Talking Michigan Transportation
The Talking Michigan Transportation podcast features conversations with transportation experts inside and outside MDOT and will touch on anything and everything related to mobility, including rail, transit and the development of connected and automated vehicles.
Talking Michigan Transportation
Managing traffic during road construction; and what about the zipper merge?
As road work continues across Michigan, police are on high alert for speeding and distracted drivers causing crashes during backups.
On this week’s Talking Michigan Transportation podcast, a conversation about efforts engineers take to balance mobility and safety during active road work.
Lindsey Renner, division administrator for Construction Field Services at the Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT) and a former supervisor of the Work Zone Safety section, explains the challenges.
Among innovative methods in use are rumble strips to alert people as they approach a work zone, speed trailers and law enforcement employing a Ghost Rider program to identify distracted drivers.
Renner also talks about the zipper merge as a means of encouraging drivers to alternate when work requires a lane to be closed.
Other relevant links:
MDOT Work Zone Safety
www.Michigan.gov/MDOT/Travel/Safety/Road-Users/Work-Zone-Safety
The Zipper Merge Explained With Kids
https://youtu.be/TLAISm1XuHQ
Operation Ghost Rider
https://www.bridgemi.com/michigan-government/ghost-riders-lookout-distracted-drivers-michigan
Hello, welcome to the Talking Michigan Transportation Podcast. I'm Jeff Cranson. Today I'm going to be touching on a theme familiar to any of you who listen to podcasts for some time, and that's how to get people to pay more attention and drive more safely when they approach construction on the roadways. I'll be speaking with Lindsey Renner, who is the division administrator for construction field services and previously was a supervisor in the work zone safety area. She's very familiar with this topic, has a lot of ideas and speaks passionately about why this is important, and we're going to talk a little bit too about the zipper merge, which I know is a favorite topic of many. So I hope you enjoy the conversation.
Jeff Cranson:Hi again, as promised, I'm here with Lindsey Renner, who is the department's division administrator for construction field services. Previously she was a supervisor of the work zone safety section and I wanted her on specifically to talk about that because, as we've gotten into the construction season in earnest this year in Michigan, the same crazy speeds and distracted driving that seemed to really spike with the pandemic has not subsided and it's showing up sometimes even truck drivers in some of our work zones. So, Lindsey, thanks for making a repeat appearance on the podcast. I appreciate it. Absolutely. Talk a little bit first about your background. You have been a guest previously, but it's been a while, so just talk a little bit about what, what you do, how you got to where you are and you know what. What keeps you, what stokes your passions.
Lindsey Renner:So I graduated in 2006 from Michigan State. I got a bachelor degree in civil engineering. I am married to Jeff and we have two beautiful little girls named Josie and Lucy. It seems like we watch a lot of Peppa Pig and a lot of Bluey here lately, but we do try to live a pretty simple life Garden and chickens and all that stuff. But outside of my day to day life with my family, you know, I have been at MDOT since 2013. And before that I worked as a consultant. So I like to say that I'm a bit of a Jill of all trades, master of none. I feel like I've done everything from, you know, materials testing to bridge inspection, and it was really the construction and the bridge inspection that gave me a front row seat to what it's like to work under, you know, traffic conditions adjacent to traffic. So that lent itself pretty well being able to advocate for policies that keep people safe, and I'm happy to continue to do that.
Jeff Cranson:Well, one of the reasons I want to talk to you again is because I think you're an excellent communicator and you explain things well, and it sounds like your young daughters one of them is well along that path. Tell me about the advice that she gave you.
Lindsey Renner:Well, she told me the other night that she wanted to talk to me possum to possum. I'm not really sure what that means. I guess you and I can talk possum to possum too, although I think it's opossum to opossum.
Jeff Cranson:I think. I think she was trying to suggest that you know, you should, we should get on the same level.
Lindsey Renner:I think that's what she was trying to say, definitely. And you know, in our industry we have the opportunity to do that. I think the nature of being, you know, administering the federal funds and the state funds, puts up a little bit of an adversarial position sometimes with the folks that we rub elbows with, and it is a pleasure to see that it's not always like that we can unite, you know, for common goals been since, you know, for a long time, but specifically for me and my roles since 2018, you know we've worked a lot with the Work Zone Safety Task Force to really prioritize what it's like to be, you know, not just a motorist but also a worker that's in the work zones that's exposed to, you know, harm that might come in their direction.
