Latest news with #boulevard
CBS News
7 days ago
- Business
- CBS News
Michigan Department of Transportation delays I-375 construction project amid rising costs, pushback
The Michigan Department of Transportation is delaying its reconstruction project on Interstate 375 in Detroit following concerns from the public and rising costs. The department says it will reevaluate design alternatives for the roughly $300 million project, which aims to transform the freeway into a boulevard to connect the Riverfront to Gratiot Avenue and Montcalm Street. The department says it will ensure "the final product meets the needs of the public and key stakeholders," according to a news release. In the meantime, MDOT says all currently scheduled meetings are postponed and it will continue to focus on the road and bridge conditions on the I-375 corridor. "We have one opportunity to get this project right," said State Transportation Director Bradley C. Wieferich in a statement. "I-375 has been open for more than 60 years, and we expect the new I-375, whatever design it may be, to be in place much longer. Getting this right for the community and our stakeholders, while remaining good stewards of tax dollars, will remain our priority." The area was once known as the Black Bottom neighborhood. However, it was demolished more than 50 years ago and replaced with what would become Lafayette Park and the I-375 freeway. The Detroit Greenways Coalition, which has been supportive of the project, says it was "disappointed" to learn of the delay. A full statement from the coalition says: "Having been involved with this project for over a decade, we were clearly disappointed with the unexpected news. While we had numerous concerns about the initial design, MDOT had made many improvements to reduce the project's footprint while improving safety and access for non-motorized travel. We are supportive of the most recent designs and are looking forward to its implementation. We hope that this is merely a pause and that the project continues to move forward in a positive direction." Throughout the process, there has been opposition to the proposed plan. Last year, the Downtown Detroit Partnership unveiled the results of a peer review report. It was an alternative plan to the Michigan Department of Transportation's design, which has caused concern among residents and businesses in the area. Initial plans by MDOT offered nine lanes of traffic along the new boulevard. However, the DDP peer review report proposed five or six lanes instead and restore tree line streets. The ReThink I-375 Community Coalition, a group that opposed MDOT's current plan, accused the department of failing to include community input, especially people who had a connection to Black Bottom. The coalition also took issue with MDOT's plan to raise several lanes of traffic to street level. In May 2024, the coalition sent a letter to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Mayor Mike Duggan and asked for a pause on the project, citing that MDOT's plan "would actively disconnect our community, and threaten decades of our neighborhood's stability." A spokesperson for ReThink I-375 issued the following statement on Monday: "This project pause is a healthy acknowledgement by MDOT of what the Rethink I-375 Community Coalition has said since it was formed: that the I-375 Reconnecting Communities project is more than a boulevard project. While roads are part of the puzzle, this project needs to follow from a vision that respects the complexity of the land use, transportation, urban design, local business, and restorative justice issues at play in the I-375 corridor. "Going forward, residents, businesses, Black Bottom descendants, and other stakeholders should be engaged in a public-private partnership to develop a vision that the entire community can support, and a project whose results will be worth the inevitable disruption and cost of a massive infrastructure project in downtown Detroit. "The ReThink I-375 Community Coalition remains committed to advocating for improved infrastructure, including a near-term solution to the deteriorating bridges currently over I-375 and improving mobility and quality of life in the neighborhoods."
The Guardian
27-06-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
I'm glad we have rules. I just don't expect people to follow them
Rules are great. I think most of us over the age of five will agree that having them is preferable to not. Perhaps there are a few stragglers out there reading this who would love to cosplay a lesser sequel of The Purge, swinging baseball bats at strangers and urinating in the street, but I would imagine you are in the minority on that. Rules are the backbone of what we have left of society. I'm not happy about where we are, but I don't make the rules. At least not yet. I just need to host a popular reality show – then my political career can really take off. A recent interaction has me reflecting on this. I was wandering over to my local coffee shop one morning, off a wide boulevard where motorists scream through intersections like the car from Ghostbusters late for a particularly aggressive haunting. A crosswalk, with accompanying yellow yield light, was recently installed to combat the minor issue of pedestrians being flattened by drivers on their way to the hair salon or texting about being late to the hair salon. The light has been mostly successful in preventing the human waffle-ironing, but it requires walkers to actually press the button to activate it. This is a step that people often dismiss, hoping and praying that the drivers out there are lucid enough to acknowledge the existence of others. Without the yellow light, we're all operating on the honor system for not killing each other. That morning, someone confidently strolled into the intersection, and was mortified that the car screaming down the road didn't immediately stop for him. The pedestrian hollered and moaned as the vehicle screeched to a halt. Once he was done cursing and spitting on the street, the man crossed and the befuddled driver carried on. Besides my relief at not witnessing a homicide, I was left wondering why the man was so upset. Was he expecting the driver to follow the rules? How naive. Let's pray this guy never ends up involved in global foreign policy. I couldn't help but think of this beautifully trusting pedestrian during the last week of nail-biting brinkmanship between the United States and Iran. A few bombs here, a couple of missiles there. Some erratic social media posts later, and we have something akin to a ceasefire for the time being. Donald Trump claimed the Iranian nuclear capability had been 'obliterated', though experts say the country's program was only set back by a few months. It all comes back to