GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Michiganders joke about how our state only has two seasons: winter and construction. Even though the cold remains, road projects are picking up.
Grand Rapidians are already dealing with it right on Division. The city is laying a road map to help folks know what’s right around the corner.
“You hope that the outcome makes your overall daily life better than it was before? Obviously, it's not ever convenient,” Micah Perkins said.
Perkins has lived in Grand Rapids for decades.
“I think especially Grand Rapids does a really good job of maintaining the roads to the extent that they can. Obviously, the winter season makes everything harder, but I think Grand Rapids does a good job,” Perkins added.
At Tuesday's Commission Night Out, the city engineering team laid out this year's planned construction projects.
The city provided six projects at the meeting and gave a tentative time frame for the start and end dates.
- S. Division Avenue: March–November
- Boston Street: March–October
- Fuller Avenue: March–July
- Ann Street: June–September
- Plainfield Avenue: June–September
- Leonard Street: March–October
”We know that construction is inconvenient; it's the unfortunate price to be paid for infrastructure investment,” Grand Rapids City Engineer Tim Burkman said.
Another planned investment is an online hub that identifies and explains future road construction projects.
“The city's website, there's information you can go to searching road construction or calling 311. Tonight, we're displaying kind of the pilot version of a project hub that'll contain information on various projects happening,” Burkman added.
If construction is happening where you live or work, it makes sense that you would want to know about it.
“Most of them have bike lanes checked. But my question is: Well, what type of bike lane is it? Is it just a line on the road, or is it a protected bike lane?” Ellen Simon said.
Luckily, a quick chat with the city engineer cleared things up for Simon.
“The ones that are downtown seem to be the ones that are gonna have the protected lanes. So we're excited, yeah. Selfishly, for me, that benefits me the most because it's, you know, it's downtown when you know you could wish this was everywhere,” Simon said.
The city hopes a streamlined project hub will help people get the answers they need. Right now, they do have a lot of information posted about construction projects, but it's spread across a few websites. When this one-stop-shop will launch isn't clear.
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