Talking Michigan Transportation

Three-year I-96 Flex Route project draws to a close

• Michigan Department of Transportation • Season 6 • Episode 199

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On this week’s Talking Michigan Transportation podcast, a return visit by Brian Travis, Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT) project manager on the I-96 Flex Route in western Oakland County, which is wrapping up soon. 

The innovative project, allowing for the use of shoulders as travel lanes during peak travel times, is MDOT’s second use of Flex Route concept. In 2016 and 2017, contractors built the first phase of a Flex Route, a $125 million investment on US-23 north of Ann Arbor. A project is underway for a second phase, at an estimated cost of $162 million, to extend the US-23 Flex Route from north of 8 Mile Road to I-96.  

Travis says the Oakland County project is on schedule and three lanes should be restored in each direction within a few days of this recording on Oct. 24, 2024. He also touts the safety and efficiency benefits the added capacity during peak travel hours will provide and explains that contractors came very close to the targeted cost of $270 million.  

Travis also explains why traffic will resume on three lanes soon, but the shoulders will not be available for use until early 2025. 

Funding for this project is made possible by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's Rebuilding Michigan program to rebuild the state highways and bridges that are critical to the state's economy and carry the most traffic. The investment strategy is aimed at fixes that result in longer useful lives and improves the condition of the state's infrastructure. 

Jeff Cranson:

Hello, welcome to the Talking Michigan Transportation Podcast. I'm Jeff Cranson. Today I'm going to revisit a topic from a couple years ago. That's the 96 Flex Route in western Oakland County, one of the biggest, probably highest profile road projects going around the state. This is the second flex route, which is a term we use at MDOT for a freeway that allows for the shoulder to be used as a travel lane during certain times peak travel times in the morning and afternoon. U. S. 23, north of Ann Arbor, was the first. This will be the second Very high volumes of both commercial and commuter traffic on that corridor.

Jeff Cranson:

Brian Travis is the project manager working out of the Oakland Transportation Service Center for MDOT. He's been on this since work began in 2022, and he's very excited to say that the work will be substantially done in the next few days, meaning that there will be three lanes of traffic restored on both bounds. The actual flex route lanes the shoulders being used as travel lanes won't really be ready because of some other things that have to be done in prep until probably early 2025. But most of the people who have been traveling that route endured the delays and the slowdowns for the last couple of years. We'll be very excited about that, so I hope you enjoy the conversation.

Jeff Cranson:

So, as promised, I'm with Brian Travis, who is the MDOT project manager for the Flex Route. That's the state's second Flex Route, so-called Flex Route, where the Federal Highway Administration allows in certain circumstances for the use of the shoulder as a travel lane during peak hours. During peak hours, as many of you know, us 23 north of Ann Arbor was the first, and the good news about that is there's a project in the works to extend that all the way to 96. So now you'll be able to go, basically, from M14 just north of the city of Ann Arbor all the way to 96 near Brighton. But Brian has been on before to talk about this project. It's very exciting. It's been a long time, it's certainly generated all kinds of grumbling and complaints and very soon you're going to have three lanes restored in each direction, right, Brian?

Brian Travis:

Yeah, we are. We are very excited. You know, it's been three seasons of construction out there, started in 2022. Everyone knows you know how tough it. Three seasons of construction out there started in 2022. Everyone knows, you know, how tough it was to commute through there. But the end is in sight.

Brian Travis:

So the end of this weekend, so end of the day, sunday, we are shooting to have three lanes open each direction on I-96. That includes all exit and entrance ramps as well, which is great news for commuters. We will have a little bit of work here and there, maybe a lane closure, shoulder closure, to finish up over the next month or so. But for all intents and purposes the project is completed, open to traffic. But you know we mentioned flex lanes, right? Everyone's excited to see these flex lanes in action, the ramp meters we unfortunately will not open those at the same time as the freeway this weekend. Those have to stay closed until early 2025. We need to get traffic back into its normal alignment on those three lanes so that we can begin testing all of our electronic components the sensors, the cameras, things of that nature. So the flex lanes won't be operational just yet, but I think everyone's going to be glad to have their normal travel lanes back.

