WYOMING, Mich. — A busy Wyoming road is being put on a 'diet,' and a moving road crew doing that work may cause some traffic issues Saturday.
The City of Wyoming is reducing the four lane road between Burton and Chicago Drive to three lanes. The road will remain the same width, but lane configurations are being changed to adjust traffic flow on that stretch.
To accommodate those changes, a moving work crew will be re-striping the lanes for about six to eight hours Sat., Sept. 28th.
Officials say traffic will not need to detour around the work, but drivers should use caution driving near the work crews. However, people living along the road whose cars are parking street side are being asked to move their vehicles while repainting is happening.
A “road diet” is when a 4-lane road is reconfigured to become a 3-lane road with on-street parking. In this case, the curbs and gutters stay the same, but the lane markings are adjusted.
Right now, Burlingame Avenue has four lanes, and parking is only allowed in the outer lanes at certain times. This can be dangerous because drivers in the outer lanes might suddenly come across a parked car and have to quickly move to the inner lane to avoid it. Plus, without a center turn lane, drivers in the inner lane often have to swerve into the outer lane when someone in front of them stops to turn left. Both of these situations can lead to rear-end and sideswipe accidents.
With the new setup, parking would be allowed all the time, but in narrower, dedicated lanes along the curbs. The three remaining lanes would be one for northbound traffic, one center lane for left turns, and one for southbound traffic. Road diets have been shown to slow down traffic, reduce speeding, and make the area safer for everyone.