Jeff Cranson:So let's get into that a little bit. I kind of feel like this is one of those things that I mean nobody's, you're never going to crack the code right. There's no perfect answer to this, as long as we're trying to maintain traffic, some level of mobility while work is going on, because we don't have great redundancy at a lot of places in the state, so you can't just close down freeways to rebuild them, which would obviously be the safest and most efficient way. So how do you wrestle with that and balance that?
Lindsey Renner:So MDOT has a lot of policies that you know, we work often with our local, state and federal counterparts to make sure that we're thinking about the right things and when we design a project as early as scoping, we're thinking about, you know, the corridor that we're on. What kind of crash patterns have we seen in the past? What kind of incidents do we cause when we do certain types of lane closures? And that is a requirement of our design project process, that we are actually taking the time to consider that crash history and how similar jobs have functioned in the same area. We look at the available traffic options for our closure scheme. We evaluate things like whether a full closure or a detour would be appropriate for the area that we're working around. We take the time to talk about safety enhancements and the things that we can do to protect the more vulnerable folks that are in those areas.
Lindsey Renner:So safety is considered at the earliest position of project development and it's considered along the duration of project development.
Lindsey Renner:You know, once we let our projects and we award the projects, we work with our contractors when they bring up necessary safety improvements to allow them to add those enhancements to those projects.
Lindsey Renner:So I would like to think that we are open to safety along, you know, along the duration of what we're doing here, and then, holistically, we do meet with other counterparts to talk about what they're feeling and what they're exposed to and we use those conversations to make best practices that we require on our jobs. So you know some examples that I would give you is we use our statistics that we see to update and inform our policies and our procedure making so an example would be we had an uptick in traffic regulator crashes and fatalities a few years ago and we enhanced our policies to require rumble strips in advance of those conditions so that we can alert the motorists so that they know that they are approaching a situation that requires their full attention Because, frankly, we're at the point where it seems like it's very hard to affect driver behavior. So doing it early and getting them paying attention is sometimes the best chance we have to make for safety down the road.
Jeff Cranson:You're talking about when we think of rumble strips, as you know, just hash marks on the shoulders or down the middle lane. You're talking about all the way across the lane as you approach.
Lindsey Renner:We are. Yes, I think if you've driven Michigan's roadways you've seen them. They're orange, you know, elevated pieces of essentially pavement marking or sometimes they're temporary, but they make noise and sometimes they're set up in increments so you'll hear them several times over. But the intention is to alert the motorist to make good decisions further on down the road. You know we've had, we know that the rear end crash is one of our most troublesome crashes, so we've ramped up our use of stop traffic advisories and those, you know, if you're driving on our roads then you've definitely seen them. They're off to the side. It's we call them a PCMS board portable changeable message sign.
Jeff Cranson:They'll tell you because there's nothing that MDOT does that doesn't have an acronym.
Lindsey Renner:Right, exactly, I know good, I was actually thinking about that one. I'm like PCMS board. I don't know it's PCMS sign that makes sense, but you know we use those to tell the motorists that are coming. You know you've got a stop condition coming up in a mile or in a mile and a half and because that's sensor data that is real time that will tell you exactly what you can expect. It's not just a message populated on the sign, but we do that to mitigate crashes. We want people to know what's ahead of them so that we can steer free of this. You know slamming on the brakes and errant vehicles at the rear queue of crash and having them hit people.
Jeff Cranson:What are some other creative things that you know we've learned about and you feel like have been implemented, that have, that have helped people?
Lindsey Renner:So we work a lot with universities, and some of the research that we've done has been things like what can we do to affect driver speeds? And we did a study with Michigan State and they showed that using speed radar trailers, which are trailers that basically show the speed of the vehicle as it passes, can drop the speed of the motorist by up to five miles per hour, and that's important for us because you know lower speeds can save lives. The speed of the vehicle as it passes can drop the speed of the motorist by up to five miles per hour, and that's important for us because you know lower speeds can save lives. So we obviously want to impart that when we can, and so what that would do is it would make us make decisions about where we expect to see speed radar trailers, and we did make those. We would call them a special provision, but we've made those mandatory on some of our projects.