Jeff Cranson:

Well, yeah, and before we get into the details on how the flex route works for the uninitiated and maybe talk a little bit about those ramp meters, which is not common at all in Michigan but is in a lot of other states, talk first about your satisfaction in hitting your target. I mean, we've said all along fall of 2024, this will be before Halloween, so solidly in the fall and you're on budget, so I mean that's great for you and your team. It is.

Brian Travis:

It's huge. I mean these are gigantic projects. We typically in the past haven't tackled projects this large, and so to have everything fall into place on our scheduled timeframe within budget, it's a testament to the contracting team and also our team internally at MDOT and our consultant partners. Everyone came together day in and day out all three years, and I know that maybe that sounds cliche or people drive by and they don't see work happening. Trust me, there was something happening every day out there, whether it was in the field or behind the scenes. Very difficult to get this amount of work done, especially in Michigan with our unpredictable weather, our winters, and have everything come into place. So I'm very pleased with the progress and where we're at.

Jeff Cranson:

Yeah, talk a little bit about that, because I hear it often and you hear it more than I do, especially when you probably tell friends and family on a weekend you know what you're working on and they drive through there and they say exactly that hey, I drove through there the other day and there was nothing going on. Um, how do you, how do you answer that without you know pulling your hair out or being defensive?

Brian Travis:

Yeah, and I understand it is extremely frustrating along a long corridor like that and you might have a lane closed for for work happening in one spot, and so you try to explain, um, how we have to shift traffic around and how we have to do it safely, and that that's really what it comes down to is balancing, uh, moving traffic through the corridor, but also completing the work in a safe manner. And so, uh to to do the work, you have to shift traffic around, you have to close lanes. A good example is right now we're placing permanent pavement markings.

Brian Travis:

Everyone thinks that you know that's a truck going out and quickly spray painting lines on the road. That's not the case. You know these markings are recessed into the pavement, so they have to go through, they have to grind the pavement, then they have to place its tape. You know they have to place the tape now by hand Very labor intensive, but you have to close lanes, you have to shift traffic to do it. So a ton of moving parts and pieces out here and you know, again, jobs of this size they take this long. Everyone thinks we can work overnight and get this done in a month. To do a quality job you need you know these three years to do it.

Jeff Cranson:

So are you coming in right around that 270 million dollar figure?

Brian Travis:

Yeah, we are. We'll end up a little bit above it, but nothing that's not unusual on a project this size. You always have some unknowns with some extra quantities, extra additions to the project. But yeah, for all intents and purposes. Right there on budget.

Jeff Cranson:

So talk a little bit about some of those unknowns. I'm sure you had several challenges along the way, but what were some of the biggest ones that you didn't anticipate and had to react to?

Brian Travis:

Yeah, I think a lot of the temporary things that we have to build out there just to maintain traffic. A lot of times we have to widen the shoulder out, we have to repair the existing pavement and some of that stuff. You don't know the condition of pavement or some things underneath of the roadway until you get out there. So as we start removing pavement, digging down, if we have an area that needs material replaced because there's water underneath the roadway, poor soil conditions, we have to adjust on the fly, remove that material, add new materials. So things of that nature are extras to the contract, unforeseen things that you don't know until you start digging out there, until you start really getting into the nuts and bolts of the project. But really a project like this, although it's huge, it's very long, 12 miles it was fairly straightforward from a construction standpoint. So there weren't a whole lot of huge surprises for us, which is always a good thing, right? Not a whole lot of utility issues or things that slowed us down.

Jeff Cranson:

So what we really need, it sounds like, is an MRI for pavement.

Brian Travis:

We do. That'd be great. That would solve a lot of our issues, yeah.

Jeff Cranson:

Well, talk a little bit more about the details of why there has to be some time between really completing the project until when it can go online as a flex route and people can use the shoulders during those peak hours.

Brian Travis:

Sure, yeah, I mean our focus has been to get the physical construction done out here, return traffic to their normal lanes, but because of all the electronic components, the sensors, the cameras, all the fiber or wiring for lack of a better term all of that has to be tested, and that has to be tested under live traffic conditions, which we really haven't had because we've had traffic shifted onto one side of the roadway.

