It didn't look close to finished yesterday. I'm shocked if the highway is open, Google Maps still shows it closed. I'll try to take it back from Mason this afternoon!
It has reopened but it's my understanding that it's not quite yet done. They still have to do the other half which includes the supplemental lane at the Lansing road exits. I think that was set for next year.
It will be nice to have a lot of the highway traffic off the surface streets even though the project has yet to be totally finished. When I lived in REO-town detours of 496 would raise the noise and pollution levels very noticeably.
There is list a by LSJ [pay] of the worse intersections in Greater Lansing, N. Homer and E. Saginaw being number one with 85 crashes last year! It is crazy around there; I often avoid driving that way. A fellow from the township just kind of threw up his hands and said, the intersections were out of date not designed to handle the traffic the area has today without offering a solution. One idea would be to have a local traffic, separated lane on Homer, on the right that traffic for local cross streets and businesses and Frandor would use, with the other left lanes for thru traffic headed to the north and 127, traffic coming off 127 would have to go down Saginaw to turn right into the Frandor area. this might lessen the cross-lane races with local traffic in its own lane there would be fewer cars in left lanes making merging across easier.
I don't understand what you're saying. A lot of the issue is with cars coming off the freeway onto Homer trying to make a right at Saginaw. The only way you separate that from local traffic is to prevent that right turn at Saginaw, and the only way to get back to Saginaw would make that traffic turn LEFT at Grand River and basically do a circle (left on GR, left on Howard, left on Saginaw) to get on Saginaw. The only other option is to move the off-ramp back, but then that messes up the 496/127 interchange traffic.
The local official is right. This is the result of extraordinarily bad planning back in the day; there is no way to fix the current issues within the existing footprint of those roads. To even begin to make this work, you'd have to take out the entire block east of Homer to make way for some flyover ramps or something, which isn't realistic.
And, like, this is before you even consider the south-bound traffic trying to access Saginaw Street from the other side (Howard). lol
I just had an idea there could be a local traffic lane which one could enter at Michigan and the other intersections on the right, this lane would be separated from the thru lanes on the left. This could keep slower local traffic separated from the traffic exiting 127. that traffic would still have to cross over to the right to go east on Saginaw, next to the local lane with two right turn lanes. Just a thought perhaps not well communicated.
Yeah, I'm still not understanding. How far would this Homer separation go? Up to Saginaw or to right before the offramp with intersection with Homer? I guess that the only other solution is that you simply take out Homer south of the intersection to the off ramp down to Michigan or maybe just to Fernwood, since this traffic shouldn't really be trying to access Saginaw at that point, anyway, given the traffic off the freeway trying to access Saginaw at the same location. The consequence of that scenario, of course, is that the local Homer traffic trying to reach the northbound freeway, then, gets pushed unto Clippert, and then the intersection of Clippert & GR become even more of a mess not to speak of the gridlock that would happen on Clippert.
It's all such an intractable mess. lol I watched a westbound car on Grand River coming down that small slope at an ungodly speed T-bone a northbound car on Homer trying to access the freeway because she wasn't paying attention and missed that the light had changed. Fortunately, no major injuries, but that's such a scary area to drive, let alone walk.
One way to fix that exit would be to route the Saginaw exit diagonally under Homer to come up on its right side for the turn at Saginaw. Certainly not a cheap undertaking but I feel something like that will necessary some day.
It'd really be nice to see the city, county and state start formal planning on something like this. It would be years after before they could probably nail down funding for something like this, but it should definitely be in like the jurisdictions' 5-year plans or something. I do like the idea of an underpass as opposed to my thought of a flyover, because it'd probabyl be cheaper. Though it makes me wonder if it could be done without effecting the bridges at Sellers and Vine, as the off-ramp would have to start much lower and sooner than it currently does.
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The local official is right. This is the result of extraordinarily bad planning back in the day; there is no way to fix the current issues within the existing footprint of those roads. To even begin to make this work, you'd have to take out the entire block east of Homer to make way for some flyover ramps or something, which isn't realistic.
And, like, this is before you even consider the south-bound traffic trying to access Saginaw Street from the other side (Howard). lol
It's all such an intractable mess. lol I watched a westbound car on Grand River coming down that small slope at an ungodly speed T-bone a northbound car on Homer trying to access the freeway because she wasn't paying attention and missed that the light had changed. Fortunately, no major injuries, but that's such a scary area to drive, let alone walk.