On the road again

By Candace Doyle

Doyle Ralph Schroeder had the chance of a lifetime working for the Wisconsin Department of Transportation: He worked on the westbound portion of the original Marquette Interchange.

A 1960 civil engineering graduate of Marquette University who later received his master's from the Milwaukee School of Engineering, Schroeder started working for WisDOT in 1957. And by 1964, Schroeder found himself working on the Marquette for four straight years; he retired from the department in 1994.

On Sept. 22, Schroeder got a chance to return to the job site; he toured the new $810 million interchange reconstruction project with other WisDOT retirees who worked on the Marquette, including Duane Beckwith, Mike Jaskaniec, Chuck Ingwerson and Dave Kussow.

But many factors were different in the original, 10-year project, said Schroeder, of New Berlin, and cost was one of them.

"I had the largest contract, at $4.25 million," said Schroeder. "But that was 40 years ago. My starting salary was $4,000. A lot of things have changed."

More than cost, though, he said the fabric of the community was different. Back then, there simply was no freeway to downtown Milwaukee, which is hard to picture today.

"The first time, it was something new to the area," he said. "People were driving on local streets. When we finished the Marquette, that tied everything together. You could drive through Milwaukee.

"Now, we've got people who are used to driving on the system," Schroeder said. "They don't necessarily see the need. They're going to be inconvenienced. We didn't have that problem. We were bringing in something they didn't have before."

While a commuter's nightmare, there's no doubt the reconstruction project is needed, Schroeder said.

"I'm glad that it lasted as long as it did," he said, adding that new techniques and the use of coated steel will result in a better system. "The materials going into it are pretty much what they were before. The techniques of the design have improved, and the capacity will improve because of it."

But back in the '60s, Schroeder said, the original Marquette Interchange project was state of the art, too.

"All of a sudden, we're doing something that's the latest in design and sizeable," he recalled. "This was kind of the epitome."