Milwaukee county drivers are about to have to deal with a major milestone one a particular construction project.
You’ve all heard me talking about it… over… and over… The construction on 894 Westbound out of the Mitchell Interchange. Not gonna lie, sometimes even I get sick of talking about it about as much as drivers are sick of driving through it.
I spoke with the DOT’s Project Manager for the 894 project, Eric Hanson, “To start this coming weekend, Friday, September 20th, through the morning of Monday, September 23rd, we’re going to be closing down westbound 894 completely.”
That’s right, A FULL WEEKEND CLOSURE of 894 Westound. Now if you’ll remember, we did have a couple of full weekend 54 hour closures a few years ago with the Zoo interchange project, and it’ll work pretty much the same way.
So basically, starting at 11pm on Friday, all ramps and interchanges feeding into 894 Westbound and 894 Westbound itself will be closing down until 5:30 Monday morning. **As long as mother nature cooperates, this work is weather dependent.**
“During that time, Eastbound 894 will remain open,” explains Hanson.
Well, at least we’ve got that going for us.
Hanson says, “The scheduled work is to mill off the existing pavement and repave it with new asphalt. And the goal here is to repave all three lanes of 894 in one direction for the full three mile length of the project. To give an idea on the scale of this effort between hauling off the old pavement and then placing the new pavement, we’re anticipating around 1,000 dump truck loads of material to be moving around to complete the operation.”
There is an advantage to doing this type of work in one fell swoop.
Hanson adds, “When we perform work under a full closure like this, it’s safer for both crews and drivers. It allows the operation to be more efficient, and then it provides a better finished product by placing the asphalt all at once instead of in smaller sections.”
Also, up until now we’ve had to deal with the left lane closed on Westbound because crews were working on rebuilding the median area. Now that work is done, so we’re getting a traffic switch.
“The great news is that after this first weekend is complete, come Monday morning, we are scheduled to fully reopen 894 westbound back to the full three lanes of traffic,” says Hanson.
And by the way, those 3 lanes, will stay open for the remainder of the project.
Ok so we’re going to have to deal with this for 2 weekends (technically remember, they’ll be doing Eastbound too next week), how’re are folks supposed to get around this?
“The best detour routes would be to use the rest of our freeway system, with I-94 and I-43 going through Milwaukee to get around these closures. And then Layton Ave. is another great detour for traffic that needs to get to that area,” explains Hanson.
Check out the map below. You can find more information on the whole project here.
And as for the whole project?
Hanson says, “The 894 project is scheduled to complete tentatively the summer of 2025. And then the associated Loomis Bridge project, the Loomis Ramps and Loomis Road itself is scheduled to reopen this fall.”
So bear with the crews this weekend. It’ll be weird for a while, but there IS a light at the end of the tunnel!
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