MILWAUKEE - — The end of a lengthy Milwaukee road project has arrived. A complete re-design of North Humboldt Boulevard is complete, where work has been underway since early 2021.
The city's chief construction engineer, Tony Kotecki, says you'll see added bump-outs, wider medians, and crosswalks and bike lanes with extra pavement marking. Mitigating reckless driving was a large part of the design process which included narrowing the road from two lanes to one.
"All of the concrete work is done, all of the pavement marking is done, all of the landscaping is done," said Kotecki noting that there should not be any more street closures on Humboldt.
Kotecki called it one of the more challenging projects in his 30 years on the job.
"We learned a lot of lessons here with the citizen involvement, with the businesses, and providing access to them."
He added that the top challenges were maintaining the flow of two-way traffic during construction and preserving the trees that line Humboldt.
"The 3rd thing I would have to say — would be the utility work," said Kotecki. "When you couple projects, and you do everything so close to each other, it's a long burden for the people who live in this neighborhood."
The expected completion date was May 31, 2023, but Kotecki says some unexpected hurdles added time.
"At the end of the year, last year, there was a concrete rationing or shortage. So we were only allowed to pour 30, 40, or 50 yards of concrete a day."
While some minor landscaping still needs to be done, Kotecki is happy to label the $12 million dollar project as complete.
"We haven't added up the numbers completely yet — but other than a few known things that we added to the job, the base core of it was done a little bit past time but on budget."
You can expect to see some construction remnants along the street as crews focus on a few finishing touches.
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