Mark your calendars. Next month MDOT is hosting an open house to discuss one phase of an I-275 bike path extension to the north from 13 mile to 14 mile.
The meeting is from 6pm until 8pm at the Novi Civic Center.
Here’s the official notice from MDOT with all the details.
The differing House and Senate versions of the stimulus bill were resolved yesterday. It’s expected that the new bill will be voted on today and signed by the President on Monday.
This final bill allocates $29 billion in transportation funding. That’s about how much the federal government allocates during a normal year. How much of that goes to Michigan and how much could be spent on non-motorized facilities is apparently unknown as of now.
We do know that the MDOT Metro Region put reconstruction of the entire I-275 bikepath on their stimulus project list. How huge would that be?
The Michigan Trails and Greenways Alliance and other advocates have been working with the City of Detroit to get non-motorized projects in the city’s stimulus list. Dan Cherrin, Mayor Cockrel’s spokesman told the the Michigan Messenger that the city wants to see “bike paths” built with stimulus money. Bike paths could include many of Detroit’s greenway projects as well as the non-motorized plan’s 400-mile bike lane network.
There are also other local bike and trail related projects in the stimulus wish list compiled by the Michigan Municipal League:
What’s not clear is how Novi’s two requests fit with MDOT’s for the I-275 bikepath.
We should know more about what gets funded as this process continues to lumber along.
Al Fields (DTE) and Greg Johnson (MDOT)
Many years ago we often heard cyclists level complaints against MDOT for the lack of safe road accomodations in Metro Detroit. At the time, they were right, that is until Greg Johnson became head of the MDOT Metro Region.
Greg went on to create an MDOT Metro Region Non-Motorized Committee. It was at an early meeting that he mentioned the need for our road networks to let cyclists get where they need to go anywhere within the Metro Region (Wayne, Oakland, Macomb, and St. Clair counties.)
Perhaps the biggest change Greg made was having MDOT take back responsibility for the I-275 bike path. After languishing without maintenance for 30 years, the bike path is getting repaired section by section. Money was spent to develop a plan on how to repair it, re-open the connection to Monroe County, and properly maintain it. Money is allocated to extend it north to Pontiac Trail.
Another huge change that is a little less evident is the MDOT Metro region’s trail bridge policy. When trails needed to build bridges over MDOT roads, there was always the question of who would maintain the bridge. Local governments often lacked the resources to even handle the inspections. Greg set the region policy where MDOT took responsibility for these bridges. This certainly helped trail bridge projects like the new Macomb Orchard Trail’s over M-53 and planned bridges like the Clinton River Trail’s over Telegraph.
And we can’t forget MDOT’s committment to bike lanes on future road projects involving Michigan Avenue and Fort Street in Detroit. Greg played a big role in making those happen.
And one final positive change. The Detroit Riverfront Conservancy received a $29 million earmark from Senator Carl Levin. Since earmarks require recipients to jump to additional (and often unfamiliar) hoops, Greg committed MDOT to designing and managing the construction of new Riverwalk segments.
So even though Greg is leaving the top position at MDOT’s Metro Region, he’s not leaving MDOT. He’s moving up. Greg has accepted the position of MDOT Chief Operations Officer. And while he expects to maintain his interest in many of the projects listed above, he also hopes to spread the Metro Region’s non-motorized transportation message at the higher levels in Lansing.
Best of luck to you Greg!
An improvised bike rack in the New Center
The Detroit Free Press has a brief article noting the new bike racks and other streetscaping that’s coming to New Center.
Woodward will see new trees, decorative light fixtures, trash containers, benches and bike racks between I-94 and Baltimore and between West Grand Boulevard and Euclid. The Michigan Department of Transportation is partnering with the city of Detroit and the New Center Council on the nearly $2-million project, aimed at making the area more pedestrian-oriented.
These racks will certainly complement SMART’s bus bike racks and DDOT’s new bus bike rack program. Woodward is the busiest bus transit corridor in Michigan.
There’s been a big push by many groups to get Green projects in the Obama economic stimulus package. We’ve already mentioned the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy’s push. The DNR Parks division has submitted about a quarter-million in infrastructure projects. The Detroit Greenways Coalition has their trails submitted as well.
That’s all the good news.
The fear however is this stimulus package will also fund a significant amount of road expansion.
From Bloomberg.com:
While many states are keeping their project lists secret, plans that have surfaced show why environmentalists and some development experts say much of the stimulus spending may promote urban sprawl while scrimping on more green-friendly rail and mass transit.
“It’s a lot of more of the same,” said Robert Puentes, a metropolitan growth and development expert at the Brookings Institution in Washington who is tracking the legislation. “You build a lot of new highways, continue to decentralize” urban and suburban communities and “pull resources away from transit.”
And decentralizing/sprawl also hurts bikability and walkability.
Some local concerns involve planned expressway expansion, notably I-75 in Oakland County and I-94 in Detroit. Neither project made financial sense long before the recent declines in vehicle miles traveled. Now they make less sense.
And they’re certainly not green, but they might get in the stimulus package.
The I-94 project is especially bad in that it would remove nine bridges over the expressways — permanently blocking bicycle routes within Detroit’s non-motorized transportation master plan.
And because the highway expansion was planned before the non-motorized plan, MDOT is ignoring the latter. However, reading their Final Environmental Impact Statement only shows that MDOT wasn’t going to let non-motorized priorities get in the way of an expressway expansion.
That said, there’s not too much we can do until MDOT’s economic stimulus list becomes public and we see what’s on the list.