Engineers are still working to determine what caused Green Bay's Leo Frigo bridge to sag.
In the meantime drivers are finding their way from one side of town to the other, by driving city streets and alternate highway routes.
The bridge has been closed for almost a week due to a two-foot sag caused by a failed support pier. At first, the closure caused a “perfect storm” of backed up traffic as semi-trucks and commuters poured through downtown, according to city traffic engineer David Hansen.
Before the closure, 40,000 vehicles crossed over the Leo Frigo bridge each day. Hansen says not all of those cars and trucks are using city detours; in the days since the closure, he says many semi drivers have gotten word to stick to highways 172 and 41.
“The word is getting out to companies even out of state that are traveling here to stay on the freeway system,” says Hansen. “I think we're starting to see a drop in that type of truck traffic.”
Hansen says some stop lights in town have been re-timed and police will manually control the lights when things get congested. He says many drivers are avoiding official detour routes, but they are not flooding residential streets.
“Surprisingly, I thought I would be getting a lot of phone calls and complaints about that,” says Hansen. “I think that what's happening is you're probably seeing some distribution of traffic on other routes, but I think they're of the arterial streets.”
This weekend is the first home Packer game since the bridge closed. Hansen doesn't expect too many problems, but says people coming from the south may experience heavier traffic than normal on highways 172 and 41.
