Governor blames budget for road project's pause

[Susan De Vos]

Governor blames budget for road project's pause

By RYAN J. FOLEY | Posted: Tuesday, March 30, 2010 6:28 pm | (2) Comments

Gov. Jim Doyle said Tuesday he has tried to speed up the timeline for rebuilding a crumbling highway interchange in Milwaukee, but has been stymied by budget problems and the complexity of the project.

Republican critics, including the party's leading candidates for governor, have accused the Democrat of diverting money from work on the Zoo Interchange and postponing the project. Their blitz started Friday, when state authorities shut down a bridge that carries traffic through the interchange because of cracks.

The bridge could be closed for two months. The closure has slowed traffic in one of the state's most heavily traveled corridors, one that carries an average of 42,000 vehicles a day.

At the same time, Wisconsin has won $810 million in federal stimulus money to build a high-speed train between Madison and Milwaukee. Republicans have called the project a boondoggle, and said resources should be spent on rebuilding heavily traveled but crumbling bridges and roads.

During his first comments on the subject, Doyle dismissed the criticism as baseless partisan attacks.

He told reporters the decision to begin work rebuilding the interchange in 2016 was made before he became governor in 2003. He said rebuilding the Marquette Interchange, another busy Milwaukee corridor that was recently rebuilt, and the interstate between Milwaukee and the Illinois state line had been set as higher priorities.

Doyle said he wanted to move up the Zoo project, at one point proposing to begin work in 2012, but the nation's economic downturn has left the state short of money to complete a project made extraordinarily complex by the need to move many utility poles during construction.

"This is a massive job that has to be done," he said. "The preliminary engineering work alone is going to take years and years. I tried to move it up. We hit a very significant downturn in the finances of the state."

State Rep. Brett Davis, a Republican from Oregon, Wis., who is running for lieutenant governor, introduced a bill Tuesday to block spending on the high-speed train line.

Davis and Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker, a Republican running for governor against Democrat Tom Barrett, said the state can't afford the train's estimated $7.5 million annual upkeep. They said the Zoo Interchange's problems highlighted the need to instead focus on the repair of crumbling roads.

Doyle called the bill ridiculous and said the train project had already won approval from the Democratic-controlled Legislature.

"It's amazing to me for people to say they would turn down $825 million that's going to create hundreds and hundreds of construction jobs in the state for years to come," he said. "He can grandstand on it, but this project is moving forward."