Parts of I-375 replacement in Detroit would be 9 lanes wide — and community is concerned

The Michigan Department of Transportation plans to review updated traffic data and possibly reduce the size of some of the intersections envisioned in its Interstate 375 replacement project.

The efforts come as more voices raise concerns about whether the project as described to date would truly address issues that backers have given for supporting it, namely as a way to reconnect east-side neighborhoods with Detroit’s downtown and to somehow address the elimination of Black Bottom and Paradise Valley to highway building and urban renewal projects decades ago.

Some intersections, when including dual turn lanes, for instance, would be nine lanes across, although much of the design envisions three lanes in each direction.

Detroit Councilwoman Angela Whitfield-Calloway summed up the concerns of some critics in a memo posted on social media Nov. 15 when she wrote that “to present and package a nine-lane highway as ‘reconnecting’ is disingenuous, dangerous and unacceptable. For these reasons, I will vehemently oppose any proposed project that fails to properly reconnect and restore the community.”

Project manager Jon Loree said much of the feedback that MDOT has received to date relates to concerns about the width of some intersections and, particularly from the business community, to how access would be maintained with major construction slated to happen between 2026 and 2028, but with some starting in 2025.

The east side has changed since the pandemic, Loree told the Free Press, and the traffic data dates to 2017, which predates the pandemic and the rise of remote work and changes in commuting behavior.

Loree said dual turn lanes, for instance, are more challenging for pedestrians, and the department would look for ways to mitigate and eliminate those, depending on the results of the new data gathering, which won’t be available until February or March. It’s one of the reasons the department opted not to hold one of its quarterly public meetings on the project in November as planned.

“We really want to see the data and be able to make some of the determinations on that,” he said. “It’s really hard to say this is what we can do without seeing the data.”

Also planned, according to Loree, are more direct meetings with residents of various neighborhoods.

“Getting out into the community a little more and meeting where the people are is what we want to do,” he said.

The I-375 project has been in some form of discussion since at least 2013, and it has caught the attention of federal officials. U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg was in Detroit last year to announce a $105 million grant toward the project cost, which, including the reconfiguration of the I-75 interchange, was estimated at $425 million in August, according to Free Press reporting at the time. Officials have long noted the need to replace the aging infrastructure built decades ago and have showcased it as an opportunity to address some of the wrongs associated with the removal of neighborhoods and businesses that had been the heart of Detroit’s African American community.

At the news conference with the transportation secretary, Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan said “I’ve been advocating for six years to fill in this ditch and knit this city back together. Detroit’s been divided by this freeway for nearly 70 years. The motivations in wiping out Paradise Valley and Black Bottom in the '50s were well known, but nobody could have imagined the pain that still lasts 70 years later.”

More: I-375 construction decimated Detroit's Black communities. Now activists want repayment.

In response to a request for comment from the mayor for this article, spokesman John Roach provided a statement from Antoine Bryant, the city’s point person with MDOT, who noted that “the community has raised several important concerns, and I look forward to working with MDOT to help get those concerns addressed.“

Bryan Boyer, a Lafayette Park resident since 2016 who runs an urban technology degree program at the University of Michigan, said the opportunity to remove a highway and create a place with a new urban fabric is a special opportunity and a “great chance for Detroit to shine.”

The current plans, however, reveal an approach focused on taking out a highway and putting in a road, he said.

“I don’t agree in calling this a project that reconnects communities. It’s certainly not going to reconnect the east side to the downtown,” he said, pointing to the number of lanes.

He questioned why the direct outreach effort would be happening at this stage and not at the beginning and whether whatever comes of that process could really make much of a difference in the final design.

Boyer used an example to make his point, saying it would be like two people deciding to have Italian food for dinner and one of them putting a pizza in the oven. The second person might point out that they’d decided on Italian, perhaps thinking of something like pasta, with the other person pointing out that, well, the pizza is already in the oven and offering to remove the mushrooms as a compromise.

Boyer, who sits on the local advisory committee for the project, noted that although he isn’t African American, he questioned the meaningfulness of some of the suggestions for how to honor the area’s history, which he framed as suggestions for historical markers and murals

It’s “hard to take it seriously, if that’s your starting point,” Boyer said.

More: I-375 project in Detroit could mean big changes — but some wonder who will benefit

Loree, the MDOT project manager, said that recognizing the history of the area is an important part of the project, noting opportunities that had been highlighted through the process for a business incubator, affordable housing and a heritage center.

Cynthia Johnson, a former state legislator from Detroit, is particularly skeptical of the project and the reasons that have been given for it, describing it as gentrification and saying residents are tired of being misled.

“It’s insulting that the businesses and homeowners … that lived in Black Bottom and Paradise Valley, to live in those communities, to be decimated, and the same government tries to sell this idea to Black people we’re going to do something to make that wrong right,” she said.

Black residents could do a lot with the money earmarked for this project and the land that is expected to be freed up with the conversion from an interstate, Johnson said, suggesting that the project would instead benefit the city’s big developers.

“This is not for us. Don’t do us any favors. We don’t need that kind of a favor,” she said.

Melanie Markowicz, executive director of the Greektown Neighborhood Partnership, noted concerns from some in the business community. She said there’s a lot of room for improvement in the project and process, although the plan to review new traffic studies is a start in the right direction.

“We agree that the initial goals of the project to upgrade the aging infrastructure, increase safety for all users, improve connectivity between communities, and enable future development are in line with Greektown’s vision for the future. However, we have grave concerns with the project as currently conceived regarding the current design, lack of clarity around construction mitigation, and the process thus far,” according to a statement she provided.

The statement said the project would put the more than 1,900 patronage-based business jobs in Greektown, including 1,000 held by Detroit residents, at risk without proper mitigation measures.

“The current design could also benefit from a reduction in lanes to improve connectivity and safety along the proposed boulevard. This project has the opportunity to reorient its current path to achieve positive outcomes for the community it is intended to serve and furthermore to be an example at the federal level of how we are doing things right in Michigan,” the statement said.

Loree, the MDOT project manager, said the project does include more local connections that are not necessarily highlighted. He noted a new extension of East Montcalm Street and connections to the riverfront that don’t exist now. There’s also a two-way cycle track to the east of the proposed road, which he said would “work more like a city street than an MDOT trunk line.” The department is not “looking to shove freeway volumes” of traffic onto the boulevard.

The project gives the department the opportunity to change the sharp curve that dumps I-375 traffic onto Jefferson Avenue so that it would be a safer connection and to make use of other surrounding streets. He noted that traffic coming into the city often travels from I-375 onto Jefferson in order to get to the central business district. The Lodge Freeway, for instance, might offer an alternative.

Loree, who noted that the plan is to maintain access for businesses and to make sure people know those businesses are open, said the department wants to get the project right, calling it transformative for the city.

“It’s still not perfect, and we still have a lot of work to do,” he said. “We look forward to collaborating … to make sure we put forward the best project for the city.”

Contact Eric D. Lawrence: elawrence@freepress.com. Become a subscriber.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: MDOT to look at I-375 traffic counts as project lane width criticized