Lindsey Renner:We've also seen, you know, we've used our partnership with Michigan State Police to provide more safety to our highway users by, you know, having work zone enforcement set up, because we've found that having police enforcement begets good driver behavior, and so we've used that as well.
Jeff Cranson:Yeah, absolutely. I think you know something that goes along with that would be the automated enforcement, the safety cameras, as some states call them that have been very successful in other places and we've talked about it on the podcast a few times with various people from other states and for some reason, the legislation seems to be moving very, very slowly in Michigan. I don't understand the opposition. I think there's a lot of misunderstandings about it, but the bottom line to me I mean what should matter is that it's been proven to work elsewhere. So we'll keep an eye on that. So what do you say? I know you have to get this, because anybody that knows you know that you work for whether it's a city, street department or department of transportation. They're going to come to you about every road project and you know any delay. And I know on a lot of my text threads I hear it every day from people how do you explain that to plain old folks? You know whether it's a family gathering or something when they talk about why do you guys?
Jeff Cranson:have to close this lane, or you know all the armchair engineers that give you advice. How do you talk about that balance of mobility versus safety?
Lindsey Renner:So that's a tough one and it's one that's in our face every single day because, you know, everybody wants the roads to drive immaculately but it doesn't seem like we have the grace to actually get the work done that's necessary to make those roads drive that way, and we've recently been very fortunate to have an awful lot of funding spent in our general direction so that we can improve these roads. But we need the patience to make sure that the work is getting done too. In the past, you know, mdot has we have had to balance both the safety of all road users with the mobility and the expectations of our customers. So it's very difficult to walk that line because if we can close a roadway sometimes we can get it done a lot quicker. But that frustrates the locals that surround that area and I would ask that if you've got something like that going on, just patience would get you very, very far, because you're going to have a better product quicker by waiting and having a closure go on.
Jeff Cranson:And that's borne out in cases where there's public involvement ahead of a project. And if you ask people most of the time you know, would you rather us close this completely and have it done in four months, or close it one lane at a time and have it take six months? They'll take the more efficient project. They'll say, yeah, we'll vote to get it done sooner, but it doesn't bear out when the work is actually going on. People will say that and then they're very frustrated. Obviously. That brings me, speaking of frustrations, to another point, and that's the zipper merge.
Jeff Cranson:You and I have talked about it before. I actually hear from a lot of friends who are big fans of it and wonder why MDOT can't use the zipper merge elsewhere. Um, I always like to think of it. Um, maybe because I really like a video that the Missouri DOT did a few years ago showing, uh, adults and little kids with cardboard cars learning to take turns and everything we need to know. We learned in kindergarten, which is, you know, be nice, take turns right. Yet we've still got vigilantes that get out and block a lane and think that somebody's you know doing something wrong. They're not using, they're getting ahead of me instead of thinking we're just using all the capacity which is arguably smarter and more efficient. So give me your take on all that.
Lindsey Renner:So you know we've used the zipper merge in Michigan and it seems to have a bit of a cult following in some areas and it's not utilized much in others. And that actually does make a lot of sense, because it really isn't for every scenario. We like to use zipper merges in scenarios where we're bringing two lanes down into one Works really good in urban areas or areas where we see a lot of like commuter traffic, where we know that at a certain time every day we're going to get a bottleneck. The nice thing about this type of merging technique is that you don't really get the brake lights and the stop that you would with traditional merging techniques. So what we do know is that the safest speed through a work zone is the consistent speed that doesn't have brake lights, and that's what this hopes to accomplish. They are a little bit of a learning curve because it takes some time to get used to.
