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Community Corner

Sometimes Driving in Waukesha is an Exercise in Tolerance

Check out Amy's view of the more confusing intersections in Waukesha.

We’ve all heard the jokes about driving in Waukesha.

My favorite is that since Waukesha was developed as an early resort town, it was laid out by a bunch of people in a holiday frame of mind, if you know what I mean.

Or have you heard this one? Waukesha is full of people who had to move here after visiting and getting lost, never to find their way out.

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One last one: Waukesha has only three streets – they just wind around and change names.

With all the confusing intersections, railroad tracks and mystifying street names and directions (for example, my favorites are South West Avenue, much better abbreviated to S. West Ave.; and Bluemound Road, Moreland Boulevard, Highway 18 or Highway 164, depending on where you are), driving in Waukesha is, to say the least, challenging.

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Adding to the challenge is the sometimes confusing signage. When there are more than three arrows on a sign, it can be mind-boggling figuring out which arrow applies to your lane. But what else to do with intersections that have more than two streets coming together?

Here’s my not-so-short list of some of the most confusing Waukesha intersections. Please note that they all have more than two streets coming together.

  • North, Madison and Delafield streets by City Hall
  • Moreland Boulevard, and White Rock and Eales avenues by Frame Park
  • East Broadway, and Hartwell and Lincoln avenues, near the Waukesha Family YMCA and, ironically, a driving school
  • Main Street, White Rock Avenue and Pleasant Street

After growing up in West Allis, where the streets are neatly organized with numbered streets in one direction and named streets in the other and very few curvy streets, adjusting to Waukesha hasn’t been easy.

Ten years ago, when I started driving in Waukesha to visit the library, the Y, parks or take my kids to preschool, I spent a lot of time and gas money trying to find the best way around town.

Now that I live here there’s a certain perverse pleasure I get in watching people attempting to find their way around town. They are usually driving slowly, trying to read a street sign and fumbling with a map, not a smart phone or GPS because those are almost useless in Waukesha.

Most of the time, however, I feel enough sympathy that I would likely stop them and give them directions, whether or not they ask for any.

“Yes, it’s Greenfield Avenue across Highway 164 but here in Waukesha, it’s Arcadian. Greenfield Avenue is over there, just a few blocks from the park,” I imagine myself saying. I think I’ve gone native.

But I sometimes think we’ve gone too far in setting ourselves apart from people from other communities, using the streets and directions as a way to tell who is belongs here and who doesn’t.

And while I’ve been very flippant about the whole issue, I received a wake-up call today from someone who watched me take a picture of the intersection of Main Street and White Rock Avenue and asked if I was doing a traffic study.

Our confusing Waukesha streets can be dangerous and sometimes deadly for those unfamiliar with them,  he said, referencing the motorcyclist who died in an accident at that intersection a while ago.

Let’s remember that and be careful as we’re winding our way through town.

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