You won't find many signs of life on the ground because it's not really a road construction project. It's a project to rebuild the ancient railroad bridge over Durand Avenue and install a new retaining wall, and workers may have been hard to spot recently while doing some landscaping around the bridge, said Traci Gengler, project manager for the Wisconsin Department of Transportation.

Your antennae aren't deceiving you, though; the scene is often quiet for a week at a time. Crews' contract with the Union Pacific Railroad specifies that they work eight days and then take seven off, Gengler said. They're supposed to be working through today.

One half of the bridge is done, and the railroad has until mid-August to switch train traffic so construction can begin on the other side, Gengler said. The plan is still to reopen the road in November.

How many people are predicted to ride the KRM commuter rail line? What are they doing now for transportation?

Planners project about 7,200 passengers between Milwaukee and Kenosha would get on and off the train on a typical weekday if the long-discussed extension is built. That's based on surveys and statistical models, said Kenneth Yunker, executive director of the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission.

How they're getting around now is hard to pin down, since talking to a model is futile (just like flirting with one). But Yunker estimated 1,500 of those future riders use public transit right now, meaning about 5,700 are behind the wheel.

Riders at the existing Kenosha station bought about 13,000 tickets on weekdays in April, Metra spokeswoman Meg Reile said. It's not a perfect comparison because that service only allows people to go south, but that computes to about 590 each day.

Here's Johnny restaurant

The building is gone but not forgotten. A bunch of readers responded to a question about the former location of a restaurant named for the late Johnny Carson's signature introduction.

They disagreed on exactly where it was, so I got Larry Perfetto of Mount Pleasant to clear it up. He and his father owned Gatsby's Speakeasy and Eatery on the southwest corner of Douglas Avenue and 3 Mile Road, and Perfetto said that was the building the Here's Johnny chain built but never opened.

Gatsby's closed in 1991 when Batten International Airport needed the land cleared for its purposes.

Mike Moore compiles the Glad You Asked column. Call us at (262) 631-1758 or e-mail:

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