Proposed changes to the Broad Street and West Carleton Road intersection include adding bike lanes and closing access to Hillsdale Street by City Hall and the Post Office. Courtesy | City of Hillsdale

Residents questioned a plan by MDOT and Hillsdale to make M-99 one lane each way

A city proposal to slim down Broad Street was met with opposition at a meeting last week, and a city official promised to incorporate resident feedback before seeking approval from the city council.

“If the city council says ‘no,’ then the project dies,” Zoning Administrator Alan Beeker said. “If the city council says ‘yes, we would like to continue to pursue it,’ we would apply for the grant, and then if the grant monies were approved, the city would continue moving forward with it.”

The proposed M-99 “road diet” would slim down Broad Street from four lanes to three, with the middle lane acting as a turn lane, and bike lanes on either side of the road. The plan would also end direct access from Hillsdale Street to Broad Street between City Hall and the Post Office. The city would need to seek grants before the end of February, and the project would begin in 2027. 

Most residents who attended the Jan. 16 meeting spoke out against the plan, but many also acknowledged the city’s pedestrian problem and wanted amendments to the plan.

The “road diet” is supposed to slow down traffic coming into town, according to the Michigan Department of Transportation and city officials. 

Hillsdale College senior Paige Conway started a petition against the proposal and got more than 30 signatures at the meeting.

“I’m against it because I think it’s going to slow down traffic and cause congestion even if they said it’s not going to,” Conway said. 

According to Conway, the roads by the college have a lot of potholes that need to be fixed. 

“I’ve personally popped two tires on the roads here,” Conway said. “I think we should spend money on that, as opposed to taking a lane away from the road.”

Around five of the approximately 55 people at the meeting raised their hands to show their support for adding bike lanes.

Matt Bell, a former city councilman and executive director of programs at Hillsdale College, said he thinks that most cyclists are worried about bad roads, not the lack of bike lanes. According to Bell, if the city’s goal is to bring more people into town, then the city should not take away driving lanes.

“Two lanes down from four would be a total disaster for traffic,” Bell said. “It would definitely adversely affect traffic through the main thoroughfare of the city even through first shift rush.”

Samuel Negus, director of program review and accreditation at Hillsdale College, is an avid biker and said he does not see a need for bike lanes.

“Nothing regulates traffic better than roundabouts,” Negus said. “That is an easily quantifiable fact. All of these conversations were, frankly, compared to putting in roundabouts in intersections, irrelevant. You‘re arguing about the second, third, or fourth best solution. The number one best solution is to regulate every three or four-way intersection with a roundabout, period.”

Project Manager Lori Pawlik from Wade Trim, the civil engineering firm working with the City of Hillsdale on the project, said if the city decides to continue with the plan and reduce a lane on Broad Street, there will be extra space for a shoulder or bike lanes.

“I understand, if people don’t want the bike lanes, that’s fine, but we could still do the ‘road diet,’ and it would really help with slowing down traffic, if there are crashes, less severe crashes,” Pawlik said.

MDOT Senior Planner Mike Davis Jr. addressed people’s concerns that the “road diet” would increase traffic congestion.

“The road diet will slow down vehicles without limiting the capacity of the roadway so severely that we would see new types of congestion that aren’t there now,” Davis said.

Owner of My Turn to Drive, Ben Cole, has been teaching students how to drive for approximately 30 years, and said the plan has pros and cons.

Cole suggested that the city should not turn traffic lights off of their normal cycle after 9 p.m. and that it add a left-turn traffic light at the intersection of Fayette Street and Carleton Road, because he cannot get students to take the left turn without having close calls.

“The left turn statistically is the most dangerous turn to make and it has the highest crash rate, but I got to teach kids how to do it,” Cole said.

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