DETROIT (AP) - Environmental groups are challenging Michigan's plan to spend $2 billion to widen and overhaul a stretch of Interstate 94 through Detroit beginning in four years.
The state Department of Transportation says some bridge work will begin in 2018, with major construction starting in 2019. About 81 percent of the funding is expected to come from the federal government.
Opponents of the project say it's based on an outdated environmental assessment that was conducted more than a decade ago and based on outdated population figures, according to The Detroit News.
The city had about 924,000 people in 2004 and about 680,000 in 2013, according to census estimates.
"We just want to say timeout and make sure this project is still what we need and what we want for Detroit and the region," said Nick Schroeck, executive director of the Great Lakes Environmental Law Center. "This highway: Does it actually need to be expanded?"
State transportation department spokesman Rob Morosi said the 6.7-mile stretch of I-94 is badly in need of updating.
"The current stretch of I-94 was designed in the 1940s and built between 1947 and 1958," Morosi said. "There are a lot of elements in the modernization project that will move this stretch from a 1950s design to a 2050 design."
Besides the population drop, economic forecasts from around 2000 don't weigh account business losses the region suffered during the Great Recession, opponents say. They also say that traffic patterns have shifted and will continue to change with the construction of the M-1 passenger rail line, whose Woodward Avenue route in downtown Detroit crosses over I-94.
The environmental groups further say that the original environmental impact statement doesn't take into account the project's impact on climate change, which federal regulations require.
According to the state, updated statistics have already been collected as part of the process and will be discussed at upcoming public meetings.
"We are required by federal law to conduct re-evaluations," Morosi said. "Part of that re-evaluation is updating traffic counts, which was last done in the fall of 2014."
The project will take years to complete, according to the state, perhaps as much as two decades.
Published: Tue, Jul 07, 2015
