689 Oh for God’s sake; here we go again.Time for a history lesson.Hillsdale, as an unincorporated village, was settled in the mid-1830’s and platted in 1839. It became the county seat in 1843, incorporated as a village in 1847, and then reincorporated as a city in 1869. It was already growing quickly. In the 60 years between the first count of residents in 1850 and the census of 1910, Hillsdale’s population had grown from 1,067 people to 5,001. In fact, Hillsdale’s population would continue to grow until the recession of the 1970’s, even adding 489 residents during the Great Depression! Image from KAYE’S KOLLECTIBLES on eBay.This postcard picture of downtown Hillsdale looking south from where City Hall now stands shows The Point (also known as The Wedge, the Waldron Block, or the Flatiron Block) as it was in 1890. This is the intersection of Broad Street (angled distant left to near right), Hillsdale Street (near left to the intersection), Howell Street (from the intersection angled to the distant right) and North Street (crossing perpendicular to the photographer’s point of view). As you can see, all streets were open in all directions, which was perfectly fine when horse buggies were the only vehicular traffic.I mentioned the population in 1910 because of this picture below. While undated, I’m almost entirely certain it was taken in 1911. That’s the year that Hillsdale’s City Hall opened, and this picture was almost definitely taken from the third floor. The building that preceded the current post office is still standing, and the current post office was built between 1911 and 1912. The mixed traffic seems to be composed of horse carriages, horseless carriages, and Brass Era automobiles. All of those vehicles would have been in use in the early 1910’s. So I can almost assuredly state that this was taken in 1911. Photo from Pinterest.As you can see, the intersection was still wide open, and it continued that way for many years, even as the automotive age kicked into high gear. By the 1920’s, the car was clearly here to stay. A picture dated 1923 from Pinterest.Obviously, that chaos would have to be brought to order as cars took over, got bigger, and became more powerful. We jump ahead to the 1950’s with the next picture, and you might be able to make out a rather interesting combination on the southwest corner’s lamp post. The powers that had been had seen fit to use traffic lights for Broad, Hillsdale, and Howell Streets, but stop signs for North Street. An undated photograph from the northwest corner of the intersection, apparently taken some time in the 1950’s judging by the styles of the cars. Image from Water Winter Wonderland.I don’t know who thought this was going to work.Oh, wait. Yes I do. MDOT and the City of Hillsdale thought it was going to work.This will be a recurring theme.See, the state routed two — at the time, very major — state highways through that intersection. By the mid-1950’s, the state highway alignments were almost in their current configuration. The only significant difference is a slight change to M-99 and M-34 in Hillsdale County.M-99 is the region’s most significant state highway in both Ohio and Michigan, connecting Carey, Ohio in the southeast to Findlay, Ottawa, Defiance, Ney, Bryan, what is now Holiday City outside Montpelier, and Pioneer before crossing the state line and running up to Hillsdale, Jonesville, Litchfield, Homer, Albion, Springport, Eaton Rapids, and into Lansing where it ends at St. Joseph Street… interestingly enough, just one block south of Lansing’s own Hillsdale Street.As you can tell, it’s a significant route. It’s not a direct route to or from anywhere except between each of those towns, but many cities depend on it to carry their heaviest traffic. As you can see from the map above, at the time that last picture was taken, Pioneer Road — after coming north across the state line — ended at Montgomery Road, where M-99 turned west through the unincorporated village of Frontier, before turning north onto South Hillsdale Road and continuing into the city of Hillsdale, where (because the city council couldn’t find some other street for the name, I guess?) it becomes Howell Street.And yes, there is a North Hillsdale Road that continues north from Hillsdale Street on the north side of the city, but it’s not a significant route. It only goes north about a mile before merging into another road entirely. It’s the back way to Jonesville, basically.Anyway, the other difference was that, since that northern section of Pioneer Road had not yet been built, M-34 continued along Hudson Road, which becomes Broad Street when it turns north into the city of Hillsdale. While not as significant a route as M-99, M-34 is important in and of itself, as it’s the primary road to the eastern portion of Hillsdale County, and it connects Hillsdale County to Lenawee County, our neighbors to the east, all the way to their largest city of Adrian. From there, one can further reach Monroe or Toledo.So the intersection of M-99 and M-34 carried significant amounts of traffic back then… and to some degree, still does today.Plus, there’s another complicating factor: Carleton Road. Hillsdale’s downtown street layout is incredibly complex in the two blocks north of the county courthouse (far moreso than it should be, and that’s an idea I’ll get into later). Take a look at the map, oriented east: Yes, Hillsdale City Hall is a pentagonal building.MDOT routed two state highways to intersect at a major, six-way junction just 340 feet away from where the more prominent route intersects with another not-insignificant street and turns to join it. I get that they were working with the streets that already existed at the time, but there was no way this was sustainable. It was poor planning from the start.So what was their solution?Ya gotta keep ’em separated. An undated postcard photo of the intersection some time in the late 1960’s. Image from CardCow.In 1966, they built this median, right down the middle of the intersection, splitting east from west and creating a pedestrian walkway between City Hall and The Point… which also had the side benefit of adding