WAUSAU, WI (WSAU) — More steps are being taken to reroute WIS 52 and Business 51 in downtown Wausau.
A public involvement meeting was held Wednesday afternoon at Wausau’s City Hall about the plan to reroute WIS 52 and Business 51 through downtown Wausau. The new route would take 52 and 51 off of McIndoe St and move the highways onto Scott St.
City Engineer Allen Wesolowski describes the changes to Scott St. proposed for the project.
“Scott St is going to go from three through lanes. Right now there are three 10 foot lanes on Scott St. which is tight. The proposal will be to go to two 12 foot lanes. Which would actually increase traffic flow by providing a wider lane. We’re also looking at putting a bike accommodation on Scott St.”
Wesolowski also mentions that parking on both sides of Scott St. will remain where it is. The main concerns expressed at the public input meeting were focused on the traffic changes to Scott St according to Wesolowski.
“If there’s any shifting of traffic or the possible increase in traffic on Scott St. We’ve done traffic studies to show that in the long run there’s predicted that there’s really not going to be increased traffic on Scott St. There are also safety enhancements with moving that traffic.”
Wesolowski says the traffic study showed there would be very minor changes to traffic flow on Scott St.
“It didn’t note really a large increase in traffic over the next 20 years. And not a lot of shifting of traffic either because people were concerned that the amount of traffic on Scott St. would significantly increase. That was not the case based on projections by traffic engineers and the DOT.”
There are extra steps to this project’s process with the DOT. As the project is a state highway, Wesolowski explains the process is more involved environmentally.
“So with this one since it is a state highway, a connecting highway, we do have to go through the process. The environmental process, the public informational meetings, the traffic studies. So it is a pretty involved process.”
Since the project involves almost no construction, Wesolowski says there aren’t any environmental concerns for the project at this time.
“Because we’re not really putting a shovel in the ground and disturbing any ground, we’re not coming up with any major environmental concerns at this point. If people come forward through these public informational meetings, I haven’t heard of any major environmental concerns at this point.”
The next step in the project is to submit the environmental document to the DOT according to Wesolowski. There are still several steps involved in the process before the City can move forward with the reroute. Wesolowski says they hope to start the project sometime in the summer of 2019 and be finished by the end of the year.
