Orange cones a necessary precursor to better roads

You’d be hard-pressed to get through La Crosse right now without running into orange barrels and a “road closed” sign.

And that’s by design. City council member Gary Padesky is getting plenty of complaints about road construction. He has to remind the complainers that you can’t get better roads without construction, so deal with it.

“People just have to change their habits on what time they go to work,” Padesky said. “Give themselves an extra 10-15 minutes. That way if there is key times of backed up traffic, they’re going to be OK getting to work.”

Padesky just recently fielded a phone call complaint about both the state of the city’s roads and the huge numbers of barricades, barrels and cones warning of road construction projects. Unfortunately, says Padesky, you can’t have one without the other.

“We can’t fix the roads without tearing the roads up and obviously that slows up traffic. Obviously, that’s an inconvenience, and I understand that.”

Padesky pushed hard to get some work done on Losey Boulevard this summer. Now a stretch of that very busy four-lane within his district is down to two lanes separated by heavy concrete Jersey barriers while crews hammer away at spot fixes of rough pavement.

Over the last couple of years, the city has tackled around eight miles of road repairs. Before that, the city was only repairing only two or three miles every year.