Highway W project is planned for 2017
By Gail Peckler-Dziki
Correspondent
Kenosha County plans to get the major kink out of Highway W, just south of 82nd Street, in 2017.
The estimated cost of the project is $850,000 and construction is planned to begin in the spring or summer of 2017 and be completed by the fall of that same year.
The project is about .43 miles long and defined as a major reconditioning with less than 50 percent of the project being reconstructed and the remainder being resurfaced.
The plan is to move Highway W 75 feet to the west and make the lanes 12 feet wide rather than the current 11 feet. New drainage ditches will run alongside the road and empty storm water directly into the Fox River, completely bypassing the residential property that now receives the storm water.
Gary Sipsma, director of the Kenosha County Highway Department, said that when a “for sale” sign went up on additional property to accommodate the improvement, the county bought it.
“This has been a problem curve and the county has long wanted to straighten it out,” he said in a recent telephone interview.
“We contacted the realtor and discovered that HUD (Housing and Urban Development) owned it,” he said, “and the county purchased it for about $90,000.”
Sipsma said, “At that point, we began the engineering for the project.”
Highway W is a north-south route that runs from the state line with Illinois and into Racine
County. Wisconsin Department of Transportation reports an average of 1,600 vehicles traveling that road every day.
The 90-degree curve just south of 82nd Street has 11-foot lanes and a 2.5-foot shoulder in each direction. The existing right of way is 66 feet wide and the roadway width is 22 feet from edge of pavement to edge of pavement.
The steep hill on the south end of that curve creates minimal sight distance and also causes storm water drainage issues for the home located on the curve at the bottom of the hill to the east of the road.
Sipsma said there have been numerous vehicle crashes on that stretch of road.
“Many are unreported because drivers would hit the guardrail and then drive away,” he said. “County crews were out there about seven times a year to fix the guard rail.”
During construction, Highway W will be closed to through traffic. The posted detour will direct traffic to use 312th Avenue to 93rd Street (Silver Lake Road).
See the Jan. 5 print edition of the Westosha Report for the full story