Major Detroit Road to Become Safer, More Flood-Resistant, and More Beautiful

Thanks to a $25 million grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT), a two-mile stretch of Warren Avenue in Dearborn is soon to get a major upgrade. The funding includes three major components:   improving safety through narrowing Warren Avenue (designed to slow traffic) and constructing protected bike lanes; instituting a plant buffer to mitigate flooding as well as beautify the area, and; installing new LED lighting, which will improve overall safety, enhance visibility for pedestrians and motorists, and lower the carbon footprint.

“When we submitted the grant, we talked about how dangerous Warren Avenue is today…knowing that we had several pedestrian deaths last year along Warren Avenue alone,” Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud said. Hammoud told Click on Detroit, “These dollars will go a long way in helping us reimagine traffic and pedestrian safety along the corridor and in doing so, improving its walkability and access to local businesses.”

Mohamad Cheik, the owner of the five-decades-old Warren Bike Shop on Warren Avenue, told Channel 7 News that he is happy to hear about the coming upgrades. “I think it’s an excellent idea,” he said. “I think it’s very good for the community. It’s also good for safety. It’s good for everybody.”

In 2023, two pedestrians were killed on Warren Avenue including an 82-year-old-woman and the uncle of Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib. Tlaib, the Congresswoman for the Dearborn area, wrote a letter in support of the grant.

The current proposal would reduce the road from two lanes in each direction to one lane in each direction with a center turn lane, a parking lane on each side, and separated bike lanes:

Illustration Credit: Safe Streets for All FY2023 Implementation Grants

Mayor Hammoud has suggested that it may not be feasible to have only one lane in both directions for the full two-mile stretch because of semi-truck traffic. DOT is working with local government agencies to plan for the project which they expect to be completed in 2025. “This is going to take strategic implementation,” he said. “So we need a full year just for that to make sure that we get it right.”.

The reconfiguration of Warren Avenue is referred to as a “Road Diet”, a low-cost safety solution which has multiple benefits to better accommodate the needs of all road users:

• Reduction of rear-end and left-turn crashes due to the dedicated left-turn lane;
• Reduced right-angle crashes as side street motorists cross three versus four travel lanes;
• Fewer lanes for pedestrians to cross;
• Opportunity to install pedestrian refuge islands, bicycle lanes, on-street parking, or transit stops; and
• Traffic calming and more consistent speeds.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg told The Detroit News that “the idea of a road diet is that while some roads out there need to be widened and expanded, some others actually need to be brought in a little bit and narrowed, so that the traffic moves at a safer speed. The traffic will still flow, but in a way that is less likely to lead to crashes, including pedestrian fatalities, which have been a big issue in Dearborn.”The grant for this project came from the DOT’s Safe Streets for All program, a $5 billion program funded through the Biden-Harris infrastructure law.