Brian Travis:

So you will see our contracting companies out in the electrical cabinets on the side of the road splicing fiber, doing testing, testing all the systems in the cabinets. You might see signs being turned on and off, making sure everything works, everything is connected and it's accurately reading the traffic that's on the roadway. Because that's the whole point of the flex route, right is, we can detect when traffic is heavy, we can open up that extra lane and also with the ramp meters, we can turn ramp meters on and off when that traffic on the freeway is heavy. So it takes a while to get all that tested and make sure it's 100% ready to go, and that's why we'll have a couple of month lag time between opening the freeway and the flex lanes.

Jeff Cranson:

Well, we've found, obviously, that there was a learning curve for the US 23 flex route. There's definitely a learning curve for zipper merges that are being used more commonly around the state on various projects, and there's going to be a learning curve for ramp metering right. How do you think that will go in terms of people adapting?

Brian Travis:

Yeah, there will be. I think it will go well. We have all the signals in place. They're at the end of the ramp, so people are starting to see the infrastructure there. It will be a bit of a learning curve.

Brian Travis:

Typically, when you're on a freeway on-ramp, you're accelerating to get into the freeway traffic. In this case you're going to have to watch the signal and most of the time it's going to be flashing yellow. You can go right through. But it's again during the rush hours that traffic's a little bit heavier that traffic will be metered. So I think it will be fairly self-explanatory once it gets into operation and there's educational videos on our Driving Auckland website. In fact, we're working on creating some shorter clips of the ramp metering just so it's easier to digest. And with all of that education that we'll put out there as well as people seeing those signals go up, I don't think it's going to be too big of a learning curve for people and I think it would be a good thing for people and I think nobody should be driving Right, nobody should be driving that doesn't understand the basics of a traffic signal.

Jeff Cranson:

It's just that they'll see traffic signals in some traditional places. Right, yes, we'll be right back, stay tuned.

Safety Message:

The Michigan Department of Transportation reminds you to slow down, follow all signs and pay attention when driving through work zones, because all employees deserve a safe place to work. Work zone safety: We're all in this together.

Jeff Cranson:

I guess I'm wondering you know what else you think will people have to adjust to? You're going to have a lot of people saying, right away, wade. I thought the whole idea here was to, you know, add that extra lane for you know when I'm commuting early in the morning or late in the day. I guess as part of that, explain again and you have in the past, I think why that can't be a travel lane all the time.

Brian Travis:

Yeah, so we are I'll say, for lack of a better term stuck with our existing footprint of the roadway. So, part of this project, we didn't expand the roadway. The width that lane has always been there. It's just used as a shoulder in the median. To have it be a full-time travel lane, we would have had to expand our roadway laterally, make it wider.

Brian Travis:

To expand our roadway laterally, make it wider, and to do that we would have had to widen bridges, potentially buy right away, very, you know, cost prohibitive to do that, because you need that to be an actual 12-foot lane with a proper shoulder. In this case it's an 11-foot shoulder that can be used as a travel lane only, you know, partially, during those peak times of the day, because once you're in that lane you're right up next to the median barrier while you have no shoulder. So it doesn't meet our federal design standards to have as a full-time lane. So it's really a creative way to utilize that extra pavement without incurring all that extra costs to widen the freeway, you know, create another full-time lane which really isn't needed most of the day.

Jeff Cranson:

And that federal design standard is for 12-feet lanes right, Correct 12-foot lane with a shoulder. So talk a little bit about you know what else. Between now and the spring, you and members of your team will be moving on to some other things. In MDOT's metro region Still a lot of big work going on in some of the busiest freeways. What do you have next?

