Back to Old Sauk Road
By Pat Schneider
The Capital Times
January 14, 1999
Area bicyclists are panning a proposal for widening Old Sauk Road to four lanes west of the BeItline.
Some 50 cycling enthusiasts packed a meeting on the road project Wednesday, and told city of Madison transportation officials that the proposed improvements won't make the road more usable but will draw more development.
"You're serving the interests of developers, not the interests of citizens," said Ray Tomlinson, who has lived in the area and biked Old Sauk Road for more than 30 years.
City officials insist they need to widen Old Sauk to serve development that's already been approved, including the Pleasant View Research Park. The $1.5 million plan calls for the road to be widened from two lanes to a four lane boulevard with bicycle lanes between the Beltline and Pleasant View Road.
"We're standing very firm" on not allowing more intense land uses than those included in long range plans for the area, said Ald. Sue Hamblin. "We've been approached by developer after developer.
Hamblin supports the project and says area residents do too. A meeting with residents of the nearby Blackhawk subdivision will be held Jan. 20. A public hearing on the project is tentatively set for March. The city hopes to bid the project this year for work to be completed in 2000.
But the project will face opposition from the very first review. Mark Shahan, a member of the city's Bicycle-Pedestrian Transportation Committee, said he will vote against it.
"Unless something really changes, I believe the city is going to try to go ahead with this. I will do everything to put a stop to it."
Officials believe the project will be eligible for federal funding covering 80 percent of the cost, and some cyclists charged Wednesday that the prospect of the federal money is pushing the city to design a road much larger than needed, inducing more sprawling development.
"You're building to the size of he car, making it harder to bike, harder to walk," I said Jeanne Hoffman of the Bicycle Federation of Wisconsin.
Asked Dave Tenenbaum: "Why not leave it a little two-lane road, put some bike paths on it and be proud of it?"
To city officials, the need for improvements is so urgent that they've drawn up an alternative plan to widen the road west to Heartland Trail only, allowing them to sidestep temporarily the complications posed by a historic church at Pleasant View and Old Sauk Road.
That part of the project will require time-consuming negotiations over the parking demands being made by the owners of the nationally registered First German Lutheran Church, city officials said. They hope to chop the project into two phases so that the major road widening can be done in 2000.
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