County may seek grant to build bike trail bridge

An Ozaukee County committee is expected to vote Thursday on whether to apply for a grant that would pay for building a pedestrian and bicycle bridge over Cedar Creek in the Village of Grafton. 

The bridge would be part of the east-west extension of the Ozaukee Interurban Trail along Highway 60 from downtown Grafton to the Five Corners area of Cedarburg.

The grant would be from the state Department of Transportation for a $1 million Transportation Alternatives Program, or TAP, grant to help pay for design, engineering and construction costs of the bridge.

The county Planning and Parks Department and a consultant are already designing a new trail in the right-of-way of Highway 60 between First Avenue in the village and Five Corners in the Town of Cedarburg using already-secured TAP funding. 

The proposed bridge would be adjacent to the existing vehicular bridge on Highway 60, county Planning and Parks Director Andrew Struck wrote in a memo to the Natural Resources Committee, which will review the request when it meets at 8:30 a.m. on Thursday, Sept. 4.

Construction of the new bridge would happen in conjunction with the multi-use trail project and a Highway 60 reconstruction project currently planned for 2027-2028, Struck said in the memo.

The grant request would cover approximately 80% of the cost of the new bridge, including a 15% contingency fund.

The county is required to provide a 20%, or $250,000, match amount, which Struck said is expected to come from a pending state Department of Natural Resources Knowles-Nelson Stewardship grant, bringing the total project cost to about $1.25 million. 

If the grant is awarded, the county Highway Department is expected to do the construction work on the bridge, pending any unknown grant requirements.

The Grafton-to-Cedarburg spur is an extension to the 30-mile Ozaukee Interurban Trail, which stretches the length of the county from Milwaukee County to Sheboygan County, following the path of the old Interurban Electric Railway.

Construction of the spur is being paid for by $110,000 in county funds and $437,500 in state money.