By Robert Tomlinson
News Director
CENTREVILLE — A comprehensive action plan for improving roads in St. Joseph County for the future was unveiled for the first time last week.
On Friday, the St. Joseph County Road Commission revealed the first draft of its Comprehensive Transportation Safety Action Plan, done through a federal grant program called Safe Streets for All (SS4A). The 106-page document outlines goals, strategies and actions that the county can take to make streets safer for not just motorists, but for pedestrians, bicyclists, and other residents.
The draft is currently in a public comment phase, where residents can give their thoughts on the plan and how it could be improved for a final draft. Public comment is open until Friday using a five-minute survey at www.stjoesafestreets.com, where the plan can also be viewed in full.
“There’s a lot of information in it. It’s got a lot, but this is essentially the last part of the plan, getting the final public feedback on it,” Road Commission engineer Garrett Myland said. “It’s a little bit of, you can put in your own information, but also a toggle switch of, are we meeting what you think is the safety concerns of the county?”
The Road Commission received SS4A funding from the United States Department of Transportation (USDOT) in fiscal year 2022 to develop the safety plan, which was started last year in partnership with Aecom, a Grand Rapids-based consulting firm.
According to the plan, there were 8,863 crashes reported in St. Joseph County between 2018 and 2022, with 64 of them being fatal crashes and 217 involving serious injury. The highest number of crashes in an individual year was in 2022, when 1,965 crashes were reported, with 66 being designated as fatal or serious injury crashes. That baseline, according to the plan, was used as a foundation for the initiatives presented to reduce the occurrence and severity of crashes in the county.
Some of the strategies and action items laid out in the plan include removing, relocating or shielding fixed objects along the roadside, installing pavement superelevation at curves, reviewing posted advisory speeds for curves, installing more paved shoulders along rural roadways, reducing the number of conflict points through intersection design, improving signal visibility, installing bike lanes, and reviewing signal timing in high pedestrian and bicyclist areas.
The biggest strategy from the Road Commission’s perspective, Myland noted, was adding those paved shoulders on the rural roads of the county.
“Being rural, one of our biggest thing is we have a lot of lane departure crashes, and those paved shoulders help give us a safety area for people leaving,” Myland said.
In addition, the plan lays out a number of potential projects on certain roadways to make those roads safer. The biggest one on the list is North River Road from U.S. 131 to U.S. 12, which has been a problem area for many years due to vehicles using the road as a shortcut between the two highways. The plan suggests installing paved shoulders, flattening horizontal curves, fixing intersection alignment, and installing enhanced curve signage.
The estimated construction cost of that potential project, according to the plan document, is just under $13.4 million.
“[Aecom] did a preliminary design and cost estimate that’s essentially re-doing the road and superelevations and widening the road out,” Myland said about North River Road. “North River Road, we’ve known it has been a problem for a very long time. It was one of the things that sparked this.”
Other projects include multiple projects on sections of Lutz Road, which include installing paved shoulders, tree removal and a roundabout at the intersection at Centreville-Constantine Road (which is currently in the works), intersection alignment at Centreville-Constantine Road at Featherstone Road, installing flashing beacon pedestrian crossings at the Centreville Street/Lafayette Street intersection, the South Street/Whiter Street intersection and on South Franks Avenue between Fawn River Road and Chicago Road, and a roundabout at the Riverside Drive/Vistula Road intersection.
A few projects are also recommended in the City of Three Rivers. The plan suggests installing chevron curve signing at Hoffman Street from Wood Street to Shiawassee River Road, constructing an access road to connect business parking lots along the south side of Broadway Road between U.S. 131 and Warner Drive, installing a traffic signal at Warner Drive, and installing a mid-block pedestrian crossing, installing rapid flashing beacon signs at the crossing, and installing a pedestrian refuge island in the existing left turn lane on Broadway Street between Fourth Street and Fifth Street at Elbert Lee Foster Park.
Once the plan is fully approved by the Road Commission, which could happen within the next month, Myland says he anticipates putting in an application for SS4A implementation funding, which would pay for 80 percent of a potential project with the Road Commission paying 20 percent. He added that North River Road would “for sure” be in the application, along with possibly other projects.
“I believe it’d be in our best interest to try to expand out our application a little bit more than North River Road to where we can look at several different types of fixes all over the county,” Myland said. “If you go through the plan, there’s a lot of different projects they have as options throughout it, so it gives us a good start to where we can look and tie in with North River Road for a more comprehensive application.”
Overall, Myland said there wasn’t too much that caught him “off guard” with what the plan has, but said it was still important to have something down on paper to help out the county in the future.
“It verifies some of the knowledge that we’ve had. An outside company is seeing it, and having this plan available and in a lot of detail, we’ll be able to actually get funding for this in the future,” Myland said. “I wouldn’t say this is a wish list, but it’s one of those things where there’s a lot of projects that are listed. That doesn’t mean every single one of them is going to get done, but it gives us kind of a focus area for projects that we should be looking for completing.”
According to USDOT, the SS4A program, which was established under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, funds regional, local and tribal initiatives through grants to prevent roadway deaths and serious injuries. Approximately $2.9 billion in federal funding has been provided so far in the first three years of the initiative to communities in all 50 states in Puerto Rico.
Robert Tomlinson can be reached at 279-7488 or robert@wilcoxnewspapers.com.
