DECLINE BEGETS DECLINE.

Wisconsin's highways are in rough shape, in many cases worse than their connecting roads in Illinois, which is a major reversal of fortune from three decades ago.  Perhaps some of that deterioration is conscious divestment: as is the case in Iowa, there's more road than there is traffic to use it, let alone to pay the user fees to maintain it.

But when a pipeline delivering the motor fuel to the distribution terminals fails, emergency actions to allow overweight trucks to make deliveries only contribute to the deterioration.

Fuel trucks with a registered gross weight of 50,000 pounds or more that operate in the state are authorized to carry up to 15% more than standard gross vehicle weight limits through June 4, Wisconsin State Patrol Capt. Brian Ausloos said.

A five-axle semi-tractor and tanker that normally hauls 80,000 pounds would be authorized to increase the load up to 92,000 pounds gross weight, Ausloos said.

All of these emergency measures, and similar ones in Michigan, to ensure that vacationers during the Memorial Day weekend would not be inconvenienced.

That is, not inconvenienced for lack of fuel.  Inconvenienced for lack of passenger trains, or of roads in a state of good repair?  That's another matter.