On this week's Talking Michigan Transportation podcast, Michigan Department of Transportation Director Paul C. Ajegba talks about some of the big projects completed in 2020 as highlighted in this year-end video.
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer celebrated a significant milestone in her Rebuilding Michigan plan when she joined Director Ajegba to tour the first project financed with the bonds. That project rebuilt the aging I-496 freeway between I-96 and Lansing Road in Ingham and Eaton counties. Major work will begin on several other projects to be financed by the governor’s bonding plan in spring 2021. Gov. Whitmer talked about the plan on the podcast in January following the State Transportation Commission's authorization.
Also, in early November, Gov. Whitmer joined the director to celebrate the reopening of the busy interchange of I-96, I-196 and East Beltline Avenue east of Grand Rapids. The Flip, as dubbed by the project team, will ease congestion in and out of the city and make for safer transitions between the freeways. As Robb Westaby at Fox17 observed, the new ramp and bridge eliminates the need for drivers to cross three lanes of traffic to get to the East Beltline Avenue exit.
Other notable projects in 2020 included rebuilding the 100th Street bridge over US-131 in Kent County, the I-75 modernization project in Oakland County, rebuilding US-131 in St. Joseph County, and rebuilding M-28 in Alger County.
The director also explains how Rebuilding Michigan and more aggressive road building is stoking competition in the construction industry, with preliminary evidence of stabilizing bid prices.
Other highlights:
On this week's Talking Michigan Transportation podcast, Michigan Department of Transportation Director Paul C. Ajegba talks about some of the big projects completed in 2020 as highlighted in this year-end video.
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer celebrated a significant milestone in her Rebuilding Michigan plan when she joined Director Ajegba to tour the first project financed with the bonds. That project rebuilt the aging I-496 freeway between I-96 and Lansing Road in Ingham and Eaton counties. Major work will begin on several other projects to be financed by the governor’s bonding plan in spring 2021. Gov. Whitmer talked about the plan on the podcast in January following the State Transportation Commission's authorization.
Also, in early November, Gov. Whitmer joined the director to celebrate the reopening of the busy interchange of I-96, I-196 and East Beltline Avenue east of Grand Rapids. The Flip, as dubbed by the project team, will ease congestion in and out of the city and make for safer transitions between the freeways. As Robb Westaby at Fox17 observed, the new ramp and bridge eliminates the need for drivers to cross three lanes of traffic to get to the East Beltline Avenue exit.
Other notable projects in 2020 included rebuilding the 100th Street bridge over US-131 in Kent County, the I-75 modernization project in Oakland County, rebuilding US-131 in St. Joseph County, and rebuilding M-28 in Alger County.
The director also explains how Rebuilding Michigan and more aggressive road building is stoking competition in the construction industry, with preliminary evidence of stabilizing bid prices.
Other highlights:
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Narrator: It's time for Talking Michigan Transportation, a podcast devoted to the conversations with people at the forefront of the ongoing mobility revolution. In the state that put the world on wheels, here's your host, MDOT Communications Director Jeff Cranson.
Jeff Cranson: So, once again this is the Talking Michigan Transportation podcast. It is our last podcast for 2020. I guess in some ways that's not so bad because it's a year, for many reasons, we might want to forget, but we're trying to focus on some of the good things that happened in spite of the pandemic and what MDOT was able to accomplish. So, today I’m speaking with our director, Paul Ajegba, who's going to talk about some of those highlights and what we were able to do across the state. So, Director, thanks for taking time to do this.
Paul Ajegba: Thank you, Jeff. Thanks for having me.
Jeff Cranson: Let's talk a little bit about—this kind of dovetails with a year-end video that our staff put together looking at projects throughout the state and some of our accomplishments. I think probably the biggest thing, obviously, is the first bonding project from the governor's $3.5 billion Rebuilding Michigan plan. We were able to get a section of I-496—as somebody who drove it often, I can say a really bad section of I-496 replaced west of Lansing. Talk about that project. That used to be your region, so how important was that?
Paul Ajegba: Yes, again, thanks for having me. It's been a very challenging but successful year. As you know, we started the year of talking about transportation funding. The State Transportation Commission approved a $3.5 billion dollar bond, and we got off to a good start, got excited, and started working on how we're going to implement this challenge that is in front of us but then COVID hit. I will say that even with COVID, I cannot say enough about all the hard work that everybody at MDOT has done to adjust to this new way of doing things. We got a lot of projects out there. The I-496 one you mentioned was the very first one we financed with the bond money. It was almost, I think, roughly a $50 million dollar project. Rebuilding that stretch of I-496 west of Lansing was, I mean, remarkable getting that done in such a record time. I think we took advantage of the fact that traffic was down and got a lot of work done this year. One of the things I would also ask about the bonding is that, as you know, I testified in front of the House and Senate, and part of the conversation at that time the skeptics were, ‘well, you're going to push all this work out in a short period of time. You're going to have inflation and all, you know, you don't have the labor and everything not to get the work done,’ but we're not saying that. The numbers are coming relatively close to what engineers estimate, and quite frankly, most of the ones were put out there so far the numbers are below the engineers estimate which is good news, and also part of that is the hard work of our designers and engineers putting things together, and I can't be more pleased with what we've done so far.
