GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — If you drive on the highways in downtown Grand Rapids, you'll want to know about an on-ramp closure.
The ramp from Westbound I-196 to Southbound US-131 will be closed for at least several weeks following a semi-truck crash on Tuesday.
This will impact not only drivers, but neighbors too, as traffic will now be rerouted through a west-side neighborhood.
Many people who use the Lane Avenue exit know about the slow crawl to a four-way stop.
“This constant traffic and people trying to get through it, they make this into a two lane,” Aaron Russo said.
Russo, who lives near the exit, can see I-196 from his doorstep.
“In the morning and especially in the evening, it's just like bumper to bumper, all the way down the ramp,” Russo added.
On Tuesday, his commute home took a lot longer than normal.
“An hour to get home from 28th in the Beltline,” Russo said. “It usually takes 12 minutes.”
”To make that initial impact, to go through the guardrail, hit the beam, and then slide along it, to smash into the abutment and then to cause damage to the approach up top; That's going fast,” MDOT Grand Region Communications Representative John Richards explained.
That on-ramp is now closed again. It only recently reopened after three months of planned construction.
“We just opened that ramp up on November 7, and now it's closed again because of this hit. So very frustrating,” Richards said.
Richards explains that the trucking company’s insurance would be responsible for the repair costs. At this time, he didn’t have an evaluation of the costs.
MDOT hopes for a temporary fix so it can reopen in early January, after initially setting the target opening date for the end of April. That was welcome news for neighbors as all the traffic is being diverted to the Lane Avenue exit.
“It’s gonna be a little annoying, but not too bad. It's better than I heard someone say it could wait until April. I was gonna be like, Oh, that's way too much,” Faith Andree, who lives nearby, said.
