Waukesha's Infrastructure Challenges Build Character, Says Retired DPW Supervisor

WAUKESHA — I spent 34 years with the Department of Public Works, the last eleven of them as a supervisor, and I want to say up front that nothing in this column is a complaint. I am not asking the city to fix the one-way streets. I am not asking anyone to touch the East Avenue roundabout. And I would consider it a personal setback if the freight train through downtown started running on any kind of predictable schedule. What I am saying is that any city can have straight roads and efficient traffic patterns. How many can claim infrastructure that tests the resolve of its residents daily?

I've heard this called a design failure. I've heard it called, by a man at the Piggly Wiggly on the west side who did not ask for my opinion but received it anyway, "an embarrassment." I disagree with both characterizations. What we have downtown is not an embarrassment. It is a natural sorting mechanism for civic competence, and I'd argue it's one of the last ones this city has left.

The Grid As Character Test

Broadway runs one way. St. Paul Avenue runs the other. A block later, both of them change their minds. I've watched delivery drivers circle the same four blocks three times looking for a loading zone that was, in fact, directly behind them the entire time. This is not a flaw in the grid. This is the grid doing its job, which is separating people who have lived here long enough to know better from people who have not.

My own nephew, visiting from Oconomowoc for a cousin's graduation party in June, got turned around on Wisconsin Avenue trying to find the DMV, a building his mother has driven past probably 200 times in her life without incident. I told him that's not a failure of navigation. That's the city checking his paperwork.

The Roundabout, 167 Days In

Yesterday marked day 167 for the East Avenue roundabout, and to my knowledge the city still has not documented a single clean four-exit lap. I've heard the "key to the city" idea floated informally for whoever manages it first, and I want to go on record now, before it happens, that I think that's the correct prize. Not a plaque. Not a gift certificate to a downtown boutique that will be having its closing sale for the third consecutive year. A key. Something with weight to it.

"Inconvenience breeds character. I did not say the roundabout would sound good on paper. I said it was doing the Lord's work."

— Bob Krueger, retired Waukesha DPW supervisor

I raised the key-to-the-city question with Councilman Gary Puchalski, who has taken my calls on infrastructure matters going back to the Eisenhower administration of his own political career, roughly 2019. Puchalski would not confirm the award is official policy. He also would not deny that his office has, in his words, "a drawer with some ideas in it." I consider that a yes with extra steps, which is itself a very Waukesha way to receive good news.

The Train, Considered Charitably

The freight train through downtown backs up Broadway traffic on a normal day for what I'd estimate at six to eight minutes, and on a bad day, when the train itself stops on the crossing and simply sits there, up to 30 minutes. I have sat through a 30-minute stop. I did not honk. Honking implies the train is listening, and I don't believe that's a productive use of anyone's energy, mine or the train's.

What I did instead, on the most recent 30-minute occasion, was watch Ned England, who I understand keeps a lawn chair positioned at Frame Park specifically for sightlines like this one, document the whole stoppage from the pedestrian bridge for one of his YouTube channels. I don't know England personally beyond a wave at the county fair, but I respect a man who has already built the infrastructure, so to speak, for turning a delay into a data point.

The only way around the crossing entirely is the Newhall Avenue underpass, on the south side between West Avenue and Grand Avenue, and I want to be precise about what that underpass represents. It is not a shortcut. A shortcut is available to anyone who looks at a map. The underpass is a reward reserved for those who truly understand Waukesha, which in my experience takes somewhere between fifteen and twenty years of living here, or one very good tip from a stranger at a gas station.

What My Wife Thinks Of All This

I read an early draft of this column to my wife, who listened all the way through before asking whether I had considered that some residents simply want to get to work on time. I told her that punctuality is a fine goal for a person who has not yet learned what this city is trying to teach them. She said that sounded like something a man says after being late himself. I was, in fact, eleven minutes late that morning, on account of the train. I don't see the two facts as being in tension. I see them as the same fact.

I'll grant the obvious counterargument, because I spent 34 years listening to counterarguments from people holding clipboards: none of this is a substitute for actual investment in signal timing, sidewalk repair, or the roundabout's frankly inadequate signage, and I'm not arguing the city should stop maintaining what it maintains. I'm arguing that somewhere between competence and dysfunction, this city found a setting it likes, and I'd rather we understood that setting before anyone tries to dial it back to zero.

Any city can have straight roads. Not every city can say its infrastructure has opinions about who belongs here. I know which one I'd rather retire in.