just a few more parallel parking spaces, as well. No more six-way intersection, no more mish-mash of traffic control devices, far fewer chances for collisions.This was part of the M-99 realignment project through Hillsdale County. See, MDOT had been planning to continue Pioneer Road northward all along, and the extension was finally completed in 1966. M-99 today turns west from Pioneer Road onto Hudson Road just west of the unincorporated village of Osseo and continues into Hillsdale along the route that used to be M-34. M-34, meanwhile, now begins at Hudson Road’s intersection with the newly-extended Pioneer Road, and travels eastward as Hudson Road from there. A north-oriented map showing the T-intersection of Pioneer Road heading south from the mostly east-west Hudson Road.Meanwhile, Howell Street reverted back to city control, South Hillsdale and Montgomery Roads reverted back to county control, and the village of Frontier never recovered. It’s still there, but… barely. It can’t really evaporate into a ghost town, as it is the seat of government for Woodbridge Township, home to both the township hall and the fire department. There’s still a post office there, there are still a number of homes there, and a Dollar General was recently built on the corner of Montgomery and Hillsdale Roads. But without the traffic of M-99, it’s not the bustling little spot it used to be.The new alignment caused some problems in downtown Hillsdale, as well.For one thing, there was confusion about street names and what went where. If you wanted to take Howell southbound out of town, you turned south from Carleton onto Broad on the west side of City Hall, which then curved and became Howell. If you wanted to take Broad and M-99 south and east to either M-34 in Osseo or continuing south to Pioneer, you turned south from Carleton onto Hillsdale on the east side of City Hall, which then curved and became Broad.M-99 was signed well enough, but the street names were not, so if you were visiting from elsewhere and someone on the north side of town told you that something was on Broad Street, you’d probably end up all the way down by the hospital on the south side of town before you realized “wait, HOWELL Street?! I turned onto Broad! I know I turned onto Broad! How the hell did I wind up on Howell?!”For another, remember when I told you that Carleton road was just 340 feet away from the six-way intersection?See? I did say that.Now, it may not look like it from the aerial view below, but that series of movements was causing real problems for the semi trucks that come through town. They had to make sure they were in the left lane, they had to turn to the right past the median, then they had to turn left again just 340 feet later, see around the blind spot created by City Hall, and make sure they didn’t sideswipe anyone in the left eastbound lane on Carleton. It was an improvement over the chaos that existed prior, but it was never an ideal situation. An east-oriented map showing the area around City Hall as it was in 2005.That was the problem that prompted MDOT to remove the median and put things in their current alignment. This is how the intersection is currently configured. Ah, that’s better. Still shitty, but better.Not only is the turning situation improved for northbound M-99, but the traffic motions were necessarily changed everywhere else for safety reasons.Howell Street is now one-way southbound for one block with a curb narrowing it to just a single lane at the intersection. Angled parking has been added to the east side (top) while parallel parking remains on the west side (bottom).The west portion of North Street remains two-way, but with a triangular curb at the intersection. Westbound traffic moving away from the intersection is limited to traffic only coming from southbound Broad Street (coming from the left as shown here). Eastbound traffic coming into the intersection can only turn right onto southbound Howell.Broad Street once again flows straight through. However, while southbound traffic can turn right onto Howell or the western portion of North Street, it cannot cross the double-yellow line to turn left onto the eastern portion of North Street or onto Hillsdale Street. Only northbound Broad Street can turn onto the eastern portion of North or onto Hillsdale.Hillsdale Street has been narrowed to one lane and is now one-way northbound (above City Hall on this map). Angled parking for City Hall, which includes the police department offices, has been added to the west side.There is no motion to get from one section of North Street directly to the other, which isn’t really a problem in and of itself. Businesses on both sides are doing just fine without it.The eastern portion of North Street, interestingly enough, is still a two-way street right up to a curb that prohibits traffic from exiting onto Broad or Hillsdale Streets. The reason for that is because what little public parking the post office has — along with some parking on the other side of North — is either on North Street itself or is in a tiny little lot that depends on North Street for access. You can see it better in this close-up, oriented south: Why the animosity toward MDOT?Well, to unpack that, it must be explained that the current configuration was a hard-fought compromise that nobody wanted.MDOT’s people came rolling into town in 2006, talking about how they knew M-99 sucked, they wanted to bring pedestrian traffic back to Broad Street (it’s already there, but not as voluminously as Howell Street), and they wanted to hear our ideas.That last point was a lie. They did not want to hear our ideas. They had to hear our ideas because of state law requiring public input. But they came here with their own agenda, and they had no intention of deviating from it.Local businessman Grant Baker and many of the businesses downtown had collaborated on their own plan for this project, and it came very close to what I would have done if I’d had the time or capacity to put one together myself back then. I approved of it wholeheartedly. It was an excellent design.Baker had been promoting it in preparation for the public meeting