Is it time to close La Crosse’s Bliss Road?

Two-mile stretch to Grandad Bluff is threatened again

The latest slope collapse beneath Bliss Road has once again threatened the integrity of the iconic street that winds up to Grandad Bluff.

Millions have been spent in recent years to repair the two-mile stretch after successive washouts closed it altogether.  

It’s La Crosse’s most frequently repaired city street.

Tens of thousands have been spent studying the road to find out what does or does not hold it up.

It’s been closed for months at a time. The road has its own maintenance account. 

Is it time to shut it down for good?  City council president Dick Swantz thinks that’s a good question.

“The experts say it’s going to continue to fail,” he said. “So, the real question for the (La Crosse city) council, I think, because it’s a city street in many ways, is: Do you keep it?

“The city has to have a serious discussion about how long it wants to be married to this project.”

The city just approved $40,000 in October to study Bliss Road. 

“We’ve been down this road before,” Swantz said, without pardoning his pun. “People have had fundraisers. The council has to have a serious discussion about how far (it wants) to keep going with this thing.

“The road fails, you stick a half million, a million dollars in it. You feel good. Several years go by, the road fails. Let’s do this with the full knowledge that that’s what’s going to happen here.”

Less than a month ago, a slope failure below the road started to cause concern about the stability of Bliss although it remains open for the foreseeable future.  

It it closed, it would be the fourth time in a decade.

The slope failure did take out the Oak Trail in Hixon Forest.