A ramp built as part of the gee-golly-whiz Marquette Interchange project was closed down Thursday because it’s cracked.

According to the JS:

State Transportation Secretary Frank Busalacchi said the cracks were discovered during a scheduled inspection on Monday and further investigation revealed that the 40-foot concrete support was designed improperly and is inadequate to support the weight that rests on it, including steel girders and the roadway.

Busalacchi says contractor HNTB is accepting responsibility for the mega-mistake, according to the JS.

Now that we know that the $800 million project is screwed up, we need answers to a few questions:

• Who at the Wisconsin Department of Transportation is accepting responsibility? Anyone?
• Why did it take until now to discover that the concrete support was “designed improperly?”
• What, exactly, is improper about the design?
• How did WisDOT review project designs before construction?
• Why did WisDOT wait three days after the crack was discovered to alert the public of a potential problem?
• Would WisDOT and HNTB have been better off hiring more project and design inspectors instead of spending almost $700,000 on a web site?
• Would WisDOT have been better off hiring more project and design inspectors instead of spending $1.5 million on an office renovation for Milwaukee Transportation Partners, the design team led by HNTB and CH2M Hill?