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The Drive
20-05-2025
- Automotive
- The Drive
Is the 'Michigan Left' the Cure for the Common Stroad?
The latest car news, reviews, and features. From Henry Ford's Five-Dollar Day to its unprecedented manufacturing efforts in support of Allied forces during World War II, Michigan spent decades as a hotbed of American industrial innovation. But despite its 20th-century dominance over American mechanized production, Detroit lays claim to surprisingly few unique and well-known inventions. Even the car wasn't invented here; Hank and company simply figured out how to do it quicker than anybody else. Perhaps its most iconic export—Motown Music—is automotive-adjacent in name only. Enter the Michigan Left: This is not so much a deliberate invention but a serendipitous byproduct of a now-defunct transportation strategy that left southeast Michigan with one of the largest, most underutilized road networks in the country. As Detroit grew rapidly during the automotive boom of the 1910s and 1920s, its planners sat down with others in the region and conceived of something that would radically change how its citizens got around. It was called the superhighway, and it was the key element of perhaps the single most ambitious regional mass transit system ever proposed in the United States. That's right—Southeast Michigan's sprawling grid of 'Mile Roads' was conceived not merely as a means of circulating private vehicle traffic, but as a holistic regional network consisting of surface rail, subways, streetcars, and, yes, automobiles. By the mid-1920s, Detroit was expanding so rapidly that its planners were looking well into the future. Detroit's population was already approaching one million people, and some of its more enthusiastic supporters were projecting a population north of 10 million by the year 2000. That never happened, of course, but Detroit residents clamored for wider thoroughfares as the old roads were quickly choked by commuter traffic. The Detroit City Council votes on the 1929 mass transit plan Detroit Free Press, March 19, 1929, Page 17. via A station in the median of a 240-foot 'superhighway' proposal. Hathi Trust/University of Michigan Library Woodward Avenue from dirt to concrete 'superhighway' Detroit Free Press, April 11, 1926, Page 88. via Local commissions embraced the fundamentals of the plan, and initiatives were launched to widen Detroit's existing avenues. The new and improved Mile Roads alternated between 120 and 240 feet wide. The former would allow as many as four subway lines to run underneath while still maintaining space for other major infrastructure (water, sewer, etc.); the 240-foot variant could accommodate four lanes of automobile traffic in both directions, up to four rail lines (or a two-track station) in the median, and still had ample room to expand underground or above it. The major Detroit avenues radiating out from downtown, including Woodward, Gratiot, and Grand River, would form the connector spokes of this vast new 'superhighway' network. Many of these routes had existing streetcar and inter-urban rail service, which was usually incorporated into the new footprint with ease. Today, the term 'superhighway' has fallen out of fashion. Detroit's early prototypes had a lot of elements we commonly associate with limited-access freeways today, including wide medians and intersections with minimal or zero conflicts, but they were also meant to remain accessible to both surface traffic and pedestrians. Early versions of the plan stipulated that all of the major mile-road intersections would be grade-separated interchanges (think highway cloverleafs, only for surface avenues), but these notions evaporated when representatives appointed to oversee the project saw just how much that sort of infrastructure would cost. Instead, only a few of Detroit's major surface 'superhighway' intersections would get that treatment. Today, many of those old interchanges are being replaced with low-conflict alternatives that are more budget-friendly, such as the diverging diamond just recently completed at 8-Mile and Telegraph Road on the city's border with Southfield. To make matters worse, Detroit wouldn't vote on the transit plan until 1929—a year after the market crash that precipitated the Great Depression. The transit plan failed to pass the city council by just one vote. As land speculation along the highways dried up and previously eager project boosters evaporated, southeastern Michigan's planning committees would need to come up with more fiscally responsible ways of linking all these major arteries together. After stripping back the flyover bridges, railroad stations, and subway tunnels, there was one vestige of this grand design that still made a lot of sense. It's a simple concept, but brilliant in its execution. Like New Jersey's 'jughandle,' the Michigan Left's primary advantage is the elimination of left turns at major intersections. Rather than waiting to turn left against cross-traffic, drivers turn right, then use a dedicated U-turn lane in the road's median to double back in their intended travel direction. This not only reduces the wait for left-turning drivers, but it makes it possible for the traffic light to cycle faster because through traffic never has to wait for those turning left. The above video uses Macomb County's Hall Road as its example, but thanks to Detroit's early Superhighway plan, many of its Mile Roads had ample room to implement this setup, and with timed traffic lights, they allow these major arteries to function a lot like the highways their original designers envisioned, only without all of the integrated transit that necessitated those wide medians in the first place. Instead, what Detroit's failed transit grid gave us was the earliest version of what we know today as a 'Stroad'—a thoroughfare that hybridizes a street and a road. In urban planning parlance, a street is designed for everybody's use—pedestrian, automotive, transit, etc.—while a road is something meant more exclusively for high-speed traffic. It's a dirty word to many burgeoning urban planners, but here on the outskirts of the Motor City, it's a label we'll embrace, because hey, our stroads are just a little bit better than yours. Got a tip? Email us at tips@ Byron is one of those weird car people who has never owned an automatic transmission. Born in the DMV but Midwestern at heart, he lives outside of Detroit with his wife, two cats, a Miata, a Wrangler, and a Blackwing.
