Posted Wednesday, July 2, 2008 -- 3:00pm
By Zac Schultz

Jefferson: The City of Jefferson opened the Wisconsin Avenue bridge earlier this week, easing traffic concerns in that city.

Jennifer Weston used to have a very quick drive every morning. She lives in Fort Atkinson and works at the courthouse in Jefferson just 6 miles away. But in early June, the floods shot down two of the three bridges into Jefferson, and many of the surrounding roads. "When the roads were closed it took me about a half hour to get from Fort Atkinson to the courthouse here. Generally my drive was about 8 minutes. So it was substantially longer."

Jennifer's preferred Highway 26 bridge is still closed, but at least a couple of other routes opened up, cutting her commute to just 20 minutes. "It was just the end of last week that they opened Highway N up a little closer to the courthouse."

"It was quite a challenge trying to find the fastest route," says Gary Petre, the Jefferson County Administrator. He had his own commuting problems. "I had to come through southern Waukesha County. It was probably about a half hour difference."

He says opening the Wisconsin Avenue bridge has cured some headaches. They needed to wait for the water to go down to inspect the bridge.

The worst was when the Emergency Operations Center was located on the south side of the river. "The employees who were working at the EOC were traveling back and forth to the courthouse were traveling about 17-18 miles just to get back approximately two miles back to the courthouse."

With only one more bridge to open, Petre hopes things will be back normal soon.