Janke takes the safest path

Janke General Contractors is taking a cautious approach in creating a new bike path for the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Photo courtesy of Janke General Contractors Inc.

It sounds simple.

Janke General Contractors Inc., Athens, is building a 4,100-foot bike path on the west end of the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus. The path will run parallel to Campus Drive from University Bay Drive to about 1,600 feet beyond Walnut Street.

That’s pretty much where the easy part of the job ends.

“It’s a slow-going project,” said Steve Janke, president and owner of Janke General Contractors. “Throw down gravel and blacktop — it ain’t that type of project.”

The job’s complications start with a plan to build a bridge over Walnut Street for the path. That structure will sit next to the railroad bridge over the street.

Janke said building bridges is a standard job for his company, but it’s not every project that requires a company to excavate for bridge abutments and drive piles around a buried high-voltage power line.

“We were told that if you hit that, you’re going to evaporate,” he said. “There’s also a high-pressure gas line buried there. That high-pressure gas would probably put a crater in the ground.

“There’s a lot of hand shoveling, needless to say.”

The plan for the bridge construction, Janke said, is to expose the buried lines and then carefully drive piles.

“It’s a tight shot because the railroad tracks are elevated 15 to 25 feet above the line,” he said. “We don’t want the tracks to fall or slide into the excavation.”

The entire project is a tight shot, with the railroad tracks and a busy road on one side and a row of buildings on the other.

“It’s all difficult because of the access,” Janke said. “East of the Walnut Street bridge, we’re in a 20-foot corridor between the railroad tracks and the buildings.”

Take all of those factors and mix them with the timing of the job coinciding almost perfectly with the return of university students for the fall semester, and a simple bike path turns into a dangerous, time-consuming project.

“Whenever we move equipment, we don’t know who could be standing there with iPods on their heads and not even hearing you,” Janke said.

But, as the project heads into fall, Janke said his team is dealing with all the challenges and is targeting the start of November for completion of the bridge and the retaining walls that will run along a large portion of the path.

“We knew what we were getting into,” he said. “A slip of the wrist, and someone could get hurt. We’re using extra safety on this one.”

— Chris Thompson