FITCHBURG, Wis. — A crash that killed a longtime educator on Tuesday happened along a stretch of South Syene Road that some nearby residents have been voicing concerns about for years.
“People call it Syene Speedway for a reason. It’s just very quick,” said Andrew Brunner. He lives down the road from the site of the deadly crash that killed Badger Ridge Middle School Principal Beth Steffen.
RELATED: Longtime educator struck by vehicle in Fitchburg, dies
In recent years, houses and apartment buildings have sprung up in the area. The transition from rural, empty plots of land to more residential areas has made the street more of a safety concern for Brunner and his neighbors.
“As it is right now, a lot of people treat it as sort of a rural highway road and move very quickly,” he said.
Brunner said since 2020, he’s been part of a city committee to make this area safer. Since then, there have been about 10 meetings with the city talking about a roundabout, possible stop signs, and other ways to redevelop the road. Those development plans are available on the City of Fitchburg’s website.
“I mentioned during one of those meetings, if nothing’s done, somebody is going to be killed. Unfortunately, that’s the case,” Brunner said.
The project has been delayed due to many reasons. William Balke, Fitchburg’s director of public works and city engineer, explained some of those reasons to News 3 Now on Wednesday.
“The project got to be more and more expensive,” said Balke. “We have a historic property, we have needs of parking, we had environmental constraints, and trying to come up with a section through there that would meet the needs of safety, speed reduction, and connectivity has been ongoing,” he said.
Construction began on a portion of Syene Road between Aurora Avenue and Nannyberry Park south of the crash site in 2022, and according to the city, work on the northern stretch of road from the park to McCoy Road is currently scheduled for 2024.
Brunner said he doesn’t think it’s an issue with the city not wanting to fix the road and that multiple factors come into play for the delayed project
“I don’t think this is a situation of people neglecting, I think it’s just things everyone deals with with budgets and time constraints,” he said.
It’s Brunner’s hope that what happened to this beloved teacher speeds up the process of fixing the problem and gets people to slow down on Syene Road.
“I’m really sad that that had to happen, and I just hope we don’t have to see something else happen for some real action to take place,” he said.
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