NO ROAD DIET FOR NINE MILE ROAD
City Council votes to move forward with five-lane reconstruction plan
Nine Mile Road will remain a fivelane thoroughfare after the Eastpointe City Council voted 4-1 to rescind its proposal to reduce the road to three lanes and move forward with the original reconstruction plan.
The decision was met with enthusiastic applause from residents in the audience Tuesday.
On Friday, Eastpointe received a communication from the Michigan Department of Transportation indicating that if the city wanted to move forward with a road diet plan on phase two of the Modern 9 reconstruction project, it would lose federal funding for phase two and possibly jeopardize funding for phase three of the project.
The City Council was given a deadline of March 20 to make the decision.
“MDOT said that because we were changing the scope of the project by making Nine Mile Road three lanes, the current funding could not be used for the project,” said Kim Homan, assistant city manager. “It was made very clear that the deadline is now for the funding.”
The City Council had to choose between going back to the original fivelane reconstruction plan for Nine Mile Road between Gratiot and Tuscany Avenue and retaining federal funding for the project, or de-obligating the funding that was released last September and authorizing the specific traffic studies and capacity analysis required to determine if the lane reduction plan meets state and federal guidelines.
A vote to table the decision would be the same as opting to de-obligate the funding, Homan added.
Mayor Michael Klinfelt, who originally supported the Nine Mile road diet plan along with councilpersons Cardi DeMonaco Jr. and Margaret Podsiadlik, said that he could not vote to stop federal funding for the road’s reconstruction.
“We keep getting different answers on how things are to proceed and I’m still not sure all of the information we have gotten is correct, but I just don’t think I can cast a vote for de-obligation,” Klinefelt said. “There is no guarantee if we did that we would have the funds obligated in the future.”
Council approved a plan for the three-phase Nine Mile Road project spanning from Hayes Road to Interstate 94 in 2021 which did not include a road diet.
During its Dec. 5 meeting, the City Council voted 3-2 to reject six bids gathered by the Michigan Department of Transportation for phase two of the project which affects the area between Gratiot Avenue and Kelly Road. The lowest bid came in $220,327 over the original estimated cost of the project. The road diet was proposed after the bids were rejected.
Initially, the estimated cost of the entire project was $4.3 million but with the rise in concrete costs, it is now $5.6 million. Funding through the Federal Highway Administration is paying for 81.85% of the project.
City engineer Ryan Kern of Anderson, Eckstein & Westrick, Inc. will make minor tweaks to the original five-lane plan that was already approved by MDOT last year and resubmit the final bid package no later than
March 26 for June 2024 bid letting.
In order to retain funding, the project must be contracted and started by September 2024.
DeMonaco, who championed the Nine Mile road diet, was the only council member to vote against moving forward with the five-lane plan. He repeatedly asked why a meeting with MDOT could not be scheduled this week and said he did not think a decision needed to be made at Tuesday’s council meeting despite Homan stating otherwise multiple times during the session.
“We were specifically told by MDOT that if we do not have a decision to them by tomorrow we will lose the funding,” Homan said.
But DeMonaco persisted.
“I think we can all work together to make this happen,” said DeMonaco. “Before we voted on the road diet I had a meeting with MDOT and asked if there were any reasons they would be against it and they said there wasn’t.
“I would like to clear up this confusion and find out who at MDOT is responsible for making this decision.”
City Finance Director Randy Blum confirmed Eastpointe does not have