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The Wisconsin State Journal Susan Lampert Smith Column: Giant Crash Shows Gigantic Problem

Posted on: Sunday, 12 March 2006, 15:00 CST

By Susan Lampert Smith, The Wisconsin State Journal

Mar. 12--It's hard to see how a crash involving 60 people could have been worse.

But when Iowa County Sheriff Steve Michek looks over the report from Wednesday's giant pileup on Highway 18-151 near Ridgeway, he's surprised more people didn't die.

"I'm still looking at the photos and saying, 'Oh, my God!'" Michek said Friday.

The giant crash, which involved three semitrailers, three cars and a tour bus, bore an eerie resemblance to a crash that killed three UW-Platteville students at Barneveld in December 1998. To me, it's more sad evidence that Highway 18-151 between Dodgeville and Verona needs to be improved sooner, rather than later.

In both cases, a semi was leaving a truck stop, blocking the eastbound lanes as it tried to turn through the median into the westbound lanes. Both mornings it was foggy. And both mornings, drivers heading east on the four-lane divided expressway crashed into the semis.

Michek was at the scene of the Barneveld crash.

And on Wednesday morning, he had the sad duty of going to Dodgeville High School and telling Lisa Zart's 14- year-old son, Devan Boling, that his mother died on her way to work at CUNA Mutual in Madison.

In both the crashes, the design of Highway 18-151 is at least partly to blame.

"It's essentially an interstate corridor between central Iowa and Fond du Lac," Michek said. "The volume (of traffic) has changed so much since it was built."

Standing in the driveway of the 151 Express truck stop, Michek could see five places where county roads, town roads and driveways cross the expressway, where the speed limit is 65 mph.

The Barneveld intersection was rebuilt with a bridge after that 1998 crash. On March 2, the Dane County Board voted to close the north half of another 18-151 intersection in the town of Blue Mounds, following a January crash that killed a 17-year-old Janesville girl.

Michek is meeting with area and state Department of Transportation officials Wednesday to discuss what can be done to improve safety between Verona and Dodgeville, the last section of the road that still has at- grade crossings.

In April, look for public meetings about the highway. Joe Olson, region director for the DOT, said the meetings were scheduled before Wednesday but added, "We know people will want to talk about the crash."

The DOT expects to have a study of possible improvement completed by early summer, but Olson cautioned that "from a funding perspective, it's going to be a while."

The one good that may come out of Wednesday's crash is that it will again focus attention on the highway's problems.

When Highway 18-151 was improved to four lanes in the early 1980s, it wound through farmland. Today, Verona and Mount Horeb are booming suburbs, and Blue Mounds and Verona are close behind.

People who live in Madison drive to Dodgeville to work, and vice versa. With the completion of the expansion of the highway to four lanes between Dubuque and Dodgeville -- making it four lanes from the Mississippi to Fond du Lac -- cross-country truck traffic is increasing.

It's when the traffic gets east of Dodgeville that the crossing roads suddenly appear. I once saw several cars and trucks veer into the median to miss a stopped Barneveld school bus that was letting off children at a farm driveway on the highway.

Michek sees near-crashes all the time, too. And, to be fair, not all can be blamed on the highway. On Wednesday morning, Michek said someone tried to pass a fire truck that was racing to the pile-up. The driver of the fire truck straddled both lanes, knowing that if the man passed, he'd likely crash into the cars, trucks and bus that were strewn across the highway.

"He probably saved the guy's life," he said.

-- If you go

The public is invited to meetings to discuss short-term and long-term improvements to Highway 18-151 between Verona and Dodgeville. The meetings with Department of Transportation planners are from 4:30 to 7 p.m:

April 5 at the Barneveld-Brigham municipal building in Barneveld.

April 6 at the Springdale Town Hall east of Mount Horeb.

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Copyright (c) 2006, The Wisconsin State Journal

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

For information on republishing this content, contact us at (800) 661-2511 (U.S.), (213) 237-4914 (worldwide), fax (213) 237-6515, or e-mail reprints@krtinfo.com.

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Source: The Wisconsin State Journal

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