with the MDOT officials, and the community was pretty much in full support of it. On the night of the meeting, the Hillsdale Community Library’s meeting space was packed. Everyone wanted to make sure this went right.MDOT’s folks came in, fired up a projector, and showed us what their plan was: a road diet of Broad Street down to one lane each way with a center turn lane, increased sidewalk and green space on both sides, and the outright closure of North Street from the six-way intersection, as well as restricting motions to and from Howell and Hillsdale.Their attitude was entirely “this is what we’re going to do.”The reaction they got from the community was “THE FUCK YOU ARE!”It took a ton of back-and-forth between the people and City Hall, a ton of back and forth between City Hall and MDOT, and MDOT trying to figure out how to prevent themselves from getting tarred and feathered at the next public meeting. A meeting that they were not at all anticipating being necessary. They had expected to tell these small-town rubes what was up and how it was gonna be. We told them otherwise.In other words, MDOT got spanked, sent to their rooms, and left to contemplate their poor life choices.So they came up with the current alignment, we Hillsdaliens said “good enough, go for it,” and the project was completed in 2007.And ’round and ’round we go.Unfortunately, institutional memory isn’t always… well, existent in state agencies like the Department of Transportation. It’s been 19 years, four and a half gubernatorial terms, and three executive administrations since then. I would be surprised if there’s anyone at MDOT today who was involved with the 2006 project, let alone anyone in the planning department.Roadway and traffic planing is one of those jobs where there’s a lot of going where the action is, because not only can priorities change with the direction of government, but planners tend, for better or worse, to stay on top of trends and be eager to try them out in new places. MDOT is particularly notorious for this. Their obsession with roundabouts in the past decade and a half, for example, has been nothing short of ridiculous.To give you some idea of the situation, we have roundabouts at freeway service interchanges where the traffic is too heavy and the roadways are too compact. The prime example: I-94 and Cooper Street in Jackson. A couple years ago, a manure truck overturned there because, hey! Guess what! You don’t put a roundabout at the end of a short, almost straight ramp coming off of a freeway! People don’t slow down because there’s no apparent need to! Imagine that!There’s also the case of a roundabout built at Ann Arbor’s intersection of State Street and Ellsworth Road, an increasingly busy intersection serving ever-growing commercial development. The accident rate there actually increased after the roundabout’s construction, and it remains the 6th most dangerous intersection in the entire state. It’s not an MDOT project — it was a joint effort between Ann Arbor and Washtenaw County if memory serves — but it was built in the midst of MDOT’s “build roundabouts EVERYWHERE!” insanity, and the continued increase in accidents runs contrary to the claims that roundabout evangelists love to make about improved safety.In fact, when you look at that list, you’ll see that 5 of the 20 most dangerous intersections in Michigan are roundabouts. 25% of the state’s most dangerous intersections are roundabouts. If you’re trying to make the case that roundabouts are safer than box intersections, that’s not a convincing record.And yes, I know the “improved safety” argument is about sideswipes as opposed to T-bones. And yes, I know that roundabouts work in low- to moderate-traffic areas along local and collector streets. And yes, I know that properly-sequenced roundabouts along properly-chosen traffic patterns vastly improve flow. Places like Carmel, Indiana have proven all of that very well. I’m not bashing roundabouts (even though I personally dislike them). I’m bashing MDOT — and those who follow their lead — for putting roundabouts where roundabouts don’t belong.I want to get that out of the way up-front, because while I don’t have any indication that MDOT wants to put a roundabout on M-99 in Hillsdale, I wouldn’t entirely put it past them. If they do, they’ll want it at the six-way intersection between City Hall and The Point, and I swear to God, I’m gonna go Bakersfield chimp (figuratively speaking, of course). I know I won’t be the only one.But what does the city want?The plan uploaded to the city’s web site was drawn up by Zoning Administrator Alan Beeker. Now, I like Alan, he’s a nice enough guy, and I’ve had good things to say about his work over the years. But while he’s done some traffic and roadway planning here and there in both his previous job and his 11-plus year tenure here in Hillsdale, most of his job involves determining what land use is best suited where. That’s why his title is “Zoning Administrator.” Zoning is pretty much the extent of what his department is responsible for, because there haven’t really been any new roadways or traffic patterns to “plan” for the past 60 years, if not more. What few roadway planning projects do come along are mostly small matters on existing roadways, like adding the left turn lane back to eastbound Carleton at Oak because removing it in the first place didn’t work out so well. Roadway planning isn’t really Beeker’s specialty.So, with that being said…First, the praise.The first thing I noticed when I opened the proposal was that Beeker obviously saw my proposal last year for the post office parking lot, because what I proposed (closing Union Street between Carleton and North and expanding the parking lot) is almost exactly what he has in his proposal, right down to closing off North between Ferris and Carleton and shifting Ferris eastward between North and Carleton. That’s my design.My proposal for the North Street parking lot, notably half-baked because I was just jotting down the basic idea. Alan Beeker’s proposal for the North Street parking lot.Notably, Beeker’s proposal adds more parking spaces because he’s narrowed