Dan Melton reports on a walk along the tracks with officials in preparation for high speed rail . . . they seemed to learn quite a bit.
Ten Atwood train corridor neighbors, State Rep. Joe Parisi, Mayor’s Office staff Chris Klein, and Chris Petykowski of City Engineering walked the train tracks Wednesday morning from the Division Street-Union Corners Bike Path to Corry Street–talking along the way about how the Milwaukee-Madison train might affect abutting properties, trees and crossings.
Rep. Parisi and Klein said they were disturbed and concerned at the apparent lack of communication between WisDOT and neighbors who directly abut the train corridor. When Rep. Parisi asked neighbors on the corridor walk if they’d received info directly from WisDOT–if anyone had knocked on their door and talked to them, every neighbor said no. “No. No,” they said. “We feel we’ve been left in the dark.” “No one’s told us anything,” “We just want to know what’s going on,” “We don’t even know who to talk to.”
Klein said he’d call WisDOT immediately to talk to them about improving communication. “They [WisDOT] are going to have to do a better job walking the corridor,” Klein said. “They need to talk to everybody.” After the walk, Rep. Parisi immediately got in touch with WisDOT and lined up a meeting next week with WisDOT officials in his State Capitol office to talk about improving communication.
At Division-LaFollette, at the first house on the walk, Klein stopped to take note of how close to the owners’ back door a fence might go. At the Jackson dead-end, Klein and Petykowski listened to the owner of the last house on Jackson–that directly abuts the train tracks–stopped to look up and down the corridor to see where exactly the RR right-of-way-property lines appear to extend to–and where a fence might go.
At the Jackson dead-end, Klein pointed up the tracks towards Goodman Community Center, said the new Milwaukee-Madison trains, and new bed and track, may be so much quieter than what people are used to, that if you cross the tracks at this point, for example, you may not even hear the train until it’s on top of you.
At the Ohio dead-end, Klein and Parisi saw the well-worn dirt path–an ‘institution’ neighbors use to cross between the north and south sides of the tracks–that curves from the Ohio dead-end, through the bushes, to the dead-end of Farwell.
Klein was upset he’d been told the Union Corners Bike Path was not official–that it didn’t ‘go anywhere’; he’d been assured it wasn’t on any maps. Standing at the Farwell dead-end, he saw the green “Union Corners Bike Path” sign–saw how it runs along the S edge of Union Corners–connects the S side of the tracks to the N side of the tracks–saw how it serves a practical function as a transportation link.
“What are they talking about?” Klein said. “No document that the path exists? Look. There’s a (green) city street sign, right there, that says ‘Union Corners Bike Path’. It’s an official part of the city bike path network.”
Petykowski said one thing they might be able to do is rather than have a separate Division Street-Union Corners Bike Path RR crossing, with its own signals and gate, maybe move the bike path closer to Winnebago so it could work with the Winnebago signals and gates.
Standing at Corry Street as it crosses the tracks, when asked about WisDOT possibly closing Corry Street–to eliminate a grade crossing, Klein said he wants Fire Chief Amesqua to come out and look at the situation–to see if any of the possible street closings might increase ambulance-fire response times.
Klein and Petykowski said one thing WisDOT may decide to do–to eliminate a grade crossing–is make the Marquette Street Bike Path a tunnel under the tracks. It crosses the tracks at grade now–at the edge of Wirth Court Park.
