$9 million project on Woodward Avenue begins, will include adding bike lane

Woodward Avenue, the iconic Metro Detroit roadway that runs from Detroit to Pontiac, is getting a makeover in Ferndale and Pleasant Ridge.

Work began Monday on a $9 million project to repave a portion of Woodward. As part of the work, Ferndale and Pleasant Ridge partnered with the Michigan Department of Transportation and construction crews will remove a lane of vehicle traffic on either side of the divided road and replace it with a lane for bicycles. The parking lane will be placed between drivers and the bicycle lane.

The bike lane will loop through some Pleasant Ridge alleys instead of staying along Woodward under overpasses, City Manager James Breuckman said.

The work also will make it easier for pedestrians to cross Woodward, for transit riders to catch the bus and for drivers to see traffic at intersections, all good for downtown businesses and visitors, said Lena Stevens, director of Ferndale's Downtown Development Authority.

"We want a safe corridor, we want an inclusive corridor and ultimately we want a prosperous corridor," she said. "Those things (like a protected bike lane) can help us get there. When you make these communities where people can get around in different ways, and not only can they do that, they feel safe and they feel comfortable doing that, those places thrive."

Ferndale leaders and residents have been talking about making the city more pedestrian-friendly for roughly a decade, Mayor Melanie Piana said. The city completed its first mobility plan in 2014.

"The city has always been focused on becoming and enhancing its best asset, which is our walkability, and we have heard from residents over years telling us how unsafe and uncomfortable it is to walk and bike along Woodward," Piana said.

Construction will happen in two phases. For the next month, crews will work on building rain gardens in the median and repaving the lanes closest to the median. They will stop for the winter and resume work next spring.

MDOT will pay for the bulk of the $9 million cost, spending $5.6 million on resurfacing work. Ferndale and Pleasant Ridge received $2 million for the project from grants from MDOT and the Southeast Michigan Council of Governments. Ferndale also will kick in $1.18 million and Pleasant Ridge will kick in $139,500.

MDOT announced in 2018 its plans to repave Woodward Avenue in the cities, Stevens said. City leaders in Ferndale and Pleasant Ridge asked if a bike and pedestrian lane could be incorporated into the project.

The cities had to conduct a feasibility study, safety review and collect public comment before moving forward with the bike lane project. MDOT also conducted a feasibility study.

In the safety review, Ferndale found there had been more than 800 crashes along Woodward from 2016-18, with 23 of them involving bikes or pedestrians. Most of the crashes were on at the avenue's intersection with Nine Mile.

About half of the pedestrian crashes and almost all of the bicycle crashes happened when drivers were turning right onto Woodward and looking at oncoming traffic instead of at the crosswalk, the city found.

"All the evidence says that there is ample space on Woodward and capacity to create a more welcoming and accessible Woodward through the protected bike lanes and safety improvements," Piana said.

A "Complete Streets" law passed in 2010 allows local governments and MDOT to coordinate on road projects that provide access to car, truck, public transit, assistive devices, bicycles and walking, MDOT spokesman Jeff Cranson said. The law allows for community leaders to request those projects.

"The new bike lane will eventually connect to other bicycle facilities in the region, specifically the bike lanes on Main Street in Royal Oak," said Lori Swanson, MDOT's Oakland Transportation Service Center manager. "At this time, no other community has proposed the idea of or are studying bike lanes on Woodward."

MDOT is launching a study of Woodward Avenue from Jefferson Avenuein Detroit up to the loop in Pontiac, Swanson said. The study will evaluate both motorized and non-motorized transportation.

ckthompson@detroitnews.com