ZEELAND, Mich. — A major road construction project is starting next year between Zeeland and Holland. The $22-million project covers a busy five miles stretch of Business Interstate 196, between US-31 and Interstate 196.
"It's cracking and everything else. So, it's time to get some work done on it," Jason Sundell, MDOT Muskegon TSC Contracts Engineer, says.
The MDOT project is funded and ready to get started next spring on business interstate 196. MDOT is seeking public input on this project.
"With the new pavement from US-31 to Paw Paw [Drive] and then from Paw Paw [Drive], we're going do some rehab work from Paw Paw [Drive] to 88th [Avenue] more towards Zealand," Sundell says.
MDOT hosted a meeting Wednesday night about the project with the Macatawa Area Coordianting Council who are putting together a study for a second project to go with this construction.
If approved and funded, the second project in the same area could get going in the next few years.
"It's a pretty important route between, you know, going from Grand Rapids to get into Holland, it gets a fair amount of traffic," Sundell said.
"We're looking at trying to figure out where's the best place to have a non-motorized crossing," Jason Latham, MACC Executive Director, says.
The MACC is asking for the public's input on whether they should build a bridge or tunnel for bikes and pedestrians, or just improve current crossings.
"With all that rain we had earlier in the week, you can kind of see there is a high water table in this area. So, even though we have kind of a pedestrian tunnel on the table, certainly we want feedback from that, that might be pretty difficult to construct. And a lot of locations it might really only be able to be built in one or two spots. But still, we want that feedback," Latham says.
Once they collect community opinion, they'll put together a design plan and seek out the funding for it.
"Once that's been developed, we're thinking that most of the alternatives that we come up with will probably be $5 million to $10 million to construct something like that," Latham says.
The MACC is collecting community input online for their study, too.
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