Beerline Trail Extension

The City of Milwaukee received federal funding for the design, real estate and construction to provide a safe non-motorized access to a vacant railroad corridor. The project consists of the installation of a 0.6 mile long bicycle and pedestrian trail. The project extends to an existing trail that was previously completed to form a comprehensive network of trail for both pedestrians and bicyclists. Included in the design are rain gardens and terraces for storm water runoff, reclaimed materials and railroad artifacts in order to create a “Gateway” element into the nearby Riverworks Business District.

KSingh is responsible for providing engineering and administrative services necessary to assist the City of Milwaukee with the preliminary design through completion of a final design, specifications, letting of the project, and administration during construction. The project is currently in construction.

KSingh had a schedule of 12 months to complete the Beerline Trail. This is an extremely compressed schedule for WisDOT projects. The schedule was compressed because federal funding timelines governed when the construction letting needed to take place.

Public involvement was also a major challenge to this project because of the numerous businesses, private non-profit organizations and several representatives from the City of Milwaukee involved in building a consensus for the design of the trail.

Another major component was the discovery of contaminated soils. Instead of going through the WisDOT master contract for environmental engineering services, the City issued the additional work to KSingh. With our extensive experience in environmental engineering, we were able to navigate the WDNR permitting process and reuse the soil on-site which resulted in tremendous cost savings. This was accomplished with no impact to the schedule.