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45 Degrees North: Don’t Jinx The Road Work [1]

['Donna Kallner', 'The Daily Yonder', '.Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Coauthors.Is-Layout-Flow', 'Class', 'Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus', 'Display Inline', '.Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Avatar', 'Where Img', 'Height Auto Max-Width', 'Vertical-Align Bottom .Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Coauthors.Is-Layout-Flow .Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Avatar']

Date: 2025-08-08

Summer isn’t over yet in rural northern Wisconsin, but soon it will be. And before snow flies, there’s lots of work to be done on many miles of local, county, state and federal roads. It feels ungrateful to complain about delays and inconvenience from repair and construction projects when we just spent months or years bemoaning the poor condition of those roads. But we don’t want to jinx progress.

So here are some things to ponder while waiting for a flagger to wave you through.

Remember kindergarten. Apparently, some motorists have forgotten important lessons about sharing and waiting their turn. This became apparent recently at a road project between home and town. Instead of flaggers, this project used portable stoplights to control traffic on the one open lane. Theoretically, east-bound traffic would go on green and stop on red, giving west-bound traffic a chance to go in turn. Except the east-bound traffic just kept coming all through the west-bound green and yellow lights, and it continued through the west-bound red. That’s not sharing.

It happened again the next time I went to town. I suspect there’s greater demand than supply of flaggers, and the temporary lights are better than no traffic control at all. Still, if it were up to me, I would hire kindergarten teachers on summer break to flag traffic and teach remedial lessons to problem motorists: Line up here. Wait your turn. Proceed slowly. Pay attention.

Alternate routes. For the sake of my blood pressure, I started taking the back way around that construction zone. It’s only a country mile longer into town that way. The folks who live on those roads may not love the extra traffic from us go-arounders. But I’m grateful there’s an alternate route. I’ve lived on the wrong side of the river through bridge projects that meant months of long waits or much longer go-arounds. Rural people feel the impact of those projects in increased fuel expenses, more time spent on daily commutes to work and to check on elderly relatives, increased response times for emergency responders, lost business revenues, and more.

Not all alternate routes are suitable for all kinds of traffic, or the increased volume that comes with a go-around. And the drivers who are accustomed to using that as a preferred route may also be accustomed to taking their half of the road in the middle. So watch out on those hills and curves while you enjoy a change of scenery. But if there’s a line of liquid manure trucks turning onto that road, you might be grateful for the option of creeping along on grooved pavement after waiting for a flagger to wave you through.

Timing is everything. Right now, there’s a big road project underway about an hour north of me that’s detouring traffic down to my neck of the woods. I’m not on the official route, but another part of the state highway I live on is in that detour. So we’re seeing more traffic this summer and I expect that to continue into the fall. Folks who live where hills hide their driveways will have to time their Sunday outings carefully to avoid southbound traffic from Up North cottage owners racing home before the Packer game starts. There’ll be an opening in that long stream of traffic eventually when someone brakes for deer or turkeys crossing the road, but you have to be ready to make your break.

The 511. Short-term projects like pothole-filling, ditch mowing, and repainting lines generally occur with no notice to the community because any delays or inconveniences they cause are minor and short in duration. Emergency closures and delays come with no notice whatsoever when motor vehicle accidents or weather events occur.

But projects that will have more extensive and/or extended impacts generally come with some warning. And I’m sure there was plenty of talk about it ahead of time in gas stations and taverns closer to the actual construction of that project Up North from me. But down here, it came as a surprise when the detour signs went up.

So when I saw the signs, I went to the Wisconsin Department of Transportation app, Wisconsin 511. From it, I learned that the project’s anticipated completion date is November 1, 2025. That might be just about long enough for a few businesses on the detour to recoup losses from last year when a bridge project there reduced traffic to one lane all summer, causing many motorists to avoid that road altogether.

Kindergarten teachers on summer break could both flag traffic and teach remedial lessons to problem motorists: Line up here. Wait your turn. Proceed slowly. Pay attention. (Photo by Donna Kallner / Daily Yonder)

Don’t ask. That section of road is notorious for unexpected delays. There’s a hill there where a fully loaded logging truck stopped a crane from rolling downhill into oncoming traffic. The same hill saw another logging truck swerve to avoid a chain being used to try to pull someone out of the ditch. The rural fire departments that respond to incidents like those have a lot to do and few people to do it all. While they’re stabilizing a vehicle, doing extrication, assisting an ambulance crew, and other tasks, the volunteers working traffic control get limited information about anything other than when to hold up traffic in both directions while the wrecker repositions. So they really don’t know what happened, what’s happening now, how long things will take, or a convenient alternate route accessible to motorists who pull out of the queue.

Don’t tell. I was on traffic control overnight after a derecho hit our community in 2019. My husband worked the north end where wires were suspended across the road. I worked the south end where wires were down on the road. We both encountered motorists frustrated by the lack of information we could give them. Cell towers were down, and our county dispatch center was working on auxiliary power to handle the deluge of traffic that comes with a natural disaster. People sitting in the dark at home following Facebook posts probably knew more than we did about how widespread the damage was. We couldn’t answer the questions every driver asked: Could they get through to a particular location? How long would traffic be delayed? When would power be restored? Where was the closest place open where you could buy cigarettes? Some drove through the ditch to avoid the wires. Some of those came back through the ditch again later to get home, having confirmed to their satisfaction that no one had power, taverns were closed, there was no place to buy smokes, and the volunteer fire department members working traffic control really didn’t know much they weren’t telling.

It could happen. One of these days, I fully expect to get stopped by a road crew flagger trying to control traffic that includes all the usual suspects (liquid manure tankers, logging trucks) plus self-driving vehicles and an Amish buggy or two. I’ll leave it to other drivers to report the stoppage on Waze, or other apps, while I imagine the digital world erupting in a flurry of audibles carefully articulated by some artificial intelligence demanding answers those drivers don’t have: What happened? When will it clear? What alternate route gives me the option to stop at a coffee shop? Where can I buy smokes?

I wouldn’t mind jinxing the kind of progress that normalizes the expectation that every question can be answered and every inconvenience can be avoided. Maybe I’ll try to think up a good jinx while I wait my turn at some construction zone. Unless there’s a good podcast playing to distract me, probably something AI recommends just for me based on my podcast listening history.

Maybe that kind of progress isn’t bad; it’s what we choose to do with it that we may come to regret. When we come to rely completely on artificial intelligence, will we regret losing the habit of finding our own go-arounds? Do I want AI to remind me to pee before I leave home, then have to listen to I told you so while I sit with my legs crossed waiting for a temporary stoplight that everyone else ignores?

Maybe instead I’ll just sit and wait and daydream about kindergarten teachers working summers as road crew flaggers. This highway will be so nice when it’s done, and by then, the summer traffic will have thinned out. I wouldn’t mind seeing the neighborhood kids rollerblading on new blacktop like they did that one time. Could that really have been 40 years ago? I wonder if Waze knows?

Donna Kallner writes from Langlade County in rural northern Wisconsin.

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