Talking Michigan Transportation

On this week’s Talking Michigan Transportation podcast, Timothy Gates, associate chair for undergraduate studies of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Michigan State University, talks about a new report on the use of seat belts and hand-held devices by Michigan drivers.

The report shows 92 percent of front-seat occupants in Michigan wear seat belts, down from 92.4 percent in 2023 and 92.9 percent in 2022.

Gates talks about the demographic breakdown within those numbers, which show younger male drivers are less likely to wear seat belts. He also discusses the different kinds of drivers who populate the roads in the wake of the pandemic, as remote work remains the norm for more white-collar workers.

Also discussed: speeding continues to be a problem post-pandemic, Gates says. 

On this week’s edition of the Talking Michigan Transportation podcast, a conversation about mental health challenges for people who build and maintain roads and bridges. 

Gregg Brunner, chief engineer and chief operations officer at the Michigan Department of Transportation, spoke about the issue last month on a panel convened by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials.

As someone who has spent a career focusing on the safety of the transportation system and work zones, Brunner said his interest in making improvements was piqued as he pored through crash reports and visited the scenes. He learned of the toll crashes, especially where road work is occurring, takes on the workers. 

Members of the panel shared some chilling statistics, including: 

• Overall, suicides in the U.S. increased to 49,300 in 2023, up from 48,183 since just 2021. In the construction industry, 5,000 workers died by suicide in 2022, which climbed to 7,000 by 2023. By contrast, the industry loses an estimated 1,000 annually to construction site incidents.
• In Michigan, a construction worker is now 12 times more likely to die by suicide rather than due to an on-the-job injury.
• There is a 75 percent remission rate for mental health and even substance abuse issues if one stays engaged six months to a year in a treatment plan. 

Also discussed: The Michigan Senate recently adopted legislation to allow the use of safety cameras in work zones to monitor vehicle speeds and initiate citations for those exceeding work zone speed limits. On a previous episode of the podcast, Juan Pava, Safety Programs Unit chief of the Bureau of Safety Programs and Engineering at the Illinois Department of Transportation, talked about the success of a similar program there. 

On this week’s 200th edition of the Talking Michigan Transportation podcast, a conversation with Bill Milliken Jr., vice chairman of the Mackinac Bridge Authority and son of the state’s longest-serving governor.

Milliken talks about the honor and responsibility of serving on the Authority, including his role as chairman of the finance committee as they look to future needs and ensure appropriate revenue streams will be there.

He also shares his history with the Annual Bridge Walk and recalls walking with his father when he was governor. Gov. Milliken still holds the record for the fastest crossing among governors participating in the walk: 46 minutes, 50 seconds in 1971.

The Milliken history with the Mackinac Straits crossing concept predates the bridge’s construction by more than a decade. His grandfather, James T. Milliken, while serving in the state Senate, discussed the need for a bridge with then-Gov. Chase Osborn in the 1940s.

On this week’s Talking Michigan Transportation podcast, a return visit by Brian Travis, Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT) project manager on the I-96 Flex Route in western Oakland County, which is wrapping up soon. 

The innovative project, allowing for the use of shoulders as travel lanes during peak travel times, is MDOT’s second use of Flex Route concept. In 2016 and 2017, contractors built the first phase of a Flex Route, a $125 million investment on US-23 north of Ann Arbor. A project is underway for a second phase, at an estimated cost of $162 million, to extend the US-23 Flex Route from north of 8 Mile Road to I-96.  

Travis says the Oakland County project is on schedule and three lanes should be restored in each direction within a few days of this recording on Oct. 24, 2024. He also touts the safety and efficiency benefits the added capacity during peak travel hours will provide and explains that contractors came very close to the targeted cost of $270 million.  

Travis also explains why traffic will resume on three lanes soon, but the shoulders will not be available for use until early 2025. 

Funding for this project is made possible by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's Rebuilding Michigan program to rebuild the state highways and bridges that are critical to the state's economy and carry the most traffic. The investment strategy is aimed at fixes that result in longer useful lives and improves the condition of the state's infrastructure. 

On this week’s Talking Michigan Transportation podcast, a conversation with Ryan Mitchell, marking the one-year anniversary of the Michigan Department of Transportation’s (MDOT) Office of Major Projects.
 
 The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) categorizes major projects as those with a price tag of $500 million or more.
 
 Mitchell helped establish and refine the alternative delivery and critical project delivery programs of numerous U.S. transportation agencies, including the state transportation departments of Nevada, Texas, Alaska, and now Michigan. In our conversation, he explains the various types of alternative delivery of projects and the benefits.

Other links and references:

Innovative contracting at MDOT
www.Michigan.gov/MDOT/Business/Contractors/InnovativeContracting   

MDOT’s Modernize 75 project
www.Modernize75.com/ 

On this week’s edition of the Talking Michigan Transportation podcast, a conversation about the extraordinary efforts that culminated with the opening of a new and improved bridge near Edenville.

Jack Hofweber, manager of the Michigan Department of Transportation’s (MDOT) Mt. Pleasant Transportation Service Center, reflects on the heavy rains and floods that breached dams and ravaged roads and bridges in several counties in 2020, just weeks after many people went into lockdown because of the pandemic.

