UNDATED (WSAU) — The upcoming Memorial Day weekend travel will be a little easier on Wisconsin’s highways than it has been the last few months.
The Wisconsin Department of Transportation is either finishing or halting their major projects so that the increased traffic from holiday travel to increase safety.
Don Greuel is part of the WisDOT Bureau of Project Development. He said. “We’ve noticed that, of course, we have congestion every holiday, and for Memorial Day, like others, traffic is heavy. We want the traveling public’s trips to wherever, vacation or visiting relatives, during the Memorial Day weekend, we try to make it as smooth as possible.”]
Despite the accommodations, Greuel warns that driving through some zones may still be difficult enough to cause a problem.
“We just ask that the traveling public gives themselves a little extra time to get through because we still may have narrower lanes to travel through. There might be some crossovers and so-forth that slows down traffic, so just be patient,” Greuel said.
Greuel confirmed that the WisDOT tries to schedule around holiday weekends to get improvements out of the way for the busiest times of the year, but the Fourth of July celebrations are the most difficult to plan for.
“We try to limit those projects that we carry through till the Fourth of July, and again, July 4th, we won’t have contracted work again to open the lanes as wide as we can, reduce the number of lane closures if possible to get that traffic through.”
Though holiday travelers won’t have to watch for road workers, in general, workplace deaths in Wisconsin have not been as much of an issue in 2016 as they were in 2015. In fact, Greuel can’t think of a single one so far.
“I haven’t heard of any, which is good, but it is a dangerous situation when you have cars traveling by workers. Trucks trying to pull out of construction zones, and again, that’s why we slow down the traffic. To be alert is the best thing.”
Highway construction will resume at 6 a.m. on Tuesday morning.
