Could Underwood Creek Parkway Become A Trail?

Freeway construction detour map for Underwood Creek Parkway. Milwaukee County Parks.

Milwaukee County Parks is beginning to plan a reconstruction project for a section of the Underwood Creek Parkway that has been closed since 2020.

The roadway was closed while the Wisconsin Department of Transportation worked on the north leg of the Zoo Interchange. Interstate-41 runs over the parkway as it transits around the northern edge of the Milwaukee County grounds, running past Hansen Park Golf Course, UW-Extension gardens at Firefly Ridge and Wisconsin Lutheran College Athletic Facilities.

WisDOT provided the county with an approximately $278,000 grant to mitigate the the freeway project’s impact on the area. This funding will be applied toward future construction costs, Jeremy Lucas, director of Administration and Planning told Urban Milwaukee.

The project gives Parks the opportunity to consider new green infrastructure and stormwater improvements along the road. It also opens the door to replacing Underwood Creek Parkway with a mixed-use trail and making it an extension of the Oak Leaf Trail.

It is standard policy now for parks to at least consider replacing a parkway with trail whenever it is up for reconstruction. It’s not always possible, as parkways often provide driveway access to homes or businesses, or an important connection to the street network. But Parks officials have stated that the department would like to reduce the amount of paved surface within the parks system and to improve pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure wherever possible.

The policy is intended to reduce the cost of maintaining paved assets like roads and parking lots, and also to improve the recreational use of the parks system.

A bicycle and pedestrian trail is much cheaper to maintain in the long run than a roadway. The county has limited funding for infrastructure projects, and the parks system has a massive backlog of infrastructure projects. Jim Tarantino, Deputy Parks Director, has noted in the past that a majority of the department’s infrastructure funding requests are for roads and parking lots. “And this is not something that really, really impacts recreation or health outcomes for our citizens,” he said.

Underwood Creek Parkway already provides a connection to the Oak Leaf Trail that allows bicyclists and pedestrians to bypass some of the busy streets and intersections in the area, with W. North Avenue to the north and the Milwaukee Regional Medical Complex to the south.

Parks has advanced two road-to-trail conversions in recent years, along the Little Menomonee River Parkway and the Lincoln Creek Parkway. Construction on both projects will begin this year. Another similar project along Jackson Park Drive has faced stiff resistance from some of the nearby residents.

The Underwood Creek Parkway project is in the early stages of planning. The engineering firm Kapur and Associates was hired in 2023 to work on the project. Parks officials and their consultants are currently reaching out to the neighbors along the parkway like the UW-Extension and Wisconsin Lutheran College.

If everything goes as planned, and the project receives construction funding, the roadway could be rebuilt, or perhaps converted, by 2025.