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Transit Updates for Greater Grand Rapids


GRDadof3

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32 minutes ago, GRDadof3 said:

Actually those maps show how many cars go through per day, not per hour.  But there's way more commuters and population going through the East Beltline corridor North of I-96 than there is West of the Grand River on LMD. Even if you take into account GVSU students. 

The EBL does certainly feel busier.  Especially when that shit show backs up between 4 and 7pm everyday.  As someone who drives LMD daily I do think it has better traffic flow though.  I think the city of Walker got their act together and actually adjusted the timing of their lights with Grand Rapids.  Even as recent as six months ago it used to take 10-15 minutes extra to get through the cluster of lights leading up to the intersection at Wilson.  Recently it's been moving much faster.  

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I live in DT GR and work in for Ottawa County and in the last 2 years I've noticed traffic on m45 getting worse. So much so I started taking Fillmore on my ride home to avoid the constant stop go headaches and replaced them with stop signs that are expected. With that said I still think belt line has it worse.

 

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Our rush hour in this city is literally an hour. Maybe less. The cost to widen all our expressways in the metro area AND the beltline would probably be a 10 digit number.  We don't need more lanes to handle traffic during 60 minutes of the day 5 days a week.  Almost all of those rush hour cars and trucks have ONE person in them.  

We should be spending transit money on solutions that reduce the number of cars on the road at peak times, not on wildly expensive road expansion. 

 

 

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3 hours ago, scottythe1nonly said:

adding lanes to highways isn't a reasonable solution.  It's incredibly expensive.  And it doesn't necessarily decrease traffic congestion.  

Adding transit is expensive AND very few use it.  :) 

ie light rail for instance is about $50 - $70 Million a mile now, and it only captures about 10% of commuters, tops. BRT is not much less, and only captures about 3% of commuters. Buses? I know people who live in trendy areas of urban Chicago and won't dare step on a bus in Chicago. 

Adding a lane to a highway is about $10 Million/mile in urban areas, and is used by 90% of commuters. I'm not saying that adding lanes is the end-all-be-all but there are some really really really stupid pinch points/merge areas on the local highways that could easily be fixed. 

I would love to have light rail in GR but when I look at the price tag of the M-1/Qline light rail line ($137 Million+ for 3.3 miles) and rode the thing with 2 other people in each direction, at a snail's pace being passed by cars, I really started to scratch my head. 

The reality of the matter is, a) not everyone can or wants to live in an urban area close to downtown b) just living in an urban area does not guarantee that you would WORK in said urban area c) people move jobs every 3 years now, and the chances that you'll continue to have a job close to your home are slim to none, especially with couples d) people are going to drive cars in a city of Grand Rapids size and the resources it has to allocate to transportation. 

I put at least 30,000 miles a year on my car. And I've driven in some of the largest cities and metro areas in North America (Toronto included). The people who make fun of traffic in Grand Rapids do not spend any appreciable amount of time on the local roads. They are becoming more and more congested just in the last year, as can be seen in the above posted map. 131 used to only be red in the s-curve area. Now it's the whole length through the metro area. I've traveled faster on I-90/94 in Indiana Chicago during rush hour than I've traveled on I-196 between Chicago Drive and downtown in rush hour. 

On a more positive note, I was really surprised to see that almost 9% of commuters locally CAR POOL!! That's 4x the number of people who ride the bus. They need to expand the carpool lots. Cheap way to take more cars off the road (but there will still be cars). Who posted that report? Where did I see that? :) 

Ah, here it is. Look at the carpoolers!

https://mibiz.com/news/design-build/item/24962-mobility-options-amid-high-demand,-grand-rapids-groups-seek-new-solutions-—-beyond-just-parking

2% of Kent County commuters use public transit. With margin-of-error it might as well be zero. To make it even comparable to carpooling, you'd have to quadruple the number of people who ride the bus. At a cost of how many $10's of Millions? 

*Edit, I removed the "throwing shade" part of my post, lol

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Some strategic lane additions and merge weave lanes would go along way to ease congestion.