North Street to eliminate parallel parking, which I didn’t (though I would have gotten there if I’d sat down to work on it some more; it was in my head). The only issue I can find with this (the parking lot specifically) is that the post office’s drop boxes are located in that median on the south side of the parking lot. I don’t see the drop boxes in Beeker’s plan, and I’m not quite sure where he envisions them winding up.I also approve of dieting Carleton east of Broad. It wasn’t in my plans, but that street hasn’t been anywhere near as busy since American Copper and Brass’s South Street facility shut down, and even less so since Pillsbury shut down Stock’s Mill. Even accounting for whatever becomes of the Hillsdale Screen Company building and development of the mill property (barring something radically huge being built there), Carleton doesn’t need to be four lanes at any point east of Broad.Another change I approve of is closing Budlong between Waldron and Broad and adding a wide-radius curb in its place.This intersection has never posed much of a problem that I can recall, but its current configuration has never been necessary, and it’s always been one that I’ve questioned the wisdom of. It, like the north end, dates back to the old horse-and-carriage days, so I understand why it is the way it is, but what Beeker proposes here really should have been done ages ago.Unfortunately, the rest of this proposal is just a big mess. For one thing, he’s not only retaining the superfluous and problematically tight right turn movement from northbound Broad onto eastbound Carleton, he’s adding traffic to it by closing off the right turns onto Hillsdale and North Streets. Under this proposal, you would have to make the ridiculously tight turn from Broad onto Carleton, then turn onto Hillsdale coming back south to curve around the post office to get to North Street, or turn from Carleton onto Ferris to come the other way on North.So not only do you have fewer lanes on Broad Street causing more congestion, you’re now eliminating egress from Broad street to the side streets that would most logically be used to eliminate that insanely tight and completely unnecessary right turn onto Carleton.Brilliant. 🙄Yes, I did just use an emoji in an opinion piece. Deal with it.Let’s move to the south end of downtown and the intersection of Carleton with Bacon and Cook Streets.Even if you live in the area, you might barely even be aware that Cook Street exists, and looking at this diagram, you would think it’s not really that important of a roadway. But let’s look at the bigger picture, shall we? The area east of Broad Street along Ferris Street, oriented east.I call this area “the back side of downtown,” because… that’s… what it is. Don’t blame me; I didn’t design it.Now, the most important thing to focus on here is the south (right) half of the block between McCollum and Cook.In the middle of the block, and extending south to Cook on the east (upper) side of the block, is St. Anthony Catholic Church. They’re also the owners of that moderately-sized parking lot directly behind their buildings. The signs outside that lot very clearly state that it is only for St. Anthony’s use. On the corner of Broad and Cook is St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, which doesn’t have a parking lot. At all. None. Additionally, that little building on the point between Cook and Bacon holds a couple of offices.Apart from St. Anthony’s, that entire block relies on streetside parking. Cook is one-way eastbound away from Broad, which means that all of the parallel parking along Cook is one-way eastbound, as well, and simply has to drive downhil to Ferris to exit. Beeker’s plan would not only eliminate more egress from Broad at Cook, it would force Cook to once again become two-way, meaning the parallel parking would also be two-way, and there would be no cul-de-sac in which to turn around; those who park westbound would have to do a three-point turn to get out. With streetside parking on both sides. That’ll be fun.And yes, there is everyday traffic that takes Cook to get to points north. If you cut off access to Cook and North, you’re shifting all of that traffic to either McCollum or the ridiculously tight turn at Carleton (which, as we’ve already established, has no reason to exist). So again, cutting off Cook Street only increases congestion on Broad Street, dieted or otherwise.Now, sure, I’m all about walkability, but not at the expense of access to necessary parking facilities, and we already know that the parking in downtown Hillsdale is severely lacking. Has been for decades, even before the Great Recession, even before the Dot-Com Bubble burst, even before the 70’s recession. It’s never been up to snuff. Eliminating what little parking we do have and still do need, or making it more difficult to access, is remarkably stupid.Yes, there is the the public lot on the north corner of Ferris and McCollum, but that lot is badly placed to begin with, it’s uphill out of the St. Joe river valley to get from there to Broad, and it barely gets used at all because of its inconvenience. Broad Street Market, also the location of 55 Below and Bootleggers Bar, shares its parking lot with Ethan’s Donut Factory. The CASA offices and Lola-Lou’s Coffee Cup Diner pretty much rely on streetside parking on Broad, and Vested Risk Strategies relies on either Broad or the parking on North Street. Only on the busiest nights at Broad Street Market have I ever seen more than handful of cars in the Ferris Street lot, and that hasn’t happened in a long time.Historical side note: Cook was once a two-way street, and I’m old enough to remember that. Bacon and Broad had their traffic lights, but Cook had a stop sign.Gee… why does that sound familiar?Oh. Right.But look at us wanting to be all bike-friendly! …just not smart about it.As you may have noticed by now, this plan calls for a set of bike lanes on the reworked portions of both Broad and Carleton, and that was actually the first noise that had been made about all of this. Rumors have been swirling for months about the city wanting “a bike lane” through downtown. “A