Bypass tweak brings cardiac relief
Merrill Hills Road not good place for increasing traffic
By D. Enriquez
The sight of the big buck with its expansive chest and full rack of antlers was breathtaking.The breeding rut was in full force. It was nearly dusk in late fall as I drove past the Merrill Hills Golf Course.
There he was on a hill in the golf course. I stopped my car on Merrill Hills Road to admire his grace and stature. Our eyes met before he bolted to parts unknown.
The memory came to mind during a public meeting on the proposed bypass. Planners were considering whether to knife the high-speed road through the beautiful and mature Merrill Hills Road neighborhood.
Completing the western portion of the bypass has been on planning maps since forever. It’s thought that Lewis and Clark used it during their expedition to the West Coast.
In 2009, long-dormant plans for the West Waukesha Bypass were revived through state, county and local efforts.
Merrill Hills Road between Sunset Drive and Highway 59 is an appealing ride. It reminds me of prosperous times, when owning a home on a beautiful and secluded country road was within reach of most hardworking folks.
I was relieved to learn that the Merrill Hills Road option is now off the table.
The bypass will be two or four lanes, depending on final plans. Using Merrill Hills Road as a section of the bypass would have meant the loss of nine to a dozen homes.
Realistically, I don’t think it was ever a viable option. It would have been too expensive to buy up the homes. I’m sure the well-heeled golf course and country club crowd would have had their say in the matter.
Who’d want their secluded golf course bordered by a noisy and heavily traveled bypass? Not the buck.
A group studying the West Waukesha Bypass reported in its March newsletter that the Merrill Hills Road option was dropped from further consideration. That decision was based on engineering design, environmental impacts, costs and public input.
The hitch in this plan is what to do with the bypass south of the Wisconsin & Southern Railroad. With the Pebble Creek environmental area smack in its path, planners are trying to figure a way to connect the existing bypass with the planned southern stretch.
The study group kept open two options south of the railroad tracks. One is to build the bypass west of Pebble Creek’s wetlands. The other is to convert Sunset Drive to Highway X into a bypass section.
About 140 people who attended an early February public informational meeting expressed their support for the Pebble Creek option.
As for the question of whether the western bypass should be two or four lanes, the study group determined it should be four lanes in its entirety.
The concrete ribbon is expected to ease the congestion that now afflicts Meadowbrook Road and carry trucks and workers to jobs in industrial and commercial parks in southern Waukesha.
