Mequon Clog: The Blog of the Clog!

Clog received this incident that happened in September

I may have been the first to get stuck in wet concrete on Mequon Rd at the intersection of Parkview Dr. Back on September 14, at 6 pm, I was going east on Mequon Rd. and was stopped in the median at the entrance to Parkview Dr. I was waiting for a gap in the continuos traffic going west. Finally the traffic came to a standstill and a car stopped short of the intersection to let me pass through. I turned into the Parkview Dr. entrance and dropped off into over a foot of fresh poured concrete.

There were no barricades or tape across the lane I was in. One of the workmen pointed to the east and said "didn't I see the barricade?" I said "I was coming from the west not the east so how would I see any barricades to the east?" They had also sprinkled dry cement on the fresh surface that made the dark concrete look white and dry. I think this was meant as part of the trap.

Gierach's Service spent hours trying to chisel off as much as they could but because the frame of my car is a box beam construction with two inch holes in the bottom, the concrete went up inside the beams and solidified. Now it is permanently part of the car. My car weighs several hundred pounds more now and drives like a tank.

On another subject, in my opinion the rebuilt road will last about five years before it becomes the bumpy mess it was before they started. I am a registered professional engineer and in my military years I did inspections of airfield runways. The workmanship and lack of proper rebaring will lead to rapped deterioration of the underlayment. Won't it be great to go through this again in a few years.

Clog comment: Why aren't the police ticketing the company for this one?!!!

I finally had a chance to download a photo taken on a foggy morning (most had burned off by the time at the time of the photo). Imagine someone at night -- this looks like a field go to go through, not way around.

This is the first photo from the car:

And a close-up to see the lack of yellow tape and exactly what someone could be hitting if they weren't paying attention:

While I don't know why a fire engine was even attempting to go down Mequon Road, I witnessed one getting stuck with its lights flashing and being followed by an ambulance, also with lights flashing.

Due to the 1-lane syndrome, I saw that that the fire engine and ambulance were behind a large semi just east of the Range Line intersection. Once the semi got to the opening near Robin, it tried to allow the two "emergency" vehicles pass. Well, they couldn't. The semi had to back up to allow the fire engine and ambulance to sneak through in front of it.

If this doesn't fall in the definition of insane, I don't know what does! How much additional damage was done, or worse if there was a life-threatening situation, due to the fire engine and ambulance being however many minutes late?!!!

I also don't understand how the city sits back and does not do anything to protect its citizens from this activity.

Because the crew recently received permission to work on this poorly managed project at night! Not exactly the sound that puts one to sleep! I know that this probably gives away my location as it is a limited section of road and I only live a good block away from Mequon Rd. I can't imagine what it would be like living right next to this.

Hey, I'm all in favor of getting the job done. However, I went past this work area a number of times today and didn't see anything going on of significance. Why wait until night to pave? Because you only get 2x pay during the day and 3x at night on the weekend?!!!

Now comes the question of why the need to work at night. Because they started the project late and obviously don't have enough people. And if they don't have enough people, why go through and tear the entire 3+ mile stretch apart at one time?! But the reason I heard that they didn't have enough people is that the requirements for a minority percentage of sub-contract work wasn't easy to find. The reason -- they were busy with all of the Interstate roadwork in Downtown Milwaukee. Well, if that is the case, then isn't the quota requirements for minority sub-contractors being fulfilled already?!!! Should WI import out-of-state workers to build on WI roads?!

I don't have a picture, but I recently heard of two stories of inept wet cement labeling. The first down by Homestead left an older gentleman buried in wet cement when he tried to turn off Mequon Rd onto a side street. The second was of someone walking on the sidewalk and inadvertently walked right into wet cement.

This lack of proper identification of problem spots has been an ongoing issue with this project. Proper paths to take are not delineated. While street lights would help in some cases, it makes no sense to advocate changing the nature of the neighborhood to overcome shoddy work!

This one is beyond bad. As one leaves from N Crown Ct walking East, the sidewalk is torn up (1st photo). So one needs to walk around, between the curb and the road sign. Take note of the path in the 2nd photo and the grate off of the sewer and completely unmarked. Now imagine trying to take this walk on a cloudy night and where someone could end up! (3rd photo)

This is just completely unacceptable and must be a major code violation.