Lindsey Renner:If you're driving in Michigan, the way that you're going to know that you're in a zipper merge scenario is that you're going to see signs on both sides of your roadway and it's going to say take turns, and in that instance it is not expected that you drop the lane. It's intended that you and the folks next to you take turns in joining that merge. You know, I know other states have had, you know, a lot of discussion about that. I've seen the video that you're talking about with the kids taking turns, and it is just a little bit more difficult for people to understand. I think that a lot of the motorists in Michigan have heard the term zipper merge and I think there might be some confusion that everybody thinks that every merge might be a zipper merge scenario or they're maybe not really sure where they should be merging at, and so I guess this is my public service announcement You're not in a zipper merge scenario unless you're seeing the take turn sign. That's. That's how we are delineating zipper merges in Michigan.
Jeff Cranson:And why can't every project have a zipper merge?
Lindsey Renner:Well, it's not fit for if, say, if you were in a situation where you were closing multiple lanes, that would just create a lot of confusion. If you were in a situation where you didn't have a bottleneck situation, there would be no reason to have people merge that way because you're not seeing the congestion or the delay. So it isn't a good fit for every scenario. Traditional merging still has its place, but it's really good in congested areas with a lot of brake lights.
Jeff Cranson:So I know what I hear anecdotally. You know what do you hear? Do you ever have anybody complain to you about it? Tell you, they don't like it.
Lindsey Renner:I haven't heard a ton of people telling us that they don't like it. I feel like I've heard a lot of like what you referenced the vigilante. I feel like I've heard a fair amount of truck drivers sitting, you know, on the cusp of two lanes trying to make it so that nobody can get by them. I feel like that's been something I've heard a fair amount about lately. I know that this is something we've talked about and ultimately we haven't instituted it as a policy here because it just doesn't have. It's hard to zone in on where the perfect spot is to put it and not all regions use it because they don't have the traffic that we need to.
Jeff Cranson:Yeah, I think that's right. Stay with us. We'll have more on the other side of this important message.
Michigan State Police Announcement:In Michigan. Safety comes first on the roads. To combat distracted driving, Michigan passed the hands-free law. The law makes holding or manually using a cell phone or other mobile electronic device while operating a vehicle a primary offense. This means an officer can stop and ticket you for violating the law. This can include, but not limited to, sending or receiving a call. Sending, receiving or reading a text or email, accessing, reading or posting to social media sites or entering locations into the phone GPS.
Jeff Cranson:With this law in place, drivers are encouraged to stay focused, keeping their hands on the wheel and their attention on the road. Drive smart, drive safe, drive hands-free.
Michigan State Police Announcement:Michigan's hands-free law making the road safer for everyone.
Jeff Cranson:Let's talk just a little bit more about what you see coming in the future. I guess in an ideal world, you know, if Lindsay were queen, what more could we do? Obviously, you know we try a lot of different education efforts and the Office of Highway Safety Planning, which is housed within the Michigan State Police, have their campaigns and the things that they do. I don't know how can we do a better job educating the public on, you know, just behaving better.
Lindsey Renner:Yeah, I think that is the toughest thing that we struggle with. You know, if you use your statistics to change your policies and you're putting out best practices, like we are, and you're having the conversations about what each unique and each experience is like and you're trying to make rules and policies that give you more safety, the real wild card is human behavior, and there's just not a whole lot you can do to make people make the right choice, which is to drive safely. And we've tried to appeal to folks with. You know, everybody's a human. Everybody wants to go back to their family.
Lindsey Renner:There could be kids in the cars around you and it just doesn't seem like people take that with the same degree of concern as they do. You know, when they get behind the wheel it's like their brain goes out the window. So I don't exactly know how we make people listen. I know that we've tried to create penalties and fines that financially motivate people to do better. I don't know that that necessarily works all the time. I can tell you that there are some things. I see that, admittedly, as a motorist, I bought a new car this year and that new car came with some bells and whistles that have been pretty frustrating sometimes for me because there's an awful lot more beeping than there used to be. But it's also come with some things that have you know, really helped me, for example, like the lane assist or adaptive cruise control.
Jeff Cranson:Lane assist and adaptive cruise control are marvels, and I think those have been great.
