The Wisconsin Bike Fed blog has a discussion of plans for connecting the Oak Leaf Trail to the Brown Deer Trail and the Ozauke Interurban Trail. A public meeting will be held this Thursday at the Brown Deer Park boathouse to discuss these plans.

Today, as I was scouting bike routes between Waukesha and Washington counties, I came across a sign announcing the impending closing of Colgate Rd.  Colgate Rd is quite a nice north-south low-traffic route. Unfortunately for Colgate it crosses a railroad and the Wisconsin Commissioner of Railroads has been on a tear to eliminate railroad crossings. All the alternate routes in the area are far more heavily traffic. It is likely that what makes Colgate attractive for bikes–low traffic–sealed its doom from the Commissioner of Railroads.

It turns out that the rustic road mentioned in an earlier post that was destroyed as a through route–Hoosier Creek Rd–was also done in by the Commissioner of Railroads.

Road work on the intersection of county P and I-94 is now nearly complete, including bike paths connecting the two sections of the Lake Country Trail east and west of county P and trails passing under the interstate. The intersection includes four traffic circles.

Also plans have surfaced that would extend the Lake Country Trail west from Oconomowoc to Watertown in Jefferson county. The route would follow a powerline that using a former interurban right of way. The biggest obstacle is the need to bridge two crossings of the Rock River.

Today, in preparation for the third edition of the Milwaukee and Southeast Wisconsin map I was in the Burlington area checking routes shown on previous maps, including the roads the Wisconsin Department of Transportation has designated as Rustic Roads.

I was very surprised then to see a “dead end” sign at the intersection of one of these rustic roads, the Hoosier Creek Road. I took the road nevertheless and found that it had indeed been made dead end. A substantial section had been torn up and no trespassing signs posted. It appeared that the former public road had been handed over to private interests.

Both ends of the road still sport Rustic Road signs and it still appears on the DOT’s map as a through route.

I have never seen this before, where a public road was closed and converted to private interests. I wonder if this is legal. On my way home I kept thinking of Putin’s Russia where people who are politically well-connected can obtain public enterprises and become very wealthy.

I sent an email to the DOT and will report any response.

A web site called Walk Score rates cities and neighborhoods for walkability, the ability to walk to destinations like stores and coffee shops. Of the fifty largest US cities, Minneapolis is ranked ninth most walkabable with a score of 69. Milwaukee is fifteenth (score: 61). Madison had a score of 55. All three are rated “somewhat walkable.

The site also rates individual neighborhoods. Scores over 90 are called “walker’s paradises.” In the Twin Cities, Minneapolis’ downtown east, Loring Park, and Lowry Hill East and downtown St. Paul are rated as walker’s paradises. Milwaukee’s most walkable neighborhoods are Northpoint, Murray Hill and Juneau Town. In Madison, the capitol area is the only one.

The least walkable cities in Wisconsin are Caledonia, Pleasant Prairie, and Mequon. All are in southeast Wisconsin (on the Milwaukee bike map) and are areas near Racine, Kenosha, and Milwaukee that have recently become urbanized. Given their low density, it is unlikely that these areas will ever become walkable. But perhaps they could be made bikeable.

One tool on the site allows the user to type in an employer’s address and get back a list of apartments within a walkable or bikeable distance or available on public transportation. Apparently major apartment listings now include walkable scores (see this article in Slate), reflecting a growing desire to get out of cars.

The southern leg of Milwaukee county’s Oak Leaf Trail follows Drexel Avenue. Construction has started on a new interchange that will connection I- 94 with Drexel, resulting in intermittent closings of Drexel between S 27th St and S 13th St. The Wisconsin DOT has posted a detour for cars but not for bicyclists. Unfortunately the car detour (north on 27th, east on Rawson, and south on 13th for those traveling towards Lake Michigan) does not work well for bikes, carrying heavy traffic and, in the case of 13th lacking a shoulder.

It appears that the best detour for bikes would be to go south on 27th, east on Puetz, north on Shepard, east on Forest Hill, and north on the power line bike trail to Drexel, for bicyclists traveling towards the lake. Those going away from the lake would take the same route in reverse. Note that Puetz Rd west of 27th lacks shoulders and can carry heavy traffic.

According to the DOT’s web site, Drexel will be closed until November.

Once upon a time, Chicago’s movers and shakers, such as the Wrigleys and the Ryersons built mansions along Lake Geneva. During the summer, their families would escape the heat and ride the train to their summer homes. Many of the mansions are still there but the train is gone. But a short stretch of the old railroad has been turned into a bicycle trail.

Apartments made from boxcars

Whenever a new facility is proposed for bicyclists, in Milwaukee at least one can expect some letters to the editor in adamant opposition. Some look at bicycling as a frivolous activity; others seem to have been traumatized by an encounter with a bicycle. But the most frustrating are those who claim to be bicyclists, state that they would not use the facility, and conclude that therefore no bicyclist in his right mind would use the facility.

For example, when a bicycle lane was proposed for Milwaukee’s Hoan bridge, there were a number of letters that insisted the bridge was too steep and too windy for bikes. Yet when the bridge was closed one morning last summer to allow the UPAF Ride for the Arts to cross, it proved very popular and much less steep than many of the hills that bicyclists often ride.

I have run into several other examples in the past month. A proposal to extend the Lake Parkway south with a parallel bike path resulted in several letters saying that the idea was folly since the letter writers would never use it. A proposal to add shoulders to a road reconstruction in Pewaukee also apparently prompted letters that insisted bicyclists did not want shoulders.

The notion that bicyclists can project from their own preferences to what all bicyclists want seems like a stretch to me (although I am also skeptical as to whether some of the letter writers are the avid bicyclists they claim to be). In my experience bicyclists vary widely in what they look for in a route. Some just want to get from one place to another as quickly as possible and have considerable faith that drivers will look out for them. Others put much greater weight on scenery and protection from traffic.

Recently, I complained about new trails in Brookfield (and Milwaukee) that are reported on maps before they actually appear on the ground. A recent visit to Brookfield shows some progress in making reality match their map. The black plastic fencing used to mark off construction zones has appeared along the routes of three of the trails. On the fourth, filling in a gap through a wetland along Brookfield Rd, a boardwalk has actually been built but is not yet open.

Still no evident progress along the Milwaukee trails, however.

Plans are afoot for a new national wildlife refuge in southern Wisconsin and northern Illinois. Called the Hackmatack National Wildlife Refuge, it would be centered on Genoa City and run between the Bong recreation area on the east roughly to the western shore of Lake Geneva. The northern boundary approximately follows the White River State Trail and the southern shore of Lake Geneva. Despite its proximity to Chicago and Milwaukee, this is an area of small towns, lakes, farms, and country roads that offer great bicycling.

In contrast to older National Wildlife Refuges that consist primarily of federally owned property, the new refuge would be a patchwork offering a variety of environments for wildlife, particularly birds that could move from site to site. This does seem to fit in with current thinking about conservation: rather than concentrating on preserving completely wild areas, find ways to support both wildlife and a variety of human activities.