bike lane.” As in one single bike lane, or at least a single set of bike lanes along one particular route. The rumor was that it would be Howell Street. This shows that it’s Broad.To quote Chester Tate, “words fail me.”Bike lanes do absolutely nothing unless you have an entire network built out across the city that takes cyclists between residential areas and useful destinations. I need a bike lane somewhere near my house to somewhere near my job. I need a bike lane from somewhere near my job to Meijer (this role is already fulfilled by the North Country Trail). I need a bike lane from Meijer to the Jackson College LeTarte Center where I’m taking night classes (there is no pedestrian access to Jackson College at this time). I need a bike lane from Jackson College to somewhere near my house.Get the picture? Bike lanes aren’t just a coat of paint to slap down on a busy road and claim you’re making your city bikeable. They are an entire overlay network that has to actually be functional. They have to get cyclists to and from places. They’re like a highway system for bikes. You have to build connections to make them work.Nobody is going to use a single solitary bike lane route on Broad or Howell or wherever you decide to put it, because it will be coming from nowhere and going to nowhere. Again, I refer you to Road Guy Rob, particularly the portions of this video about road diets causing increased congestion and platoon sizes at traffic lights and the use of dedicated trails and layered networking to build out the pedestrian and bike lane system. And no, you’re not going to build roundabouts throughout Hillsdale like Carmel did. We don’t have the space or the money for that, so put it out of your head right now. A bike network across the city would still be useful, but you’re not going to be able to do a road diet anywhere to create space for them, because road diets necessitate the increased flow rates that come with free-flowing traffic, and we can’t do that here.Now, again, Broad Street must be four lanes, and that’s non-negotiable. We’ll get into that in a moment. But even presuming that the Broad Street road diet is a good idea (and it isn’t), look at this diagram and tell me the first problem you see with the bike lanes. The buffer lanes? No, those are a good thing. The center turn lane? You may dislike them, but no, that’s not the problem here relative to the bike lanes.There is no space between the retained parallel parking space and the bike lanes. Whenever someone opens a driver’s-side door, any bicyclists coming along will have to dodge around it, possibly into the buffer space. Which, to be clear, is not why the buffer space exists; the buffer space exists to maintain a safe distance between bicycle traffic and motor traffic.In fairness, five feet is the recommended minimum amount of space when parallel parking is placed adjacent to a bike lane in limited available space, but six is the ideal, and we shouldn’t be putting bike lanes on Broad Street in the first place, so this should all be a moot point.Remember how I said that the bike lane network should go to and from places? Most of downtown Hillsdale’s destination businesses are located a block west on Howell Street, and for those on Broad Street, it’s not going to be much trouble for a cyclist to take a bike lane on Howell, park somewhere there, then walk a block over to Broad.Because you’ll notice that I also said I need a bike lane near my house or near my job. Bike lanes are, in roadway hierarchy terms, collector roads. You don’t need them in front of every doorway on every block. A bike lane on Howell Street — connected to a city-wide network of bike lanes and dedicated pedestrian facilities — would work just fine.Bike lanes on Broad Street? Not smart.So why is this whole road diet an incredibly stupid idea?Well, have a look at the south side of town. This is M-99 on the south side of the city with the map oriented east. The cross street is the northern terminus of Steamburg Road, which is also the southern city limit. That big sandy lot is the southern end of the Hillsdale County Fairgrounds.As you can see, M-99 — called Hudson Road south (to the right) of Steamburg — almost immediately narrows down to one lane each way. It’s exactly a tenth of a mile from Steamburg to the merge.Now take a look at the area immediately surrounding the fairgrounds. South Street bounds the north end of the complex (left side in this map; Google Earth wouldn’t show its name here for some reason), and it’s the primary entry for parking during Fair Week and most other events held on the grounds. Steamburg Road on the south end provides access for the horse racing track, as well as the weekly Saturday auctions and associated sales throughout the fair weather months.What little parking there is off of South Street is nowhere near enough for the fair or even the 4th of July festival, so people park on the local streets and walk. I’ve walked from several blocks away at times because parking was so jam-packed. It’s not called “The Most Popular Fair On Earth” for nothing. That’s why those two entrances across from Sharp and Hallett Streets are there. In fact, the entrance at Sharp, just to the left of the fair office building, is genuinely the primary entrance to the midway. It’s where the main ticket booth is. You can see a crosswalk and stop lines painted across Broad Street. Usually just putting a temporary stop sign there is suitable, but there have been years in the past when MDOT has found it necessary to put a temporary traffic light there at Sharp Street.So it’s not as if they don’t know how badly traffic already gets backed up on M-99 during Fair Week. You’ve got some animal exhibitors and grandstand activities coming in and out at Steamburg, you’ve got revelers coming in and out at Sharp, and you’ve got attendees and the rest of the animal exhibitors and all of the other exhibit entrants coming in and out at South Street. There have been times that I’ve seen inbound traffic backed all the way up to the second intersection of Hudson and Steamburg, another 1.6 miles out of town. That’s what happens when you have three major congestion points in a row with nowhere to go to get around them. Bypass? What bypass?And that’s the real problem with M-99 south of town: there is no real alternate route for it close to town. If you want to get over to Hillsdale Road from Pioneer Road, your last chance on a paved road is Reading Road some five miles out of town… and you’ll have to jog back south out of your way when you hit Steamburg. There’s nothing closer because the chain of lakes that provides the headwaters for the two St. Joseph Rivers gets in the way.