the rules we make. We had an Obama-era deal to cap Iran's atomic ambitions – but Trump pulled the US out of it back in 2018, drastically curtailing the west's ability to hold the ayatollah to his promises. It's like if Los Angeles decided to take the crosswalk out of my neighborhood and instead ask people nicely not to run each other over with giant piles of metal going over 40mph – and if someone got hit, to blow up the area with a bunker buster. We need rules, even if we assume people will break them early and often. Because the vast majority of us won't. Most of us are too timid, too square or, in my case, too lazy. The alternative to rules is anarchy: a fistfight in the supermarket or a bachelor party in Atlantic City. Still, it's time to expect that the arc of the universe will not bend in our direction, that our fellows might not be considering whether or not to slow down through the intersection of life. I don't want to wade too deeply into the finer points of foreign policy, because, as I mentioned above, I have never hosted a reality television program. But I am highly qualified to complain about things, which I will continue doing in this space for the foreseeable future. Assume the worst, as I do, and your life will be much simpler. Expect those around you to fail and flout the rules that govern our world. Does this sound cynical? Of course it does. Does that mean it's wrong? Absolutely not. Look around. Not just at the inside of your living room, the bathroom stall or wherever it is you're reading this. I mean, look around metaphorically. Our institutions are wobbly, our trust in order is at an all-time low, and Vanderpump Rules might never come back for new episodes. Where is the justice? The Democratic primary victory of the New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani has been the talk of the entire US, acting as a lighthouse of hope in the choppy pea-soup shit fog of 2025. But in order for Mamdani to win that primary, people had to show up. They had to vote for him and not assume someone else would. Better to assume everyone around you had a nasty fall on the head and can't stop saying 'Cuomo' over and over again. Expect the worst, then enjoy the surprise of being wrong. If I did host a reality show, and therefore became eligible for the presidency, this would be the primary tenet of my foreign policy. 'If we bomb Iran, people will be upset. And upset people do nasty things' – sure, that won't fit on a campaign button, but I'm sure I could hire someone to workshop it into something catchier. I'm obviously thrilled we all haven't been vaporized, but decisions made today do have this pesky way of leading to calamities of the future. You only need to think back to the 1953 CIA coup that led to the overthrow of the Iranian prime minister Mohammad Mossadegh. Cleverer people than me (with a higher word-count maximum) could explain the connection between that regime change and Iran's persistent conflict with the United States. What will be the long-term effects of the US-Israeli bombing campaign? Unfortunately, I'm stuck in the present and can't give you a definitive answer. That is one of the many drawbacks of corporeal existence, another of which is getting hit by a car. Whatever happens next, don't expect it to be fun. But if it is, and we're all drinking champagne in Tehran in a decade, you can come back here and tell me I'm stupid. What a lovely surprise that would be. Dave Schilling is a Los Angeles-based writer and humorist
Yahoo
08-06-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Why did Rochester build some streets too big?
Jun. 8—Dear Answer Man: Driving around Rochester, I see a couple of roads that look a little out of place among the other roads in their areas. One is the two blocks of boulevard that are 10th Avenue Northwest between 10th and 12th Streets. This road has a tree-lined median between the opposing lanes of traffic. The second is Seventh Street Northeast from 14th Avenue to 18th Avenue. This road is just extra wide compared to other roads in the neighborhood. My questions is why were these roads built like this, and will the city ever change them in the future? — The Road Worrier. Dear Worrier, You must put a lot of miles on your jalopy to find these irregular-fit roads around Rochester. Let's tackle these one at a time. The first one is one Answer Man has known about for years. In fact, our esteemed editor, Jeff Pieters, wrote about it as "recently" as 2009 . Writing a story about how the City Council denied a request from the school board to vacate part of its right-of-way along the east side of Washington Elementary — presumably, the school district had plans for that land — Pieters wrote, "The road was supposed to have been part of a grand parkway running from Assisi Heights to Saint Marys Hospital, but the parkway never was completed." He further noted that the grand parkway plan had been started a half century previously. Giving the excess 10th Avenue right-of-way to the school would have increased the campus's land by 14%, or 36,000 square feet. Why the need for this grand parkway? Well, that goes to the connection between Assisi Heights and Saint Marys Hospital, which the sisters built for the benefit of the Mayo brothers and their burgeoning health care center. It was thought there would be a lot of travel between Saint Marys and the home for the religious order. The second one had, previously, eluded even my vast quantities of knowledge. For that, I reached out to our good friend Megan Moeller with the city of Rochester. According to the city's engineering team, Moeller relates, Seventh Street Northeast was planned to be a major four-lane road back in the middle of the 1900s or so, and Seventh Street was going to become a major thoroughfare in that part of the city. Alas, in 1965, the city purchased a farm on the east side of town, and that farm became Quarry Hill Park. About the same time, the city grew so that the street grid expanded, and the big east-west road in that part of town became 12th Street, so the city did not build a road through the park. "Back then, Seventh Street Northeast carried a lot more traffic as there weren't many places to cross the Zumbro River," Moeller said. "Building more bridges has helped disperse traffic and reduce the projected volumes on that corridor." So, both roads — irregularly sized as they are at the moment — are relics of a bygone time and long-discarded plans. When the day comes to reconstruct those streets, Moeller said, "we will rebuild them to current standards." So, enjoy the grand parkway and the wide lanes on Seventh Street while you can. Some day it'll all be back to normal ... and maybe Rochester Public Schools can get that bonus land. Send questions to Answer Man at answerman@ .