WB 96 west of Cascade, NB 131 at 96 needs an extra lane under 96, EB 196 from Lake Michigan east to extra lane at Lane Ave are just a few. NB 131 from 28th has too many entrances with short acceleration ramps. As for the EBL, a lot of the congestion is due to all the turning volumes. If you give the thru traffic more green, the turning cars back up into the left thru lane. Again strategic lengthening of the left turn lanes would help. Plus letting 2 turn side by side would help.

However MDOT appears to be paralyzed to do anything along those lines. I suggested they look at the merge weave lane between Leonard and Ann St 20? years ago. (I work right there and my employer has about 40 trucks that use those ramps every day.) It took them 15 years to build the NB, didn't have funds to do the SB for 3 more years. Part is the lack of funding. They are paying down the bonding debt and are also focused on repaving whenever a few cracks show up.

 

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On 8/5/2017 at 8:52 AM, Raildude's dad said:

Experienced that yesterday about 3pm between 28th and Cascade WB.  Then at rush hour drivers that don't know how to merge at speed at Cascade bring that strech to stop and go.

That's even worse at Lane and I-196. Recently I've seen stretches of cars stopped on the on-ramp because they couldn't figure out how to merge at speed. But Lane's on ramp is a perfect example of 1960's highway design. 

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On 8/4/2017 at 7:34 PM, Raildude's dad said:

Some strategic lane additions and merge weave lanes would go along way to ease congestion.

WB 96 west of Cascade,

The much ballyhooed diverging diamond at Cascade Rd and 96 is still a congested mess.  Because of course it is.  The 5 stoplights in approximately a quarter mile stretch on Cascade road is one epic fail.  Plus, the money spent on the diverging diamond would've been better spent extending the long on-ramp from Cascade onto WB 96.  Take it all the way until it joins the third lane from Fulton to the 96/196 split.  

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35 minutes ago, wingbert said:

The much ballyhooed diverging diamond at Cascade Rd and 96 is still a congested mess.  Because of course it is.  The 5 stoplights in approximately a quarter mile stretch on Cascade road is one epic fail.  Plus, the money spent on the diverging diamond would've been better spent extending the long on-ramp from Cascade onto WB 96.  Take it all the way until it joins the third lane from Fulton to the 96/196 split.  

The added weave/merge lane on I-96 east of the city really should begin at least M-6.  An argument could be made that it should start at Lowell.  It should continue through the 96/Ford Split to Fruitridge or the 8th Ave/Wilson interchange.  Conversely the Ford Freeway should have an additional lane to at least M-6 in the west.  Although I could see an argument being made to add one all the way to the Byron Rd/Chicago dr. Interchange in Zeeland based on the traffic patterns.  This would give the area a network more representative of it's size, but still somewhat behind peer cities. 

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  • 2 months later...

You can say you read it here first. The only thing that will happen is the consultants will get paid for expensive gov't funded studies. Google the Wally to see how it shakes out. The Wally has a railroad the Great Lakes Central that will allow the commuter rail on their state owned track.

CSX won't even allow an occasional excursion on their rails nor will they allow a separated fenced bike path.

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27 minutes ago, localtalent said:

Who’s ready for The Rapid to lose 35% of funding? 

Millage is going down today. Probably 62%-38% ish.

Expect the May request to represent a substantial increase.

What's the basis for that vote estimate? I've certainly been seeing a lot of negativity (especially from the union), but I haven't seen any concrete numbers.

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2 hours ago, localtalent said:

Call it a gut instinct. ;-)

You might be right and what bothers me is that other organizations who were looking to put issues/ballot initiatives on the ballot this go around were told to wait until next year or even 2019, since the ballot was full this Fall with GRPS, GRPL and the Rapid. Now if the Rapid goes down in defeat and has to go back in May, once again other issues/initiatives get pushed out again. And with Peter Varga and Jennifer Kalczuk gone from the Rapid, their messaging seems to be lacking. 

That may be a little too insider baseball but someone needs to say it. 

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