Serving Gogebic, Iron and Ontonagon Counties
Serving Gogebic, Iron and Ontonagon Counties
By RICHARD JENKINS
Bessemer — It looks like it may take some getting out and pounding the pavement to decide the number of lanes on U.S. 2 through Bessemer after state officials attended Monday’s meeting to answer the Bessemer City Council’s questions.
“We’re not trying to make your job difficult, and we’re trying to come up with a workable solution that’s going to work for Bessemer for (many years),” councilman Terry Kryshak said. “So I think it’s worth the investment of ‘boots on the ground’ as they say and we get out there and have a work session and … then we can see (what everyone is talking about).”
“Sometimes you just have to be out there,” he continued, referencing the difficulty the council and Michigan Department of Transportation representatives seemed to have Monday explaining their visions and concerns in the council chamber.
There was a consensus that a work session on U.S. 2 involving both the council and MDOT representatives would be the best path toward a decision on whether to make U.S. 2 three lanes or four through the city’s downtown. The change is needed to bring U.S. 2 into compliance with state requirements regarding lane width.
At the beginning of the discussion, MDOT representatives showed the council the latest preliminary designs for reducing the highway down to three lanes through downtown Bessemer.
The plan calls for the “pinch point” transition down to a single lane to happen further from downtown when entering Bessemer, while traffic returns to two lanes closer to downtown when leaving the city from both the east and the west.
The idea is to get the cars into a single-lane formation earlier to avoid added confusion from cars turning onto the highway from the side streets.
“You’re moving (the pinch points) out of town enough so people are in single-file before they start hitting all the side streets,” said Dave Bradley, with MDOT’s Crystal Falls office. “That was a point of confusion, I think, last time. Maybe there was too much pavement when you’re pulling out (onto the highway) and there’s confusion.”
In response to the idea, members of council inquired about the possibility of shrinking the section of highway that would be one lane to reduce the area impacted by the lane change.
In particular, several members of council expressed concern regarding trucks turning onto the highway from various businesses having trouble getting up to speed fast enough to not slow traffic behind them if there isn’t a second lane for other vehicles.
In response to other concerns from the council, the MDOT representatives said the state didn’t expect a need to acquire any property beyond the existing easements for the project.
If the four-lane plan is adopted, the highway would feature two 11-foot lanes in the middle with two 12-foot outside lanes and 4-foot sidewalks.
The council expressed some skepticism that the four-lane plan with larger lanes would be feasible without acquiring extra property or building the highway very close to buildings, which was where the idea of a meeting along the highway where both sides could point out their plans in the actual space came from.
In response to various flags and marking seen downtown, MDOT representatives said there have been multiple surveyors working in the area, and not all the paint marks seen downtown show where the roadway would be.
In other action:
—The council approved an amendment to its engineering contract for the ongoing sewer project to pay the engineering firm C2AE an additional $14,000 to cover additional time firm staff have to be onsite to oversee the project. While not part of the contract, it was also reported at the meeting the city and engineering firm had reached an agreement to reimburse Bessemer $12,000 due to what City Manager Charly Loper told the Daily Globe was issues the city had with previous inspections.