(That’s both the St. Joseph River that flows through South Bend and into Lake Michigan and the St. Joseph River that feeds the Maumee River in Fort Wayne. They both spring up in Hillsdale County from the same aquifer just miles apart from each other. If the glacier had moved just a little more land, the Lower Peninsula would be an island.)Everything else is all further distant from the city or winding dirt roads that, sure, you might be able to navigate in your personal vehicle, but what about the commercial traffic? Semi trucks can’t drive on those roads. Semi trucks can barely drive the paved county roads.If you’re taking M-34 into Hillsdale, at least you have the option of taking Bird Lake Road through Osseo up to Bacon Road, but that’s going to put you on the east side of town, not the south side. You can get to the south side from there, but it’s out of the way. Plus, if it’s wintertime, trucks had better break off Bacon at Carleton, because the hill coming up out of the St. Joe River valley, at the top of which is the M-99 traffic light, is not a good place for a semi to be stopping when it’s icy. Yeah, trucks use it, and I’ve never seen or heard of problems there, but it’s always worried me. You can click the graph image to see it in detail, because I know that text is tiny (it’s tiny even at full size), but I’ll describe it here, as well. It’s 638.6 feet of distance along Bacon Street west to east from the top of the hill at Broad Street to the mill race (which is at the same elevation as the St. Joseph River), and in that distance, the hill drops 34 feet with an average grade of 5.7% and a maximum grade of 8%. It’s within the standard for a collector road of its type in an urban, mostly level setting (the maximum is 9%), but it’s pushing the limit.Look, all I’m saying is, I’ve seen too many Final Destination films to risk getting stuck behind a big rig on that hill in the middle of an ice storm, okay?And sure, if you’re hitting traffic, you can turn off in a few places through the residential neighborhoods along Baw Beese Lake and cut back over to Steamburg, take Griswold over to one of the St. Joe Streets (East or West, there used to be a railroad splitting them between South and Bacon) and up to Bacon or Carleton… but again, trucks don’t belong on most of those streets. There’s just no good way to avoid that snarl.All of that is to say that if you take away two lanes from Broad Street, you are going to cause insane traffic when it’s Fair Week or when there’s some other event going on at the fairgrounds, and there are zero options to relieve that congestion.MDOT’s folks tried to placate us back in 2006, saying “oh, but that’s just one week of the year. You can deal with it just one week of the year.”Uh, no, that’s one week out of the year and another full day and night when you add in the Independence Day events. One week and two days if you add the Christmas events that have recently moved to the fairgrounds with the Light-Up Parade (thanks to the dumbasses on the city council greedily requiring completely unnecessary fees to close down Howell Street through downtown). It’s every single Saturday at the Steamburg Road T-intersection while the auctions and sales are going on. We don’t just use our fairgrounds for our annual fair, we use our fairgrounds year-round for all sorts of events, and it gets busy.Quite honestly, MDOT needs to widen Hudson Road to four lanes going back to the four-way Steamburg intersection, at the very least. It needs passing lane sections going all the way back to Pioneer Road.I state this not as someone who is of the “one more lane will fix it” mindset. I know just as well as any other planner that more lanes =/= better traffic. But M-99 was a bad routing from the very beginning because the city needed a bypass that the state couldn’t afford to build. Even moreso when it was signed as M-9 in 1919 than today, and it still needs a bypass today… which the state could afford to build if the money were set aside for it and the M-99 corridor was a priority.But the money has not been set aside because the M-99 corridor is not a current priority, so reducing lanes is beyond idiotic.What can and should be done?We all agree: M-99 sucks. It would be nice to make Broad Street more appealing for pedestrians. It’s not terrible, but it’s not great, either. Nobody likes Howell Street being one-way north of McCollum. The triangle curb on the west side of North is completely unnecessary. The lane directionality at Broad and Carleton is asinine, and the crosswalk there is dangerously ill-designed; everyone is terrified of it, and rightly so.I give you, essentially, what Grant Baker’s plan was, plus a few tweaks of my own. Map oriented east. This does not include my proposal for the area east of the post office. I hadn’t gotten that far yet.Let’s start with Carleton and Broad. The signal should be 4-phase with protected cycles for each direction, plus a dedicated pedestrian phase that occurs on trigger activation.Staggered stop lines will be necessary on both south-eastbound Carleton and northbound Broad.On south-eastbound Carleton, both lanes should have the option to turn right onto Broad with only the left lane given the through motion. There’s no reason to be restricting southbound M-99 to only one lane there, there’s enough space for them both to turn.Same for northbound Broad: both lanes have enough room to turn left there, and in fact, you’ll notice that I’ve made that mandatory. There is no reason to be turning right from Broad directly onto Carleton; there’s nothing there that can’t be accessed from Hillsdale