Interstate 94’s expansion on Milwaukee’s west side could take another two years to complete beyond its current eight-year construction schedule.
That’s according to a new Wisconsin Department of Transportation report obtained by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
That potential two-year project delay is caused by “significant utility relocations along the corridor and the impacts on work zones and through-traffic,” said a WisDOT report to the state’s Transportation Projects Commission.
The I-94 project, funded mainly by the federal government, also carries a newly revised cost estimate of $1.71 billion, the report said.
That’s a 3.6% increase from February’s $1.65 billion estimate. A 2024 report said the project could cost up to $1.74 billion.
That higher price tag is due to “increased real estate and construction costs primarily due to updated [bid] estimates and impacts from utility relocation delays,” the report said.
A two-year delay would bring a December 2035 project completion date.
“The department is trying to reduce or eliminate the potential delay by reconfiguring [bid] packages to deliver portions of the project earlier and avoid those conflicts,” the report said.
That would require shifting additional funds into the 2027-2029 and 2029-2031 WisDOT budgets from future years, it said.
“Pulling this additional funding forward would allow the project to reconfigure [bid] packages and accelerate portions of the project to remain on schedule and eliminate $22.0 million in delay-related costs,” the report said.
A WisDOT representative said the key phrase is “potential delay.”
The report “is a snapshot of scenarios based on current funding levels,” said Dan Sellers, the department’s southeast region communications manager.
“Project schedules and utility work time windows rely on and affect one another,” Sellers told the Journal Sentinel.
Shifting additional funds forward into the next two biennial budgets will provide better flexibility to reconfigure bid packages “and deliver portions of the project earlier to help avoid any potential schedule conflicts,” he said.
Project includes widened I-94, new Stadium Interchange
The project’s main work involves widening a 3.5-mile stretch of I-94 from six lanes to eight lanes between 16th and 70th streets; modernizing the Hawley Road, 35th Street and 25th/27th Street interchanges, and replacing the Stadium Interchange with a new diverging diamond interchange.
I-94’s widening is needed to reduce congestion and improve safety, according to WisDOT and business groups that support the expansion.
Opponents say a six-lane reconstructed freeway with increased mass transit would be large enough to safely accommodate traffic.
WisDOT said in 2025 that 58% of the project’s funding is from the federal government, 40% from the state, and 2% from local sources.
Under a timetable announced last year, construction is happening on the project’s west portion from 70th Street to Zablocki Drive, west of the Stadium Interchange, from 2025 to 2028. There’s also work on updating interchanges east of the Stadium Interchange.
The work widening I-94 east of the Stadium Interchange was scheduled to run mainly from 2028 to 2030. Work on replacing the Stadium Interchange was to begin in 2029 and to finish in 2033.
Meanwhile, a lawsuit filed by expansion opponents remains active in U.S. District Court.
Milwaukee Inner-City Congregations Allied for Hope and three environmental groups in 2024 filed a civil rights lawsuit claiming the U.S. Department of Transportation and WisDOT failed to properly analyze the project’s potential negative environmental and transit equity impacts.
The departments have denied those claims.
That lawsuit could force WisDOT to provide additional funding for public transit improvements.
Tom Daykin can be emailed at tdaykin@jrn.com and followed on Instagram, Bluesky, X and Facebook.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Milwaukee I-94 expansion may face two-year delay
Reporting by Tom Daykin, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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By Tom Daykin, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel | USA TODAY Network
