MUSKEGON, Mich. — On Monday night the Muskegon City Commission met to discuss the Shoreline Drive road diet report and next steps for the project. They discussed the impact of narrowing Shoreline Drive in downtown Muskegon.
A 360-page report about the affect of reducing Shoreline Drive in downtown Muskegon concluded that vehicle speeds dropped substantially during the experimental phases. The report examined the results of two experimental periods during which two lanes of Shoreline were closed. Due to traffic safety and concerns, project planners believe the road would function better with fewer lanes.
"It is an area where we have high speeds through there generally, and people going over the speed limit, which is never a good thing," said City Manager of Muskegon Jonathan Seyferth. "And one of the big challenges that we have a shoreline drive is it separates the downtown from the Lakeshore, and as the lake shore continues to develop, and as we have more people living and working in the downtown, we want them to be able to get to the water."
No decisions were made Monday night but Muskegon City Commissioners say they wanted to be transparent with the community. Progressive AE is the engineering firm that was contracted to do the study and presented information from their study at the meeting.
"And they presented on the final results from the report from the road study," Seyferth said. "So we did it in two phases in October of 2022. And then again over the summer of 23. So we were we were really looking to get a feel for the data, to make sure that the modeling that the state showed was possible on shoreline drive was possible in a real life environment."
The next steps for the project are to plan and apply for some federal grants that are available. The commission committee says the community’s feedback is also highly encouraged.
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