Street, and there’s never going to be anything of that sort. The one-way section of Hillsdale Street past City Hall should be signed as the movement from northbound Broad to both northbound Hillsdale and south-eastbound Carleton.North-westbound Carleton can remain mostly as it is, but the stop line needs to be moved back a bit for the placement of the crosswalk. This will still provide enough distance, space for the left turn motion, and visibility.The signal’s protected crosswalk phase and the adjustments of the vehicular lanes make possible a few changes beneficial for pedestrians.First, the crosswalk across Carleton should be moved from the west side to the east side of the intersection. There are no residential areas accessible by pedestrians on the north side of Carleton between Broad and West, and the traffic light at West allows pedestrians coming from that direction to cross to either side of Carleton. At the same time, there are residential areas accessible by pedestrians on the north side of Carleton to the east via Hillsdale Street, as well as several walkable destinations such as Hillsdale Brewing Company, the Handmade sandwich shop, the coffee shop Rough Draft on Union Street, the Dollar General store, or even Gelzer’s Hardware.Really, it makes no sense to cross on the west side of the box when the east side is where you’re most likely coming from or going to. And if someone is coming from the west side of Broad, it’s not too much of an inconvenience to cross Broad and Carleton… or just go over to West and cross there.Second — and this one’s the biggie — the crosswalk across Broad should be aligned perpendicular to the roadway. Trying to cross from corner to corner as the configuration currently exists is an outrageously long distance made especially dangerous by the fact that you’re doing so across turning state highway traffic (hence my requirement for a protected pedestrian phase). There’s absolutely no excuse for the crosswalk to be in its current form, and I see that Beeker’s plan doesn’t change it. Whoever it was at MDOT in 2006 who thought that was okay should be repeatedly shot in the groin with NERF balls.And to facilitate both changes, the curb should extend north from City Hall into the existing right of way, preventing right turns from Broad directly onto Carleton and keeping the crosswalks visible to motorists and short enough for pedestrians to feel safe about crossing. It’s a win-win.Meanwhile, over at the six-way intersection… Hillsdale and the east section of North should remain as-is, open to traffic turning off from northbound Broad Street. Again, signs should indicate that all traffic to northbound Hillsdale Street or eastbound Carleton Road must turn onto Hillsdale Street, as there is no right turn at Carleton Road.The triangular median at the western section of North should be removed. Left turns from northbound Broad onto either North or Howell should be allowed. All eastbound traffic on North will still be required to turn onto southbound Howell.The curb at The Point (splitting Broad and Howell) should mostly remain intact, however Howell should be made two-way once again, with parallel parking restored on the northbound (east) side of the street. A single traffic lane should be cut through the curb, sending that traffic to a stop sign at southbound Broad Street, where only right turns will be allowed.This will also necessitate changes to the road markings one block south at the intersection of Howell and McCollum, and while the traffic signal there remains as it was physically prior to the 2006 reconfiguration, the timing will need to be adjusted to account for the changes at Broad and Carleton.Do those things and the better parts of Beeker’s plan, and people will be very happy.Traffic doesn’t need to be “calmed” on Broad Street.There’s not really all that much on Broad Street that people want to get to, and not because the traffic makes it unwalkable. It doesn’t. The sidewalks on Broad are perfectly walkable, especially since a path was added along the edge of the courthouse lawn. And while the traffic is heavier, I haven’t heard of anyone getting schmucked by a semi while trying to get out of their parallel-parked car. You just have to be a little more alert than you are on Howell. Not a big deal.And the reason why that’s completely and totally fine is because — if I may paraphrase Danny Tripp and Cal Shanley from Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip (which is a damn good show, and if you haven’t watched it, you should) — Broad Street isn’t where downtown Hillsdale is. Downtown Hillsdale is on Howell between North and Barry. The business district never really developed on Broad south of Bacon because the Stocks built their mansion and its outbuildings on the southeast corner of that intersection. Only residential development continued south of that for many years.Business and mixed-use development, however, continued south along Howell, and the entrances to the Point block buildings face Howell because that’s where people go. That’s where the main entrance to the county courthouse is. That’s where Sears built their department store, which is now the headquarters of County National Bank; address 1 South Howell Street.Howell is where most of the cool stuff in downtown Hillsdale is. In just a handful of city blocks, you’ve got things like the Toasted Mud ceramics shop, Hillsdale Natural Grocery, the Birdie’s & Howell boutique gift shop, The Hunt Club bar, Jilly Beans coffee shop, the Healthies smoothie shop, Checker Records (both a record store and a coffee shop!), multiple salons and spas, and plenty more.If it doesn’t outright collapse before its renovations are completed (long story), the Keefer Hotel on the corner of Howell and North might eventually (but most likely won’t — again: long story) reopen as an actual hotel for the first time in decades.Plus, what we call “midtown” is basically just an extension of downtown on the back side of Howell. On North street, you’ve got Here’s to You Pub & Grub (what most people around here refer to as “the pub”). Across the Midtown parking lot on Manning south of