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.

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.

One of the most disconcerting aspects of some bike maps is their habit of showing trails planned for the future as if they were already built. I recall two times where I set out to follow a bike trail that the map showed as existing, only to find that my only choice was a road with heavy traffic and no shoulder. I recently ran into two examples of this, although neither is likely to place the bicyclist in danger.

Brookfield’s Greenway page lists three projects scheduled for 2011-12. The current version of its map shows all three as presently existing. Late last fall, after printing the map, I decided to try all three, only to discover they didn’t exist.

Not to be outdone, Milwaukee’s bike plan shows existing and planned trails. Two of the “existing” trails run south from downtown along former railroad rights of way, one from Washington to Maple and the other along the Kinnickinnic River south of Lincoln. With the unseasonably warm weather last weekend, I decided to check them out. No sign of either although I spotted some construction that may be an early sign of conversion of the latter.

Kenosha county has recently paved its two sections of bike trails: from the Racine County line south to 35th St in Kenosha and from 89th St south to the Illinois state line. Thus the entire trail between Racine and Kenosha is now paved.

I just rode the newly paved middle section of the Lake Country trail. The trail is now paved throughout its length (except for a short detour near county P). While the trail is mostly a rail-to-trail conversion with mild grades, the newly paved portion follows a power line directly over a moraine next to the Nagawaukee golf course. So it is quite steep (I am told the state denied a grant application because the grade did not meet standards), but still much nicer paved.

In the same area, the trail along Cushing Park Rd between the Lake Country trail and the Glacial Drumlin trail is mostly open (one bridge was still unfinished when I looked but is easy to get around by taking the road). A side trail leads across the park to connect with the road up Lapham Peak.

An extension of the Brown Deer Trail is now paved and ready to open between Brown Deer Rd and Brown Deer Park. This is good news for several reasons. It eliminates the need for a potentially dangerous left turn between Green Bay Ave and the old village center of Brown Deer. It also means that the Interurban trail system is connected to Milwaukee county’s Oak Leaf Trail. Finally, the Interurban Trail system now runs from Brown Deer Park to Oostberg in Sheboygan County (with a few on-street interruptions).

(cross-posted at Wisconsin Bike Routes)

Shortly after the bridge carrying the Ozaukee Interurban Trail over Interstate 43 opened, I decided to try it out. Looking down, I spotted a couple of bicyclists on the frontage road staring up at the bridge and obviously wondering how to get on the trail. Unfortunately for them, the bridge spanned the frontage road along with the interstate, with no connection.

As more bike paths are built, particularly on converted railroads, we are likely to see more situations where two bike routes cross without connecting. In my last post, I listed a number of such situations with the Hank Aaron State Trail. The HAST is an extreme case, both because it starts in a valley and then moves to a former railroad, but there are a number of similar cases in Milwaukee:

• The new Beer Line Trail passes under North Ave without connecting to it.
• The East Side Oak Leaf Trail passes under Prospect, Farwell, and Locust without direct connections. There is a trail connection mid-block between Farwell and Prospect and one about a block south of Locust.
• A path starts at the east end of Brady St, descends the bluff to the Oak Leaf Trail. It then connects a bridge that passes over Lincoln Memorial Drive to connect to the bike path on the lake side of the drive. There is no connection, however, to the path on the west side of the drive.
• The Marsupial bridge under the Holton St bridge skips over Commerce St.

Just being in the right horizontal location may not be enough if one is too high or too low.

When I first researched the Milwaukee and SE Wisconsin bike map, I prepared some notes on the routes and posted them on my website of Wisconsin Bike Routes. They had not been updated since, an omission pointed out by one of our readers.

They have now been updated and can be seen here. I very much appreciated comments and additions.