Waukesha Man, 68, Learns This Week That The Train Crossing Has Had An Underpass The Whole Time

WAUKESHA — Marvin Coates has lived in Waukesha since 1995. In that time he has stopped at the downtown railroad crossing on Broadway more times than he can count, and on Tuesday, at the Piggly Wiggly fuel center on the west side, a man he had never met told him he did not have to.

The man mentioned the Newhall Avenue underpass, which runs beneath the tracks on the south side between West Avenue and Grand Avenue, and which has done so for the entirety of Coates' 31 years in the city. Coates said he thanked the man, finished pumping his gas, and sat in his 2013 Buick Enclave for a period he estimated at four minutes.

"I need to sit with this," Coates said Wednesday. "That's a lot to take in on a Tuesday."

Thirty-One Years

By his own accounting, Coates has waited at the Broadway crossing on the order of two or three times a week for three decades, a figure he was reluctant to convert into a total and this newspaper was reluctant to convert for him. He described the delays as routine, and said he had come to understand them the way a person understands sleet, as something that happens to a region rather than something a person can route around.

He recalled a wait in roughly 2011 when the train stopped fully on the crossing and remained there for what he believes was close to half an hour. He said he turned the engine off. He said he ate a granola bar he had not planned to eat. He said at no point during those minutes, or during any of the thousands of minutes before or after, did it occur to him that the city had built a way underneath.

"I want to be clear I am not upset. I am just going to be quiet for a while."

— Marvin Coates, Waukesha resident since 1995

Coates said his wife, when informed, told him she had assumed he took the underpass "sometimes." He said this was the part he was still working through.

The Underpass

The Newhall Avenue underpass is not new, not hidden, and not, by any official account, a secret. It appears on city maps and has for years. It carries traffic under the rail line at a point roughly a half mile south of the Broadway crossing, and drivers who use it are, by design, not stopped by trains.

Reached for comment, Bob Krueger, 72, a retired city Department of Public Works supervisor, said the underpass has been "sitting right there, doing its job, asking nothing of anybody" for longer than he cares to specify. Krueger said he was sympathetic but firm. "You can lead a man to Newhall," Krueger said. "You cannot make him take West to Grand."

Councilman Gary Puchalski, asked Wednesday whether the city might post additional signage directing downtown drivers to the underpass, said the matter was "worth a look," and noted that the underpass is already signed in the customary way, which is to say it has a name and is a road. "The information is out there," Puchalski said. "It has always been out there."

What Now

Coates said he intends to use the underpass going forward, with reservations. He noted that Newhall Avenue takes him somewhat out of his way for most of his usual trips, and acknowledged that on several routes the Broadway crossing remains the shorter option even accounting for the trains. He said he would be evaluating this "case by case, like I should have been doing since Clinton."

He added that he was reluctant to tell too many people, both because he did not want to appear to be the last to know and because he suspected he was not. On that second point he may be correct. As of Wednesday afternoon, two additional west-side residents had contacted this newspaper to ask, separately and without prompting, where exactly the underpass was.

Coates said he planned to drive it once this weekend with no destination, "just to see it work." Asked what he expected to feel, he considered the question. "Underneath," he said.