Wisconsin’s busiest interstate corridor is getting rebuilt from Madison to Wisconsin Dells, and the state has handed the design work to Jacobs. The program covers roughly 67 miles of I-39, I-90 and I-94, one of the most heavily traveled routes in the Upper Midwest, and its cost has crept from an early $3.7 billion estimate toward $4.9 billion as inflation reshapes the math.
Project Scope
Jacobs holds several design contracts across the corridor’s modernization segments. The work widens the interstate, rebuilds interchanges and bridges, adds three new interchanges, and raises the roadway in low spots to cut the flooding that has closed lanes in recent wet years. The Madison-to-Dells stretch carries commuter, freight and tourist traffic that regularly overwhelms a roadbed built for far lighter volumes.
Why It Matters
Big interstate reconstructions are back on state books after a decade of deferral, and Wisconsin’s is among the largest. The corridor connects Madison’s job market to the recreation economy up north, so lane closures here ripple across the region. Raising the grade also matters: repeated flooding has turned a design detail into a reliability problem. For contractors, a multi-year, multi-segment program like this one anchors regional backlog well into the 2030s.
Project Team & Details
| Owner / Client | Wisconsin Department of Transportation |
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| Consultants | Jacobs (Lead Design Engineering) |
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| Status | Planned |
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| Delivery Method | Design-Bid-Build |
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| Funding Source | Public (State) |
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