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Region Turns Traffic Anger On a Figurine
The Wall Street Journal|January 28, 2025
Local's Playmobil creation becomes favorite scapegoat
- BY JOE BARRETT
Region Turns Traffic Anger On a Figurine

FOX POINT, Wis.-Karen Olsen was running late to pick up a friend for a charity walk in September when she took a quick turn to avoid construction and hit a pothole, destroying two tires.

"Damn it, Ed," muttered the 47-year-old software consultant.

It's a refrain heard across Milwaukee's northern suburbs, where a massive construction project has been snarling traffic for several years. Drivers' frustrations have found satiric outlet in Ed Lebiecki, a mustachioed three-inch-tall plastic figurine with a hard hat, yellow vest and a coffee mug always in hand.

Ed is the brainchild of Julie Olson, a Realtor with a Playmobil obsession and a fascination with the murky logistics of getting around during a disruptive freeway upgrade. He quickly became the most popular character on the Facebook page where she posts carefully constructed scenes and witty dialogue.

"Traffic is frustrating, but it's fun to have a scapegoat," Olson says.

In her scenes, Ed is the doltish mastermind of the seemingly endless heavy road construction besetting Fox Point and other communities pressed between Interstate 43 and the shores of Lake Michigan.

Olson's Mommy plays Playmobil page chronicles Ed's efforts to bring more "razzle-dazzle" to the widening of a 14-mile stretch of I-43-a project that began in 2019 and is expected to wrap up this year.

Ed loves unusual designs like the "diverging diamond"-a real-life traffic pattern that briefly has motorists driving on the wrong side of the road at one interchange. And he likes to use construction equipment to maximize the mayhem.

"Ed is a menace," said Karen Olsen, the software consultant, whose commute was gummed up for months by construction on her exit.

This story is from the January 28, 2025 edition of The Wall Street Journal.

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This story is from the January 28, 2025 edition of The Wall Street Journal.

Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.

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