Times
20-05-2025
- General
- Times
Cecil Newton obituary: Survivor of D-Day who almost lost a leg
As dawn broke off the Normandy coast after a miserably rough crossing, a fellow trooper of the 4th/7th Royal Dragoon Guards aboard Cecil Newton's tank landing craft (LCT) decided to make tea on their field cooker. A huge orange flame shot up, the LCT commander threatened them with death, and then the guns of a hundred warships opened fire. Gold Beach, one of the five Allied divisional landing zones on D-Day, June 6, 1944, was the 50th Northumbrian Division's objective. To give the assaulting infantry battalions a chance of making it across the beaches, the Allied air and naval forces were to pound the defences in preparation, but they could only do so much. Intimate support by tanks was necessary. To give the tanks a
Glasgow Times
18-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Glasgow Times
Date revealed for award-winning musical's Glasgow premiere
Operation Mincemeat: A New Musical will be performed at Glasgow's Theatre Royal from November 10 to November 14, 2026. The show, directed by Robert Hastie, tells the wildly improbable and hilarious true story of the covert operation that helped the Allied Forces in 1943. Read more: Bosses urged to let workers finish early if weather reaches 20 degrees It has already garnered significant praise, having won a 2024 Olivier Award and a nomination for the 2025 Tony Awards. At the entrance to the United Nations in New York City on May 13, it was announced that the show will be embarking on a world tour, with Glasgow marking the show's Scottish premiere. The tour comes after the show's third Broadway extension through to February 15, 2026, and its fifteenth West End extension through to February 28, 2026. The show stars David Cumming, Claire-Marie Hall, Natasha Hodgson, Olivier Award-winner Jak Malone, and Zoë Roberts, who reprise their original, acclaimed performances for the musical's Broadway (American) premiere. Read more: Glasgow to bask in sunshine as temperatures to soar SpitLip, the musical's writers and composers, said: "Broadway opened the literal world to us, and we couldn't be more grateful for every unpredictable twist of this astonishing journey. "Most of all, we wish to thank the audiences who continue to carry this show with love and enthusiasm. "Operation Mincemeat reminds us that in uncertain times, the bonds between allies are more important than ever - and that message feels especially relevant as we consider all the great nations in which our show will now have the opportunity to play. "This show continues to be the adventure of a lifetime, and we're wildly excited about what's to come." Operation Mincemeat is produced on Broadway and the West End by Avalon (in association with SpitLip). It was commissioned by New Diorama Theatre, co-commissioned by The Lowry, and supported by the Rhinebeck Writers Retreat.
