[Reprinted from The Capital Times, Thursday, October 19, 1995. -Ed.]
By Chris Murphy, Correspondent for The Capital Times
Al overwhelmingly one-sided crowd blasted a proposal to widen U.S. 12 between Middleton and Sauk City at a public hearing Tuesday, but the protest may be only symbolic.
The Dane County Regional Planning Commission convened the public hearing and will forward comments made there to the state Department of Transportation. But the commission does not have any control over the $61 million project to widen U.S. 12 to four lanes, which the state plans to constructing in 1998.
Commission Chair Jonathan Becker said purpose of the hearing was to give the public a chance to speak in an open forum, rather than via individually taped or written comments collected by the Transportation Department at its hearings earlier this year.
The possibility that their complaints would fall on deaf ears did not keep project opponents away Wednesday night. Just one person spoke in favor of the road project, while 46 criticized it on fiscal, environmental and ethical grounds. Another 145 people registered in opposition, with- out speaking, and just five registered in favor.
Many speakers said widening the highway would lead to a string of development along U.S. 12, which cuts through the rural towns in northwestern Dane County on its way to Sauk City.
"Do we want to subsidize the generic spread of sprawl, such as we see on the west side of Madison?" asked Andrew Hanson of Madison.
Others feared that increased highway traffic would overload city streets in Madison that are already congested. The Nature Conservancy's David Cieslewicz fears increased development in the area will do irreparable harm to wildlife in the Baraboo Hills, a 144,000-acre forest north of Sauk City. The forest is unique in the Midwest, he said, because its unbroken expanse shelters a rare diversity of species. Cieslewicz told those assembled Wednesday that relatively low housing prices in Sauk City combined with a new four-lane road would surely bring houses to the hills.
But Thomas Carlsen, Transportation Department district director, said after the hearing that the expanded highway is not the root of the evils the critics see.
The department argues that the expansion is needed to make the road safer for motorists, while critics say less drastic modifications would ensure safety. When comparing a four-lane road to an improved two-lane, the difference in highway travel time is insignificant, Carlsen said, so why would one be more attractive for develop- ment than another?
Rolf Paul Meyer of Sauk City said fears about increased traffic on U.S. 12 have al- ready been realized for many. His daughter was recently injured when one vehicle forced hers off the highway.
"We already have the traffic and we have to do something about the traffic we have," he told the group. He was the only person to speak in favor of the road project. But others doubted that widening the road is the solution for the safety problems that exist. "I don't feel that we should be spending this kind of money on a road that has heavy traffic only two hours a day," said Tony Statz, 59, of Prairie du Sac. Statz has lived within a mile of U.S. 12 all his life.
The highway project has survived several attempts to derail it in the state Legislature, but federal agencies could still affect the outcome of the fight.
Bruce Nilles, who works with several groups opposed to the project, said they are anxiously waiting for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's comments on the environmental effects of the proposal.