Jeff Cranson: And you think that there's enough competition in the industry and this is kind of stoked that competition and that's helping to keep the bids down, right?
Paul Ajegba: Absolutely, there's no doubt about it. I think the level of competition is part of why our numbers have been relatively good.
Jeff Cranson: So, that was the first project that we were able to, you know, finance with the bonding plan. Most of that money is going to go to projects that really begin, you know, in earnest this coming spring throughout the state. What do you think about, you know, what the future holds in terms of revenues and what we'll be doing with the program going into 2021?
Paul Ajegba: Well, if you look at what the governor has done, this $3.5 billion dollars couldn't have come at a better time. As I speak to my colleagues in other states, they are cutting projects because the revenue didn't come in as they projected, just like ours didn't, you know, because when the pandemic hit, as you know, the driving in Michigan went way down.
Jeff Cranson: It was down as much as 60 percent early on.
Paul Ajegba: Exactly, we were rebounding around mid-May. By Memorial Day, things were beginning to go back up, but that two, three months gap, it's a lot of revenue that we did not generate, so having this $3.5 billion dollar bond money has really helped us to kind of, you know, keep going. You say that what do I see coming in the future, I did a TV show the other day and I said 2021 and 2022 is going to be the highest money we've ever spent on infrastructure in the state of Michigan, so I expect that for the next five years. My hope is that before we get to the end of that five years that the legislature would at least work with the governor to pass some kind of a funding package. This is a financing tool; bonding is not a permanent solution to a funding problem, so I’m hoping we will be able to address that as well.
Jeff Cranson: Yeah, that conversation has to continue, and you're right, the bonding does maybe cloud that a little bit because we'll be able to make so many fixes, but it's not a long-term solution so that's—
Paul Ajegba: Exactly.
Jeff Cranson: That's got to be the conversation. Well, let's talk beyond the bonding projects and some of the other things that you were able to celebrate toward the end of the year, a big one—two big ones—on the west side of the state: the flip the I-196/I-96. You and the governor were there for that and that was not a bonding plan, but it fit very much with the theme of the Rebuilding Michigan plan in that the idea was to do something and do it right so that we won't be back out there for a major fix for 40 or 50 years, and that's what that reconfiguring—from a safety aspect, as somebody who lives in Grand Rapids can tell you, that merge between I-96 and I-196 in the east beltline was often awkward and precarious. They've solved that and they also got new pavement out of it and you got to you got to see that.
Paul Ajegba: Yes, going out there, doing the ribbon cut on that project was very exciting. I think it was a well overdue project, and I will give the credit to the engineers in Grand Region for coming up with that with that idea, and you say for somebody who lives in Grand Rapids, for some of us who don't live in Grand Rapids but going are there from time to time for meetings and other things we do experience that. I-96 and I-196 coming together, that's a lot of confusion with that congestion in the morning and a.m. peak hour and p.m., so finally coming up with a workable solution for that any whole interchange I think it's great work and engineering ingenuity to put that together. So, I’m really pleased with the work that the Grand Region did there, and the 100 of 131 is another great accomplishment in—
Jeff Cranson: The famous 100th street bridge.
Paul Ajegba: Yes, exactly.
Jeff Cranson: It had its own Facebook page.
Paul Ajegba: As you know that bridge has been hit 13 times in the last five years. That's a lot of hits, and to be able to get that that bridge reconstructed that quickly and make it a multi-modal infrastructure I think it was a very good thing.
Jeff Cranson: Yeah, the community is extremely excited about that. We had local legislators there. We had local businesspeople there. Helen Zeerip, a State Transportation Commissioner, who owns a trucking firm that goes through that interchange was very excited about it, and you're right, they were able to add lanes to create turning capacity, and it's going to help some of the businesses in southern Kent County in northern Allegan County. So, it was cool and it was on the drawing board anyway but the region found a way to shuffle some money and move it up to get it done, so, that was an exciting one for 2020.
Paul Ajegba: Yes.
Jeff Cranson: I think some of the other ones talked about progress on the I-75 modernization in Oakland County, and you can talk about that a little bit, you're familiar with that from your work over there.
Paul Ajegba: Yeah that's a $235, $238 million dollar I-75 widening project. That is a project that's way overdue. As you know, it's a three-segment project. Segment one was done a few years ago. Segment two started last year, and we completed it this year. There's still some you know finishing work to do obviously, but by the time we finish the punch list item it'll probably be early, mid spring next year. But to get all that work done in two years, it's a lot of work. You're rebuilding the Big Beaver interchange for 10 mile Road interchange and all that and widening the whole I-75 corridor with all that traffic. it is a lot of work that got done in a very short period of time, again, $230 plus million-dollar project. I think I give a lot of credit to the Metro staff for all the hard work they put on it. I drove through there I think about a week or so ago, and I mean, it looks great. It's a good project.
