Liam Beran
Mother Fool's Coffeehouse currently has wood beams where the brick pillar was destroyed.
Wood beams were installed as supports after a car crashed into Mother Fool's on May 2.
The number of car-into-storefront crashes on Williamson Street has become something of a local joke.
“Reset the ‘It’s been X days since someone crashed into a building on Willy Street’ counter,” one resident quipped on the Madison subreddit after a driver crashed into Mother Fool’s on the corner of Williamson and South Ingersoll Street during evening rush hour on May 2.
But the crashes are dangerous to residents and harmful to local businesses. On Aug. 13, the city’s transportation commission pushed for a trial run of a potential fix: removing rush-hour traffic lanes from the street.
“I would like to see us make Willy a less comfortable street for commuters,” said Commissioner Cailey Jamison. “I think an obvious reroute is East Washington [Avenue].”
Currently, cars are prohibited on the south side of the street between 4 p.m. and 5:30 p.m. to provide a second eastbound traffic lane, away from downtown. Over the last five years, a majority of crashes on the street have occurred during this 4 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. time period, though only one building crash over the last 10 years has occurred in that time slot.
Parking is prohibited on the north side in the morning to accommodate commuters heading west toward downtown.
Removing the rush-hour lanes would congest traffic on Willy Street and potentially push commuters to use other routes, such as East Washington Avenue, a four-lane roadway, with an additional dedicated bus lane, meant to handle considerably more traffic.
It would also require, said Tom Mohr, assistant director of traffic engineering, removing street parking near intersections, longer traffic signal delays and changing hours for city street division maintenance, such as leaf collection or snow plowing. Businesses will also be impacted by removing permanent parking, he said.
“There's more to it than you may think of at the surface,” said Mohr, who gave a presentation on Williamson Street traffic safety to the transportation commission on Aug. 13. “It might seem easy, ‘Just bag the signs, we can have a study and we’ll go from there,’ but I think we want to do it the right way.”
Mohr recommended that commissioners wait until funding is allocated for a “proper study,” likely done by a consultant, rather than an internal “rush study.” Funding for a “proper” study could run $100,000, he estimates.
There are considerations about timing, too. Mohr said construction on John Nolen Drive from fall 2025 until 2029 may decrease traffic numbers on Willy Street and skew the data, though the commission could also wait until after that reconstruction project concludes to recommend the study.
The prospect of removing rush-hour traffic lanes has been raised before. Marlisa Kopenski-Condon, president of the Marquette Neighborhood Association, one group lobbying for the change, wrote in a June 2025 letter to the transportation commission that there was a “tentative agreement” to conduct such a study after a car in 2022 crashed into Willy Street Treasure Shop, but “Traffic Engineering ultimately withdrew its commitment based on predictive modeling results that have not been updated in several years.”
The commission unanimously voted Wednesday to have Traffic Engineering come back to the commission’s Aug. 27 meeting with a proposal for a test of removing rush-hour traffic lanes. A temporary test would not require approval from the city council, according to Mohr.
Commissioners and those addressing the panel on Wednesday were largely supportive of pushing ahead with a pilot project on a quick pace.
“I’d rather have a trial fail than spend $100,000 and months or years waiting while nothing’s improved,” said Mike Tarby, the incoming co-chair of the Marquette Neighborhood Association’s Transportation and Safety Committee.
Said Commissioner Denise Jess: “Waiting on a study for several more years is really concerning.”
Businesses such as Mother Fool’s, Ha Long Bay, Batch Bakehouse and Change Boutique have been victim to crashes over the past 15 years. Stephanie Rearick, co-owner of Mother Fool’s, says the business has been crashed into three times since she's co-owned it — in 2010, 2016 and 2025. She's also seen a photo of another crash into the building prior to that.
The coffee house is supportive of removing rush-hour traffic lanes, she tells Isthmus in an email.
“We want rush-hour traffic lanes removed from the street,” Rearick says. “Because the street obviously can't handle fast-moving traffic, many buildings have been hit, including some others repeatedly. We support a variety of traffic-calming measures and also liked it when the buses were running down Willy.”
City of Madison Fire Department
A car crashed into Mother Fool's Coffeehouse on May 32 2025.
The scene from the crash on May 2. No injuries were reported, though the business' brick support pillar was destroyed.
The reasons for crashes into buildings have included drunk driving, swerving to avoid collisions and medical incidents, according to Mohr.
“Other than the common denominator of Williamson Street, there wasn’t much common to all the crashes,” said Mohr.
Over the last five years, there have been 122 crashes on Williamson Street, Mohr said, compared to 211 on East Washington Avenue, a considerably busier roadway. Monroe Street, which Mohr said is most comparable to Willy, has only had 46 crashes over the same period. Mohr said that’s strange, given how similar the streets are.
“They both have residential and commercial. They both have peak-hour traffic lanes,” said Mohr. “But quite a bit fewer crashes on Monroe Street compared to Williamson Street.”
That could be due, in part, to the amount of traffic Williamson Street sees compared to Monroe. During weekday afternoon rush hour, the street is taking “as much traffic as possible” coming in from John Nolen Drive, according to Mohr. Traffic at the right-turn into Williamson Street from John Nolen — the infamous "hairball" intersection — is frequently backed up.
Meanwhile, East Washington Avenue is operating well under capacity, said Mohr: “Traffic volumes are much lower than they have been historically…East Washington Avenue can take a lot more traffic than what's on it now.”
Removing rush-hour traffic lanes isn’t the only safety option available to the city. Mohr also floated installing safety bollards — poles designed to stop vehicles from crashing into buildings — near some businesses or along intersections of the street. The city has only implemented such bollards once before, on the East Washington Avenue and Livingston Street center median island.
Doing so could be costly. To install bollards on just one side of an intersection would cost $15,000, Mohr estimated, and to install them on all sides of an intersection would run $60,000. Installing them along all intersections of Williamson Street would run $600,000. Mohr said installing a larger-scale project could potentially be covered by the U.S. Department of Transportation’s “Safe Streets and Roads for All” grant program.
“If we're just putting in a few bollards at a select location, I think Safe Streets Madison would probably be the way to fund that,” said Mohr. “If it becomes a bigger, larger scale project, then we're going to have to look into other ways to fund it.”
Still, commissioners and registrants for public comment said something needs to be done. Jamison said she’s lived in the neighborhood for five years and in that time has almost annually seen a local business lost due to crashes.
“Our neighborhood suffers when that happens, and can't always afford to reopen a local business or absorb that damage,” said Jamison.
Jim Kreft, a registrant for comment, said he’d like to see an immediate study into removing rush-hour traffic lanes — “you can get public input as it happens, right?” — and that the commission must acknowledge that “the nature of Williamson Street has changed” with the neighborhood’s growth over the last decade.
“I really want to encourage this commission to think about building streets for the people who live on them, and live and walk and bike to get the services on that street, over people who are commuting to suburban locations. Those folks can find other options.”
