Wisconsin State Fair Draws 1.1 Million Attendees; County Braces For 'Unprecedented Traffic,' Planners Say

WAUKESHA — Waukesha County Highway Commissioner Dennis Aldrich, 54, unveiled the county's traffic mitigation plan Tuesday ahead of the Wisconsin State Fair's 175th run, telling reporters the highway department has pre-identified three alternate routes around downtown and is bracing for what he called "unprecedented traffic," a phrase he said he chose after consulting last year's phrase, "significant traffic," and finding it insufficient.

The fair, held at Wisconsin State Fair Park in West Allis, runs 11 days, August 6 through 16, and is expected to draw 1.1 million attendees. County planners estimate 340,000 of those visitors will pass through Waukesha roads at some point during the run, most of them via Highway 18 or the Moreland Boulevard corridor before connecting east toward the fairgrounds.

The Three-Route Plan

Aldrich's department has mapped three alternate routes intended to steer fairgoers around downtown Waukesha entirely, primarily to avoid the Broadway rail crossing, where freight trains can hold traffic for up to 30 minutes when a train stops on the tracks rather than simply passing through. "We've built this plan around one assumption," Aldrich said. "That a fairgoer stuck behind a stopped train downtown does not become a more patient fairgoer. She becomes a fairgoer who takes Sunset Drive next year instead."

Commuters seeking to bypass the crossing entirely have one option Aldrich's office is promoting in this week's advisory: the underpass on Newhall Avenue between West Avenue and Grand Avenue, the only route under the tracks on the south side of downtown. Aldrich said his department fields "a modest but real number" of calls each fair season from residents who did not know the underpass existed.

"A fairgoer stuck behind a stopped train downtown does not become a more patient fairgoer. She becomes a fairgoer who takes Sunset Drive next year instead."

— Dennis Aldrich, Waukesha County Highway Commissioner

An Independent Verification Effort

The county's forecast is not the only one in circulation. Ned England, 70, of Backslide Way, has spent the past four days conducting what he describes as baseline traffic documentation from his lawn chair, using a handheld radar gun to log vehicle counts at two-hour intervals between 6 a.m. and 8 p.m. England said he is cross-referencing this week's readings against his own radar-gun archive from the 2023, 2024, and 2025 fair weeks, which he keeps in a spiral notebook he declined to remove from his garage for photographs.

"The county's got their number. I've got mine," England said. "Mine's from the actual street, not a spreadsheet." England's preliminary count, as of Monday afternoon, showed a 6 percent increase in eastbound traffic past his driveway compared to the same pre-fair Monday last year, a figure he said he considers "early but directionally credible."

England's son Trevor, who lives at the Backslide Way address, said he has largely stayed out of the count. "He asked if I wanted to log the 4 p.m. shift," Trevor said. "I had plans."

Downtown Considerations

Retired DPW supervisor Bob Krueger, a frequent opinion contributor to this paper, said the fair's traffic surge will land on a downtown parking grid he has previously argued benefits from its own dysfunction. "I've made the case that the parking crunch builds community," Krueger said. "I'm not walking that back for a state fair. I am saying bring a book if you're circling for a spot on Broadway between the sixth and the sixteenth."

Aldrich said the three alternate routes will be marked with temporary signage installed by Thursday morning and that his department does not plan to revisit the plan once the fair opens, barring what he called "a structural failure of a specific route," which he said has not occurred in his six years overseeing fair-week traffic. The Wisconsin State Fair opens Thursday at 7 a.m.