Four Michigan communities are getting $35.5 million in grants from the Bipartisan Infrastructure law to improve roadway safety.
The largest grant—$25 million—will help Kalamazoo County add safety features to 130 miles of roadway throughout the county. The project “aims to address the 74 fatalities and 30 serious injuries on the project roads over the past 5 years, more than half of which were due to roadway departure,” according to a release from the Michigan Infrastructure Office.
“[The project] will systematically install centerline and shoulder rumble strips, provide adequate clear zones, and install pavement markings and signing improvements along 130 roadway miles. The project will also widen about 16 miles of primary roadways to provide a minimum of 3 feet of paved shoulders—which will improve the safety of people walking and bicycling while also reducing lane departure crashes—and install left-turn lanes at select high-risk locations to address identified crash patterns.”
Zachary Kolodin, Michigan’s Chief Infrastructure Officer, said jurisdictions can apply for federal transportation grants if they develop a comprehensive roadway safety plan.
“Once you have a comprehensive safety plan, you can then go and apply for one of these Safe Streets for All grants to actually implement it,” Kolodin said. “So that's what Kalamazoo is doing. They're actually getting funding to implement their plan.”
Detroit is also getting $10 million to improve safety along the Gratiot corridor, which according to state officials is among the most dangerous roadways in the state and the country when it comes to traffic crashes. From 2019-2023, there were 2,542 crashes, 842 injury crashes, 102 crashes involving pedestrians and cyclists, and 38 fatalities (including 19 pedestrians),” according to state data. Detroit will use the funds to “implement a number of proven safety countermeasure techniques to reduce the number and severity of crashes occurring on Gratiot.”
Kolodin noted that like Kalamazoo County, Detroit also developed its own comprehensive safety plan after the city saw an 88% increase in its per capita fatality rate from 2017 to 2020. That plan received a prior round of Safe Streets grants, and the city is currently in the process of implementing it.
Kolodin said that traffic crashes, particularly ones involving pedestrian injuries or fatalities, have spiked in recent years, especially during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. He said those numbers have started to subside in the past two years, “but we haven’t gotten all the way back to where we were before the pandemic.”
According to state data, traffic crashes are still the leading cause of death for Michiganders under 45.
