Michigan Avenue - The Great Divide
Michigan Highway United States 12, (US-12) passes through the City of Wayne.
It is a monstrosity.
It has 4 lanes in each direction.
It has parking lanes along some sections.
It was designed so it opened out to surround the downtown.
At the time it was built, the downtown was destroyed, so, the choice to open it out like that became unnecessary and was redundant to the work.
Following that destruction and the construction of the roadway the center of the city was isolated. There is senior housing there and the people who live there are effectively isolated from not only the rest of the city but the rest of the region.
To the north of US12 there are apartment houses which also have been isolated from the center of town and the south of town. Though they have access to Wayne Road, that thing is 5 lanes wide.
The people who live in the apartment houses and homes all in the northern part of the city are blocked from interacting with each other or visiting businesses because of the overly wide Wayne Road.
The combination of 8 lanes (10 if the parking and turn lanes are included) heading east and west and the 5 lane road heading north and south has quartered the city.
I am writing to find out how to begin the process to move the east-west traffic from this bizarre configuration and join them again. Preferably to the south lanes. Michigan Avenue is slimmer in Dearborn where the downtown area is.
It is not fair nor wise, economically nor politically nor socially to have a confused and shrunken center of commerce directly at the center point between the major American and Michigan cities of Detroit and Ann Arbor.
Apparently the difficulties with the destructive work that was done in Wayne surfaced immediately after the destruction and initial construction was carried out. Ever since that time, which is now 80 years ago, the people of the City of Wayne, its administration and businesses have been attempting to work to have this corrected.
It has been told to me that the Michigan State Department of Transportation repeatedly and forcefully states, and acts in such a way, that indicates they will never do this work. I have nothing in writing but the general consensus from those I have spoken to have indicated that the Department of Transportation is acting in a manner indicating they are immune to serving the public.
That is sad and I won’t dwell on that. Simply put, the lanes of US12 need to be moved in the City of Wayne. The number of lanes is excessive for this location. As it is the traffic lights in the City of Wayne and the lower speed limit have reduced through traffic considerably and pushed it to Van Born Road where the speed limit is higher, there are fewer traffic lights and the roadway is straight rather than winding back and forth.
I know that money is tight but consider this, money is expended every year to maintain this oversized monstrosity that has never delivered the promise it was meant for. In point of fact, no one that I know is aware that there ever was a reason for it. If there happened to be one it has clearly not come to be and the present result is a serious problem in the heart of our region.
Were you aware that this section of oversized highway that runs through the City of Wayne is maintained by the City of Wayne, Wayne County, the State of Michigan and various vendors they send in to do the work?
Even if, as most of the people in the City of Wayne, the City of Westland, the Charter Township of Canton, the Charter Township of Van Buren, the City of Romulus, Garden City, Taylor, Detroit, Ypsilanti and Ann Arbor, the Michigan Department of Transportation once again refuses to deal with this relic of segregation and exclusion, it will serve as an example of confused government waste and administration that will be of interest to study.
In this one instance there is more than enough for members of both the Democratic and Republican Parties to take issue.
Roads are meant to accommodate people and businesses. Not the other way around.
Please let me know how to begin the process to correct this mess. We would like to wrap it up within the next 5 years. It is impeding the necessary upgrades to the corridor between Detroit and Ann Arbor.
The City of Wayne was once the hub for an extensive bus system as well as the regional headquarters for street cars between Detroit and Ann Arbor.
Then Ford Motor Company opened the Ford Stamping Plant and the Ford Wayne Assembly Plant and you can guess what happened next. Not pointing fingers but it is clearly a point as automotive manufacturers and road builders rose up public transportation for individuals and freight went down as prices rose precipitously.