Raildude's dad

My daughter works for the largest AE company in the US and thus interacts with offices around the country. It's not unusual for her co-workers in distant offices to think GR is a suburb of Detroit and the associated negative things. I've always said how Detroit is viewed so is GR and the State of Michigan., therefore we need to be supportive of any effort to make Detroit great again.

This ship sailed years ago, like the late 60's. The 36th St exit is supposed to offer the chance for a 2nd entrance but the road needs to go under the railroad and the runway. Look to the north the next time you leave the airport and look how much lower the north runway is than the terminal area. Can it be done?, yes but it will be expensive. One can avoid 28th and 96 right now by using the 36th St interchange.

No sewer or municipal water out by the interchange. It will have to come from Lowell. It's an expensive proposition. 1 hour ago

City of Walker

We drove down Woodward Ave yesterday late afternoon to see the Q-line. The sidewalks were full of people and theres lots of new building and redevelopent going on along the route. My daughter (who was with us) worked on some of the site civil for the Q said it is like night and day, the before and now.

It's not buckling, the joints are deteriorating. The black stuff is called mastic and is an a tempt to seal the joints to keep the water out during the winter freeze thaw cycles.

I see more castle spires It has spread from Grandville

I find the settling hard to believe. I attended a presentation on the construction and it's on something like 1000 piles IIRC As for the naysayers, I get it, they don't like the appearance, but let it go for crying out loud.

Thanks for the nice photo essay, especially the Ada pics

The real estate bubble is full blown. No way I'd pay $159,000. My neighbors house just sold for $175,000, listed on a Wed pm, offer pending Fri pm . Just redone inside. 3 bedrooms 1 1/2 bath nice yard & beautiful landscaping (she was a master gardener) and 2 1/2 stall garage. No bars close by but the Alpine Meijers is 3 blocks away. We love the convenience of Alpine Ave close to our neighborhood.

The drawing has lots of detail, the actual building not so much:(

Replacing the concrete slab. It's the original pavement from east of Alpine to the Grand River.

You have to remember most everyone with a house and businesses were heating with coal back then. I'm sure you have seen the photos of the factories belching black smoke. I suspect the belt driven machinery were powered with coal somehow. The City's Coldbrook Pumping Station was coal fired. They generated electricity for the pumps and the street lighting system. You've seen "The Stack" at the American Seating Company complex. That building was the powerhouse where they burned coal for steam heat and electricity for the plant. They burned coal until the late 50's IIRC. My dad worked at AMSECO and I can remember the guys at the powerhouse lighting fires under frozen coal cars to get the coal to come out the bottom hatches. My folks built a new house in the Leonard Diamond area in 1947 and it had a coal furnace. My dad was very happy to put in a gas forced air furnace in about 1955 or 56. I remember a gentleman coming with a small dump truck and a Ford loader come and empty out the coal bin. The coal bin had the coal chute removed, glass blocks put in and it made a great work shop. My dad put a dutch door in and that's where our dog spent his nights. One other thought - I don't think there was such a thing as readily available power washer and those nifty hydraulic man lifts that you can rent today didn't exist. "We've come a long ways baby"

You need to get out a little more The elevation change was to get the road above the 100 year flood elevation. The road would flood regularly at the old elevation. The water would back up the storm sewer and come out the catch basins.

This happens a lot more than one would think. Look at the underside of other bridges. Lots of impact marks. Most are not as severe as what has happened at 100th St. It is a little lower than most but still any legal height load should be good to fit under. The first hits were 2 guys hauling shipping containers on regular flat bed trailers. There is a reason that there are hundreds of thousands of container chassis out there. The containers are too high on a regular trailer. They almost made it .One guy hit the south fascia beam the second hit the north fascia beam. The air ride suspensions raised up enough to snag the bridge. I remember a guy SB that didn't get off at 28th St on his way to MC Sporting Goods warehouse. The container hit the overpass, split open and spread Nike's all over the highway. The next "hit" was the plastic covering the top of a modular home. Not a true hit. The next one was some guy that had a piece of equipment that didn't measure his load .That happens more often but the news media typically doesn't report it unless it's a real traffic issue. Right now "100th St" is a hot new item. The guy that peeled off the top of his pallets again didn't measure his load , probably didn't even think about it. Used to be we could tell when Christmas trees started moving south by the trees along the road at the lower height overpasses on the freeway. I'm not on the road like I used to be so I can't tell you if it still happens. One thing thy could do quickly is mill off the 4-5 inches of asphalt on 131 under the bridge. A second thing is make their truck permit sysytem easier to use. I know from personal experience it takes a long time to to get thru the application on line. I'm guessing a lot don't bother to get an over height permit - any permit for that matter . An accurate measurement entered in would get those bridges flagged. Know your load / trailer height, read the signs and you won't hit anything. Over height , get a permit and MDOT will flag the problem ones. No excuse for anyone hitting them.