Category: Climate Action

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Climate Action Safety & Education

Our MDOT Five-Year Transportation Plan comments

From the cover of MDOT's draft 5 year transportation plan

We submitted the below comments on MDOT’s 2025-2029 Five-Year Transportation Plan. This year we did not have any comments specific to Detroit projects within the plan. However, we did ask how this plan supports and helps meet MDOT’s Toward Zero Deaths goal and Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s Carbon Neutrality pledge. We’d note that the plan’s cover includes a photo of 14th Street construction in Corktopwn that removed the bike lanes.

Safety

The MDOT trunkline safety goal of zero fatalities and serious injuries by 2050 will not be met by reliance on “several safety initiatives and strategies.” (Page 23) We ask for a more sober assessment that this goal will not be achieved without fundamental changes in how MDOT prioritizes, funds and designs its trunklines while also making investments that encourage modeshift to public transit and active transportation. The latter is critically necessary for MDOT to reach its safety goal, yet we don’t see this mentioned in the plan, even in Public Transportation Program Impacts. (Page 19).

We ask that you show the required annual performance targets to get MDOT to zero by 2050. If you can project pavement and bridge condition through 2040 then there’s no reason why safety can’t be given this similar forward looking graph.

MDOT’s prioritization of safety is not apparent from the provided project list, including the proposed HSIP list. Is MDOT prioritizing safety projects in the high-injury network? By far, Wayne County has more trunkline fatalities and serious injuries than any other Michigan county, yet no proposed HSIP projects are listed for it.

Carbon Neutrality

This plan has a modest mention of MDOT’s Carbon Reduction Strategy (using a broken hyperlink) but doesn’t show how these strategies affect the provided project list. Do these projects reduce carbon emissions and will they get the state to carbon neutrality by 2050?

Similar to our safety comments, we want to see carbon emissions performance targets through 2050. We want to know where we are at today and what changes need to be made to get us to zero.

And as we noted earlier, modeshift to public transit and active transportation must be clearly called out in the plan as a fundamental safety and carbon neutrality strategy.

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Climate Action Events Greenways Newsletter

News from the Trail – October 2023

Our October newsletter is now online! Many ribbon cuttings, public meetings, surveys, and more.

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Climate Action Complete Streets

MDOT 5 Year Plan Comments

Below are our comments on the draft MDOT 2024-208 Five-Year Transportation Plan. You can submit your own comments before September 8th, 2023.

  • I-94 Modernization Project. We are critically disappointed that funding for this project has apparently been delayed by two decades. The Complete Streets/Multimodal portions of this project were highlighted in prior five-year plans, but with the new time frame, we see these as broken promises to reconnect the community. 
  • Hubbell Street bridge deck replacement over I-96. We would like to see this bridge cross section improved to better accommodate bicyclists with bike lanes, preferably grade-separated bike lanes. This segment of Hubbell is very popular for Detroit bicyclists since it is easier to cross I-96 at Hubbell since there are no interchange nor grade changes. The popularity of this route is shown on the Strava heatmap for bicyclists.
  • Virgil Street bridge deck replacement. This bridge should be also designed to better accommodate pedestrians and bicyclists, preferably with grade-separated bike lanes. This bridge provides a critical community connection across I-96 with  Eliza Howell Park to the north and Rouge Park on the south. City of Detroit plans envision this bridge carrying the Rouge River Greenway. 
  • Pedestrian Bridges. We like seeing the Vassar and Sawyer bridges being replaced as well as the addition of a Verne bridge over I-94. However, we want the Spruce bridge added to the plan as well. This is a critical community connection for North Corktown with no legal, direct, or viable alternative for bicyclists.
  • Fort Street (M-85) road rehabilitation from Rosa Parks to Griswold. We want this designed as a Complete Street. It provides a critical, direct connection between the Gordie Howe International Bridge and Downtown Detroit. 
  • US-12 and Gordie Howe International Bridge. We are glad to see these projects moving forward within this plan. We have led the non-motorized advocacy on these projects and look forward to celebrating their completion. 
  • Carbon Neutrality. We see no mention of MDOT plans to reduce GHG emissions and help make Michigan carbon neutral per the Governor’s commitment. In fact, the plan includes many major and minor widening projects that will induce higher VMT and increase GHG emissions.

