet past his second driveway, where before the closure there was a pothole he remembers as "about the size of a dinner plate, with opinions."

The pothole is not there. Chen said he does not consider this conclusive. By his estimate he will need three more traversals, spread across at least two different weather conditions, before he will trust the asphalt, and he has already scheduled the third for Sunday after church.

"I'm not saying the county is wrong. I'm saying a road can look fixed for a day. I'd like to see it on a Tuesday."

— Marcus Chen, owner, Chen Hardware & Supply

Lost On The Original Route

The larger adjustment, Chen said, has been among his customers. After 24 days of detouring through downtown, where the street grid reverses direction every block or so, a number of west-side drivers have returned to CTH E having lost, in his words, "all confidence in what a normal road does." Chen said one customer told him on Saturday that he had checked at every intersection along the corridor for a one-way sign, found none, and eventually stopped to yield to no one.

A second customer, Chen said, asked whether the store had moved to the other side of the road. It had not. Chen said the customer had spent three weeks approaching it from the opposite direction via the Newhall Avenue underpass and had "just gotten used to it being on the left."

Saturday transactions at the store came in at 212, against a pre-closure Saturday average of 260. Chen described this as "coming back," and said he expected a full recovery by mid-October, "once people remember where I am."

The Downtown Side

The reopening was less welcome in at least one corner of the local economy. A downtown boutique that has displayed a "closing sale" sign in its window since before the closure said detour foot traffic had "returned to normal levels," which the owner, reached by phone, characterized as "the same as before, and the sale continues."

County Public Works Director Frank Novotny said the new surface passed inspection and that the road "is open, and the asphalt is asphalt." Asked whether residents should expect any further work on the corridor this year, Novotny said none was scheduled, then said "as far as I know" and, after a pause, "as of Thursday."

Ned England, 70, of Backslide Way, whose radar gun has been trained on the corridor since the barricades came down, said his early readings show the median driver traveling at 31 miles per hour, which he called "cautious, but not unreasonable." He said he would have a fuller picture after two weeks. Asked whether the road felt different to him, England said it did not.

Chen said he plans to make his fifth and final trip sometime next week, after which he will consider the matter settled, unless it rains.