A proposed lane reduction for 10 Mile Road may not come to fruition after the Eastpointe City Council determined it is currently in such disrepair that a planned reconstruction project should not be delayed.

In order to determine if it is feasible to reduce lanes from four to three between Hayes Road and Phlox Avenue, a traffic study is needed.

“I would really like to see the road done; it is just a disaster right now,” said Councilwoman Margaret Posiadlik during the Dec. 3 City Council meeting. “If asking for a traffic study is going to delay things, I’m not sure I can get behind it at this point.”

Posiadlik said she is not opposed to asking for a traffic study, but if it is going to significantly delay reconstruction she would rather the project just proceed as a four-lane design.

OHM Advisors engineering and planning firm recently conducted a traffic safety audit on 10 Mile Road that recommends reducing it from four to three lanes between Hayes Road and Cushing Avenue. Ten Mile Road would have one east- and one westbound lane with a center turn lane as opposed to the current four-lane roadway with nothing between them.

Ten Mile is under Macomb County jurisdiction and reconstruction of the road is already planned. There is to be a total reconstruction from Hayes Road to Phlox Avenue. Currently, two of the four lanes are concrete and two are asphalt.

“It is mismatched,” said Eastpointe City Manager Mariah Walton. “And the state funding that was earmarked for this project was specific to a full reconstruct not a resurfacing.”

Walton said Eastpointe city officials will meet with Macomb County Department of Roads officials next week to work out the details of the reconstruction plan and as well as a timetable.

Mayor Michael Klinefelt directed Walton to meet with county officials and determine if conducting a traffic study would delay the reconstruction project. If it would cause delay, Klinefelt said the reconstruction would move forward as planned without a lane reduction.

“I would like to see the recommended safety improvements implemented but I agree that the road is in really bad shape and not having a delay is the priority,” said Klinefelt.

Councilpersons Rob Baker and Harvey Curley said they were opposed to reducing 10 Mile Road from four to three lanes. The City Council also discussed the results of a Nine Mile Road traffic study that was conducted in February 2024 by Anderson, Eckstein & Westrick, Inc., Eastpointe’s city engineering firm, and revised recently to encompass only the area between Tuscany Avenue to Kelly Road.

AEW senior project engineer Ryan Kern said additional studies were conducted in September and that average daily traffic on that stretch was just over 21,000.

“The results showed that the queuing of traffic at Schroeder and at Kelly would increase if there was a road diet,” said Kern. “It would be between five and eight additional cars waiting at a traffic signal.”

Kern said the study took into account crash data from 2018 — 2022 excluding 2020 because of the impact of the COVID pandemic on traffic patterns. He said a road diet would have minimal effect on crashes that result in property damage only but that injury crashes and fatalities would be reduced. There were no traffic fatalities on Nine Mile Road recorded between 2018-2022 and seven injury accidents. The next step, Kern said, is to meet with members of the Southeast Michigan Council of Governments, Michigan Department of Transportation and the Federal Highway Administration.

“Typically a road diet would be looked at on streets with 15,000 or less but they have been done on streets with traffic volume as high as 25,000,” Kern said.

The City Council approved a motion to receive and file the Nine Mile Road traffic study.

“Aside from the queuing, which is an issue we need to look at, overall it was a report that indicated there would be some positive changes,” said Klinefelt.