At first glance, it appeared this five-year plan removed prior MDOT commitments for the Iron Belle Trail/Conner Creek Greenway bridge over I-94. After conversations with the City of Detroit and MDOT, we learned that it wasn’t removed. It was no longer individually identified and had been wrapped into another I-94 phase line item. This is confusing. We ask that MDOT consistently list projects for each five-year plan so the public can more accurately determine what changes exist or do not exist.

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Climate Action Complete Streets Greenways Newsletter Policy Safety & Education

News from the Trail – April 2023

Map showing the I-375/I-75 interchange with the planned design changes

Our April 2023 newsletter is now online!

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Climate Action Complete Streets Policy

Detroit Green Task Force in Seattle

Smiling group of people sitting around tables

A 35-person study group from the Detroit Green Task Force recently spent three days in Seattle to learn about that city’s sustainability and climate action efforts. The Detroit group included four city councilmembers (Benson, Calloway, Santiago-Romero, Waters), many departments heads, and advocates, including us.

The City of Seattle was especially gracious in welcoming us and putting together a very thorough agenda. While there are many obvious differences between the two cities (e.g. average household income), there were also many similarities and opportunites to learn from their sustainability practices.

Edie Gilliss, Citywide Coordinator for Climate Iniatives in Seattle’s Office of Sustainability & Environment

We heard presentations on many topics from energy to waste, water to solar, and our focus area, transportation. As for the latter, they recognize the need to reduce single-occupancy vehicle traffic through investments in public transit, walking, and biking. Electrifying the status quo is not enough to get to carbon neutrality in the transportation sector — and it’s also not an equitable approach, a leading priority across all their efforts.

Every morning we led a group run to see some of those investments in person. One highlight were Healthy Streets, which are similar to their neighborhood greenways but with fewer restrictions on neighborhood activities that would otherwise require street closures (e.g. basketball).

Healthy Streets are closed to pass through traffic, but open to people walking, rolling, biking, and playing. The goal of this program is to open up more space for people rather than cars—improving community and individual health.

Seattle’s Healthy Streets and neighborhood greenways include traffic calming, such as bump outs, speed humps, 20 MPH speed limits, and traffic circles.

These are similar to the Slow Streets described in Detroit’s Streets for People Design Guide, but not yet implemented.

Bell Street in Seattle

Seattle has also invested in thousands of traffic circles. These are small gardens that fit within a residential intersection to slow vehicles. They are not roundabouts! These are also in the city’s Design Guide. Since returning from Seattle, we’ve submitted a grant application to pilot these in Detroit.

Detroit & Seattle elected officials
e-Trikes used for street maintenance
Stormwater retention pond
ADA ramps maintain pedestrian access through construction zones
Curb-protected cycletracks
Traffic circle

One thing we didn’t see in Seattle: broken and missing bike lane delineators. Theirs seem far more durable that those used in Detroit. We were told they rarely need replacing. We hope to try those as well with out traffic circle pilot.

A major takeaway for us was climate change. They’re feeling the effects of record temperatures, expanding forest fires, and risings seas, whereas Michigan hasn’t. We can’t help but think this is one reason why Seattle and the state of Washington are taking climate action much more seriously than Michigan.

Overall, it was an invaluable experience, not only to learn from Seattle, but to strengthen connections within our Detroit group. We look forward to implementing some of what we saw here at home.

Thanks to the Kresge Foundation, Amazon, and Visit Detroit for making this visit possible. We also would like to thank Washington DOT Traffic Engineer Dongho Chang and Seattle Neighborhood Greenways Executive Director Gordon Padelford for helping us plan our group run routes and meeting with us during the event to share additional information.

Video from our group runs through Downtown Seattle