Lindsey Renner:You know there's, I know there's automatic braking. That's happening. There's forward collision warnings. A lot of the newer cars have things that override the human error, which has been. That's kind of cool to see. It's also maddening, like I said, because you don't understand why it's doing it. But then you know for me, I know there's been times that my adaptive cruise control has kicked on and I've been like you know what this actually makes for a pretty comfortable speed through the work zone and I think it's appropriate. So I would encourage anybody that you know if this is a toggle that you can turn off and you have consider turning it back on, because you could save a life and it could be your own or the people in your car with you.
Jeff Cranson:I hear that from a lot of people, and even people who, if you ask them what they think about automated vehicles, they'll say no way, because you know, like I probably said too many times on the podcast, everybody thinks they're a good driver, but the other people aren't, and there's no doubt that the technology is going to be better than we are. It doesn't drink, it doesn't have road rage, it doesn't get distracted.
Lindsey Renner:No medical conditions or anything like that. Not every issue is an intentional one, but we still have to prepare for them, right yeah?
Jeff Cranson:Ultimately people like, even though they might complain, like you said, about some of the beepers and buzzing and vibrations, but ultimately they get that this is helpful. It's adaptive cruise control, front assist, rear assist, automatic braking, all those things and they'll say, if you take them one at a time, yeah, those are all good. And then you say, well, ultimately your car will drive itself because it'll have all those things. They'll say, oh, no, no, I don't want that. So it's an interesting discussion. Well, the only other thing I was going to ask you to talk about, because one thing that maybe want to get into this issue this week is that some major work has started on a project on I-96 in Ionia County between Grand Rapids and Lansing. It's going to tie up traffic this summer and much of next summer too.
Jeff Cranson:It's a big rebuild and right out of the gate we've had some crashes and backups where drivers clearly were distracted and came upon the backed up traffic and didn't have time to stop. And you know most of I mean our focus is is largely on protecting the workers, and it should be. That's a, that's a high priority. But most of the fatalities and injuries and work zone crashes are people that are driving Right, and you know it sounds cliche, but it's true that the life you save may be your own. It sounds like the Grand Region folks who are managing that project are about to try some other creative things. Why don't you talk about that a little bit?
Lindsey Renner:Sure, yeah, this is probably not going to be the motorist's favorite, but I think it's an important accountability piece every now and then. You then Operation Ghost Rider exists and that's a nice partnership between the Department of Transportation and the Michigan State Police. The intention is to have unmarked police vehicles and they grab license plate numbers, and the individuals that are grabbing those license plate numbers are watching motorists or phones in their hand or distraction, and when they know that they've been distracted and they know their license plate number, then they radio downstream and somebody goes and pulls over that motorist and they you know they get the ticket that they deserved. In cases like this, you know the fines for something like that could be up to $250.
Lindsey Renner:Every time you do it you might have to do 24 hours of community service or you might be required to take a driving improvement class, and if you were the individual that caused a crash, the civil fines can be doubled if you were found to be distracted. So it's a steep price to pay for something that you know really doesn't take any effort at all to simply put your phone down. We've got enough. You know. There's enough assistance and easier ways to do things hands-free. Now that we should really be looking at those things for our own pocketbooks, but ultimately for the safety of those in our car, around our car and working in our work zones.
Jeff Cranson:And hands-free is the law after all. It is. Well what else, Lindsey? This has been helpful and informative. Is there anything else you wanted to touch on?
Lindsey Renner:No, I think I would just say you know we're doing the best that we can to keep you safe, and I think that everybody that's out in the work zone would ask you to do us that solid as well. Try to keep us safe, make it so that we and the folks that we employ can go home to our families. At the point where we've issued policies and standards, the only piece that's missing here is the compliance, and I don't think anybody wants to hurt anybody or kill somebody. Nobody wants that on their conscience. So to do your best to make it that you don't have to have that and do better.
Jeff Cranson:Yeah, well said. Thank you, I appreciate it, as always, and I'm sure that we'll talk about this again sometime. Thank you, I'd like to thank you once more for tuning in to Talking Michigan Transportation. You can find show notes and more on Apple Podcasts or Buzzsprout. I also want to acknowledge the talented people who help make this a reality each week, starting with Randy Debler, who skillfully edits the audio, Jesse Ball, who proofs the content, Courtney Bates, who posts the podcast to various platforms, and Jacke Salinas, who transcribes the audio to make it accessible to all.