Brian Travis:

Yeah, there is. We'll have some cleanup work to do on this project. We have a lot of paperwork to final out and finish up, but we'll be quickly moving down the corridor to the next section of I-696, which is from Lasser to Dequindre. That starts in March of 2025. So our team will pack up and head down that way and essentially that's another full reconstruction of the pavement there, reconstruction of of the pavement there. Um, and when that's completed you know this entire corridor, basically from i-94 all the way to, you know, kent lake road, 275 and on 96 to kent lake road, it's all reconstructed, it's all new pavement. So, um, really exciting time for us and my team. You know we've been on this corridor for the last three years. Uh, previous to that, we were in Macomb over on that section of 696 in 2018, 2019. So excited to be moving on to the next one.

Jeff Cranson:

Yeah, I mean, when that's done, how much of 696 will have been rebuilt in the last few years?

Brian Travis:

Yeah, so we did the first piece in 2018 from Dequindre to 94. So we've just done just about to wrap up I-275 to Lahser, which is about 10 miles. The next section, Lahser to Dequindre, is about 10. And then that section to Macomb was eight miles. So 28, 30 miles of 696.

Jeff Cranson:

Which is just about all of it right.

Brian Travis:

Yeah, that's all of it.

Jeff Cranson:

Yeah, that's amazing. What else besides that is coming in your sphere, I guess in 2025?

Brian Travis:

Yeah, I mean, that will be it for my team. But you know out of our office we're still working on I-75 up in northern Oakland County. That has another year or two, I believe, to complete the reconstruction up there. From there we'll move on to more of our M routes, I believe like a Rochester Road type of project. You know we're still a few years out from projects like that, but just looking ahead to see what funding we have for our biggest needs in Oakland County.

Jeff Cranson:

Do you think, you know, whereas from the day the U. S. 23 Flex Route opened, there was discussion about how it doesn't go far enough and all you've done is move a bottleneck further north? Do you think that you'll have that same kind of discussion after 96 is open, or do you feel like the segment that it'll serve will really make a huge difference in congestion, will really make a huge difference in congestion?

Brian Travis:

I think it'll make a huge difference. We will get the question about you know, what is the point of the flex lane if it's only going to drop off? You're right, you're moving the bottleneck further down the line, which can be both things can be true. Right, you might have another bottleneck, but you're also alleviating congestion in that 12-mile stretch. So drivers will get used to you know. They know this lane is going to end. Let me merge over when I have a gap. So I don't anticipate traffic getting worse by any means or creating issues. It's just going to be an adjustment for drivers. I'm pretty sure anybody that drives this corridor will be happy to have that extra lane because it does just get very congested and it it seems, you know, the population keeps moving further west down the corridor, um, lion township, brighton, that whole area. So, um, not going to be a shortage of commuters that that are using that route and oh my gosh jeff when we, when we eventually connect the flex lanes too, I mean that's going to be huge.

Jeff Cranson:

Yeah, that growth in Livingston County and western Oakland County is still a real phenomenon, but I kind of have to believe since you started in 2022, you know, still coming off the tail end of the pandemic and more people have returned to the roads. You've probably seen a huge difference in the last couple of years of travelers, right.

Brian Travis:

We have and that's been one of the biggest eye-opening aspects of this project. You know our day-to-day is hard enough with just trying to put down the proper materials and get trucks in and out of the job. But the live traffic out there day in and day out, the congestion, the crashes, the driver behavior, you know all of those things take a toll on the project team trying to maintain and do our job safely out there. And so right, traffic volumes are heavy. It doesn't seem like there's ever a good time to take a lane closure out there. Saturday, sunday, monday, tuesday, it doesn't matter. Traffic is just, it's always moving out there.

Jeff Cranson:

Well yeah, especially when you have an unexpected tiger appearance in postseason and then you transition into a really hot Lions team. So yeah, it doesn't matter. Well, hey, thanks Brian, that's very helpful. I'm congratulations to uh, to you and everybody you're working with on this. I know this is a huge milestone and, uh, I know that we can't really celebrate it in its entirety until the spring, but just getting those lanes open it's quite an accomplishment.

Brian Travis:

Yeah, appreciate it, Jeff. Yeah, like I said, a lot of people have worked very, very hard on this project for the past three years, so we're all excited that it's going to be open to traffic here. So appreciate the time today. Sure thing.

Jeff Cranson:

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.