McCollum, you’ve got the Mitchell Research Center (the former library building, holding local historical documents) and the Hillsdale Community Library (a former Ford dealership building). Down on Bacon, just west of Howell, is an ice cream shop that started life as a Dairy Queen, but later became a local fixture called Coneys and Swirls (which is up for sale last I knew).And even the west side of Broad across from City Hall — which realistically is just an extension of the Howell Street density, anyway — includes places like the Studio 55 School of Dance and the locally legendary and newly-renovated Dawn Theater events venue (it was formerly a movie theater, then a nightclub, then sat dormant for a while).On top of all that, the Hillsdale County Farmer’s Market normally uses the courthouse parking lot every weekend in the fair-weather months, but while the courthouse was under renovation and the parking lot was closed, the city closed off Howell between Bacon and McCollum on the west side of the courthouse for them to use instead (prior to the city council idiotically thinking they could charge fees out the ass for such things).Basically, Howell street is where downtown Hillsdale happens. Broad has a handful of destinations like the Broad Street Market stores, the newly-opened Ethan’s Donut Factory, or the longtime fixture Hillsdale Filling Station deli in the basement of a building south of McCollum, but there’s just not enough usable or even desirable space over there for much else other than offices and upper-floor apartments to be viable.Just to give you an example, the building that used to sit immediately to the north of St. Anthony was condemned and torn down a few years back because its deadbeat owner didn’t keep it up and hadn’t paid taxes on it in years. The final straw came when a crack formed in the southwest corner and chunks of the building literally fell off and hit the church. Its lot currently sits vacant, owned by the city after foreclosure.Now, that’s not to say that all of the downtown buildings on Broad Street — or any of them at the moment — are structurally unsound or in that dire a state of neglect. To the best of my knowledge, they’re all just fine. But at the time, amongst the general public, that building was seen as the epitome of how unimportant the Broad Street side of downtown had become. Its demolition — along with relatively fresh memories of a historic church having burned down on Howell Street about a decade prior — started conversations about what should be done with that property, what should be done with that entire side of the central business district, and how Hillsdale should handle new development downtown overall. No real conclusions were ever reached, but that’s what got the discussion going.The three non-office, non-house-of-worship mainstays on Broad have been the Coffee Cup diner, Broad Street Market, and The Filling Station. That’s three commercial operations on two whole city blocks, which just goes to show you that there’s not much else you can do with those blocks, and dieting Broad Street isn’t going to help.It’s not going to change the fact that Broad Street Market has been through multiple incarnations in the past 20 years because multiple owners have tried multiple ideas and nothing seems to stick (a simple bodega with an awesome butcher shop inside worked the best).It’s not going to change the fact that the biggest draw south of McCollum, The Filling Station, isn’t even visible from Broad Street and only locals actually know where it is. It’s not going to change the fact that St. Peter’s still has no parking to call their own.The only thing it will change is to gum up traffic and make it even less desirable a place for businesses to locate.And as much as I know planners hate to be told this and don’t want to believe it, they have to be told anyway: a street overhaul alone does not prompt redevelopment. It doesn’t. Fight me on that if you want to, but I’m right, and you know I’m right, so if you do fight me, you know that you’re going to lose. I have over a century of history backing me up on that statement of fact.If you want to do something to help bolster business and bring people into downtown Hillsdale, help what’s already thriving: Howell Street. Put bike lanes there. Repeal the moronic money-grabbing fees to shut down city streets. Quit using TIFA as a property speculation tool and use it for what it’s meant to do: upkeep of downtown buildings’ facades, sidewalk features and fixtures, street decorations, and promoting downtown businesses.That’s how you bring people back to downtown Hillsdale.And MDOT, if you really want to do something to improve M-99 through Hillsdale, add the dedicated left-turn traffic signals back to Carleton and Fayette. Only one vehicle can get through in a single cycle, and that happens in all four directions. Regularly. It’s fucking ridiculous, and we all knew that your claim that those signals weren’t necessary (when they clearly were before you yanked them out) was a lie from the beginning. Fix that.Stop trying to make the Broad Street road diet happen. Alan BeekerBike LanesCity of HillsdaleDawn TheaterDowntown Hillsdale TIFAFrontierGrant BakerHillsdale County FairHillsdale County FairgroundsHillsdale Planning & Zoning DepartmentKeefer HotelMichigan Department of Transportation (MDOT)Road DietRoadway PlanningRoundaboutsWoodbridge Township 0 comments Josh Colletta When he was a kid, everything was a microphone. So they put him behind one, and he started in radio at the age of 8. Now, some 32 years later, Josh Colletta is doing what he's worked toward all his life: talking with you about things that matter, things that don't matter, and life in general. From politics to sports to Star Trek to civil engineering, and plenty of other geeky endeavors, let's have fun keeping the doctors confused! You may also like Congress Has Bought the Bullshit on AM Radio... Published: Tuesday, February 18th, 2025 Bishop Budde Demonstrated REAL Christianity Published: Friday, January 24th, 2025 No, Climate Change Is NOT Causing Miami’s High-Rises... 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