Jeff Cranson: Well, one of the things that our video highlights is in that component of the project is a really never-done-before-in-Michigan drainage tunnel that's going to be part of that. Can you talk about why that was necessary?
Paul Ajegba: That's for segment three. Obviously, we were having a lot of drainage issues out there and being able to build that tunnel—if you haven't seen, Metro Region does a good job of putting out a newsletter about the project from time to time, and I always try to take some time and read it. That is, I mean, an amazing project. That tunnel is about 100 foot below the surface, and it's, you know, just a great project.
Jeff Cranson: And it's going to alleviate some chronic flooding that would happen and really tie up traffic on those lanes, right?
Paul Ajegba: Exactly, and that's what I said. We put it in there because of all the flooding we used to have on that corridor.
Jeff Cranson: So, speaking of flooding and other things 2020, it counts as an accomplishment although, obviously, we wish that, you know, we had never had a 500-year flood, but you got to go to Midland County a few times, once with the governor when US-10 was restored and then again to celebrate the opening of a section of M-30 that was washed away and left a handful of homeowners, you know, literally stranded having to walk across the remnants of the river in order to get anywhere. So, talk a little bit about that and how, you know, the governor told you that we got to restore mobility up there and you marshaled the forces to do that and get it done in a hurry.
Paul Ajegba: Yes, as you said, this is something we wish had not happened, but it did. You had about nine inches of rain in three days, 500-year flood, and it washed away some critical infrastructure out there, US-10 and M-30. Bob Ranck and Kim Zimmer and all the entire staff at Bay Region for what they did out there to restore mobility to that community. I mean, it's amazing but I also take a step back and give the entire MDOT team a lot of credit because you had Matt Chynoweth and his team jump out there with region and Lansing working together to get that done. I have to also take another step back, it goes back to MDOT putting an emergency response guideline together that, ‘hey, we have a bridge hit this is the template. This is the guidelines you use. Pull this off the shelf, call three, four contractors, get them out there on site, then take it, do a walkthrough, get bids, and get them going right away.’ So, the Bay Region team—the first was to clean all the debris out there because, you know, homes and boats and all kinds of stuff was washed away. So they did that, cleared all the debris, the next contract put out there was to have restoring this infrastructure. Pictures don’t do it justice, you have to go out there and really see how bad this situation was, but to have Matt's team and Bob's team work together to restore mobility to that community in a very short period of time it's amazing. We have video and there's a couple in that video—I would encourage everybody to look at that video—they said they could not believe MDOT did this in in this many, you know, in such a short period of time because they thought they were going to be shut in during the winter time, and that was their fear. To hear your customers say that I think it speaks volumes on what we have done to restore that confidence in the community out there.
Jeff Cranson: Well, yeah, and it showed the difference. Obviously some projects require a great deal of planning and there's an environmental process and a lot of things that you have to do and that's why they take so long to get from drawing board to actual construction, but when there is an emergency like that and you are able and have to respond you can, and that's what that demonstrated so—
Paul Ajegba: Exactly.
Jeff Cranson: Very good thing. So, yeah, that's pretty much the big ones I think in terms of what we covered in the video, and I appreciate you taking some time to talk about that and, you know, letting folks know how you prioritize these things and how it came to be. Is there anything else you want to add in terms of 2020 or looking ahead to 2021?
Paul Ajegba: I think two notable mention would be the Cavnue project from downtown Detroit all the way to Ann Arbor. Everybody that was involved in that and putting all that together and seeing the governor's vision and chairman Ford’s vision to let's dedicate a lane out here for CAV. The work to get that going I can't describe it. All the behind the scenes work that went into putting on that together I think it's something to be celebrated.
Jeff Cranson: Yeah, you were able to join the governor and Mayor Duggan and Bill Ford and others to celebrate the completion of a contract on that back in August, so normally you'd say now the hard work begins, but just getting that contract was pretty hard work, so it is definitely worth celebrating.
Paul Ajegba: Exactly, because it's the first of its kind in the world, not just in the United States, and to be able to get it to that point, it's an accomplishment in itself. I think the other the other one is the Gordie Howe International Bridge. All the work that's gone into getting it to where we are now, where you start beginning to see piers off the ground on that project, it's amazing. A lot of property acquisition went on clearing and utility relocation. I can go on and on about all the work that's been going on behind the scenes to get to this point, so it's a success story that needs to be celebrated.
Jeff Cranson: So, here's a question: are you still going to be director when it opens?
Paul Ajegba: [Laughter] I plan to be around.
Jeff Cranson: Well, thanks, Director. I appreciate you taking time to do this.
Paul Ajegba: Thank you, Jeff.
Narrator: That's a wrap for this edition of Talking Michigan Transportation. Check out show notes and more by subscribing on Apple podcast.
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