In what meteorologists concluded was a 500-year event, the flooding that resulted from up to 7 inches of rain in Midland, Saginaw and surrounding counties damaged homes and property, forced more than 10,000 people to evacuate and most spectacularly destroyed one power dam and severely damaged another.

One year after the floods, an MLive drone video captured the changes.

On Monday, Oct. 7, MDOT Director Bradley C. Wieferich, elected officials, contractors and labor groups celebrated the opening of the new bridge, as highlighted in this video.

With climate change and sustained high water creating headaches for shoreline communities across the state and officials from several state agencies planning for more, the challenge of planning and building more resilient transportation infrastructure, especially during an ongoing period of underinvestment, remains acute.

Other relevant links:

https://www.mlive.com/news/saginaw-bay-city/2020/05/how-a-spring-rainstorm-became-a-500-year-flood-event-in-mid-michigan.html 

https://www.michiganradio.org/post/governor-expands-state-emergency-declaration-include-arenac-gladwin-and-saginaw-counties 

This week’s Talking Michigan Transportation podcast picks up on themes in a Detroit Free Press story detailing creative efforts by the Michigan Department of Natural Resources (MDNR) to stem the proliferation of deer in the state’s southern regions.

Ed Golder, public information officer at MDNR, explains the challenges and how wildlife officials are tackling them. This includes some important changes in 2024 hunting regulations.

The problem, as outlined in the story:

While the state just recently started requiring hunters to report deer harvests, the results are stark: Hunters reported killing 30,000 fewer deer in 2023 than the year before, an 11 percent decrease, according to the state.

In a letter to hunters last year, Chad Stewart, MDNR’s deer, elk and moose management specialist, urged a greater antlerless harvest.

Podcast image courtesy of the Michigan Department of Natural Resources.

On this week’s edition of the Talking Michigan Transportation podcast, a follow-up to the previous episode highlighting efforts to protect people and animals with creative wildlife crossings on roads.

Amanda Novak, a resource specialist in the Michigan Department of Transportation’s Bay Region, helped spearhead the grant application and explains the importance.

As laid out in the project abstract for the grant, the number of wildlife vehicle collisions (WVCs) in Michigan continues to increase annually, worsening risks and costs to drivers. For example, white-tailed deer alone account for more than 55,000 WVCs and cost motorists an average of $130 million per year in Michigan. Additionally, WVCs are a major threat to many wildlife populations in the state, including documented impacts on several threatened and endangered species. Projected increases in tourism, housing development and climate change effects are likely to exacerbate WVC effects on motorists and wildlife in Michigan.

Podcast photo courtesy of the Michigan Department of Natural Resources.

On this week’s edition of the Talking Michigan Transportation podcast, the first installment of two focusing on ways to enhance the safety of animals, and human drivers, with wildlife crossings. In Part I this week, a conversation with Tim Johnson, a landscape connectivity specialist with the Yellowstone to Yukon (Y2Y) Conservation Initiative.

Going back some three decades, Canadian transportation and wildlife officials have collaborated on ways to build safe crossings to protect both animals and humans in Alberta. A system of 38 underpasses and six overpasses and fencing on 82 km of the Trans-Canada Highway in Banff National Park are also part of the longest ongoing wildlife crossing research and monitoring program in the world.

Johnson explains how the crossings work, how different animals use them and, especially, why these are just as beneficial to humans as the animals.

The hope is that Michigan officials can learn from the success from western officials as state officials pursue a federal grant for crossings here. Michigan State Police say more than 58,000 deer-related crashes occurred in the state in 2022. That’s a 13 percent increase from 2021, a decade high. Repairs from those crashes could be just as high.

In Wyoming, a $24.3 million federal grant awarded in 2023 was the largest made from the U.S. Department of Transportation’s first tranche of $109 million for a novel Wildlife Crossings Pilot Program. Wyoming will use the money to fund the bulk of the $37 million construction project that will involve fencing 30 miles of the highway, building six or so new underpasses and a wildlife bridge for skittish antelope that won’t go through a tunnel.

Podcast photo courtesy of Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative. 

On this week’s edition of the Talking Michigan Transportation podcast, a conversation with Detroit News editor and columnist Chad Livengood about his reporting on misperceptions and contradictions surrounding the development of electric vehicle battery production facilities.

As his Aug. 31 column observed:

All of this transition to electrification is backed by huge government subsidies — just like China does with its auto industry — so the Michigan-based domestic auto industry doesn't move more production to Mexico or offshore.

While EV adoption has not occurred at the pace expected by U.S. automakers, investments in plants to produce the batteries continues at the same time Michigan and other states make progress on supporting new charging infrastructure through the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) process.

Other relevant links:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/peterlyon/2024/04/28/why-america-remains-a-forbidden-land-for-chinese-carmakers/

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/15/business/economy/china-electric-vehicles-biden-tariffs.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&ngrp=ctr&pvid=EA2E2D4F-A518-4BE7-A02D-690443CDEC23