The Star
18-05-2025
- Politics
- The Star
India-Pakistan conflict: Clinging to the rhythms of a normalcy
Local residents looking at the Indian side of Kashmir from a tourists point in Karen, in the Neelum Valley near on the Line of Control, the de facto border that divides the disputed region of Kashmir, some 93km from Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistan-controlled Kashmir on May 1. — AP EIGHTY years ago this month, the Germans surrendered unconditionally to the Allied Forces. On May 4, King Charles of England began a four-day commemoration of that event. It seemed like an ironic anniversary celebration from the perspective of South Asia where we were poised on the brink of a large-scale war between India and Pakistan. The cynics among us could not help but consider the possibility of a third world war beginning in the same days of May when World War II ended. The details of war were everywhere in conversations, text messages, Instagram reels, TV shows, and TikTok, among others. Schools opened, schools closed, exams proceeded, exams cancelled, work schedules went awry, business trips could not be taken, concerns about the availability of food, et cetera – all of it amounted to creating confusion and dread. One friend told me that she had stored up two months of groceries in her deep freezer. The ordinary person in war situations has little control over what his or her government chooses to do. At the same time, the impact of those decisions are inevitably felt most by these same ordinary people. It is the nature of the human mind to try and create certainty, and the inherent unpredictability of war is a challenge to this. The current barrage of information, with doses of misinformation, presents a situation in which individuals try to mitigate feelings of helplessness. Hoarding food is one way to do this – people feel something must be done to prepare for the worst. Then, because of their preparations, they imagine themselves as somewhat safe. War is the ultimate disruption in human life. The continuing sense of crisis is traumatising in its ability to cast one into some parallel universe where the certainties of the old do not apply. In the accounts of people who endured the travails of World War II, there are stories of attempts to create some semblance of normalcy even in the shadow of complete devastation. Even after schools were closed, parents tried to set up lessons for their children at home. When tea or coffee were not available, some burned rice and added it to hot water and drank it in the morning to keep up the ritual of having a warm drink to begin their day. Clinging to the rhythms of a normalcy that is gone is essential for survival. Survival, therefore, is not a matter of physical security alone. The trauma of war is not simply that of living or dying; it is – as the younger generations of South Asians would learn in the event of a full-scale conflict – a matter of enduring a million other smaller traumas. Ever since the terror attack on Pahalgam on April 22, people in Pakistan – and I'm sure in India too – have had trouble focusing on work, on studies, on the other details of life that otherwise are central to our existence. The spectre of conflict means everything else has less meaning and yet everything still has to be done. Work assignments have to be completed, exams to be taken, children fed, and chores completed. The tension of looming doom takes a heavy toll on human psychology. And when war ends, the living are left with the weight of having survived the debilitating burdens of many small traumas. As the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish once wrote, leaders will declare war and then leaders will shake hands. Hostilities that begin will ultimately end. But then, only the mother waiting for the dead son or the girl waiting for her father, or the wife waiting for the husband will be left with their loss. For those that incur those losses, the war will never end; it will continue for the rest of their lives. — Dawn/Asia News Network Rafia Zakaria is an attorney teaching constitutional law and political philosophy.
Yahoo
18-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Back in Time, May 17: The USS South Dakota
May 17—"South Dakota saw extensive action during World War II; immediately upon entering service in mid-1942. ... she was sent to the south Pacific to reinforce Allied forces waging the Guadalcanal campaign. ... taking part in the Battle of Santa Cruz in October and the Second Naval Battle of Guadalcanal in November. During the latter action, electrical failures hampered the ability of the ship to engage Japanese warships and she became the target of numerous Japanese vessels, sustaining over two-dozen hits that significantly damaged her superstructure but did not seriously threaten her buoyancy. South Dakota returned to the United States for repairs that lasted into 1943, after which she was briefly deployed to strengthen the British Home Fleet, tasked with protecting convoys to the Soviet Union. In mid-1943, the ship was transferred back to the Pacific, where she primarily operated with the fast carrier task force, contributing her heavy anti-aircraft armament to its defense. In this capacity, she took part in the Gilbert and Marshall Islands campaign in late 1943 and early 1944, the Mariana and Palau Islands campaign in mid-1944, and the Philippines campaign later that year. In 1945, she participated in the Battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa and bombarded Japan three times. Following the end of the war in August 1945, she took part in the initial occupation of the country before returning to the United States in September. She later moved to the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, where she was laid up in the Atlantic Reserve Fleet until 1962, when she was sold for scrap." The South Dakota, built by the New York Shipbuilding Corporation, was 680 feet in length, had a beam (width) of 108 feet, and could reach a speed of 27.5 knots (31.6 mph). She had a crew of 1,793 officers and enlisted men during peacetime and 2,500 officers and enlisted men during war time. She carried 3 x "Kingfisher" floatplanes. South Dakota's crew suffered heavy casualties, with 40 killed and 180 wounded. The USS South Dakota (BB 57) is honored with a museum and mock-up of the ship in Sioux Falls, located on Kiwanis Avenue and West 12th Street. The mission of Battleship South Dakota Memorial is to preserve the history of USS South Dakota (BB 57) and its crew. The museum's goal is to educate current and future generations on the most decorated battleship of World War II. — Linda Oster, Researcher
