Upper Peninsula Highways

This weekend I spent some time in Wisconsin visiting my sister. The journey to and from where she lives is always a long drive, no matter which route we take. I went with my parents, which is always nice to have company on such a journey. But driving the roads between Michigan and Wisconsin is like night and day. The state of Wisconsin is putting billions of dollars into their road infrastructure statewide, not just in the most congested areas of the state like Milwaukee or Madison. Compare that to the U.P., where the roads have been status quo for years, except for the typical maintenance like crack sealing and roadway resurfacing. The Upper Peninsula is in need of an east-west four-lane divided highway, as well as a north-south divided highway to service the western and central portions of the peninsula. I-75 serves the eastern U.P. from the Mackinac Bridge to the Sault, but that's it. For the remainder of the Upper Peninsula, traveling to and from destinations is done by two-lane highways.

And I know there'll be people coming onto this blog completely denouncing the idea of additional lanes on U.P. highways, saying that traffic counts do not back up the idea of more divided highways in the Upper Peninsula. Drive on M-35 from Menominee to Escanaba and you'll see that traffic is starting to increase on that stretch of roadway. Or how about US-2 from St. Ignace to Escanaba or M-28 between Harvey and Munising? They are all roadways in need of expansion with increasing amounts of traffic. More and more people are driving these days and some are traveling more miles than ever just to get to work. You also have to include the increasing amount of truck traffic on highways. With railways becoming more and more extinct by the decade here in the U.P., how else are goods delivered here? The traffic is only going to get worse before it gets better.

Several years back, the Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT) had the opportunity to bypass a few cities in the southern Upper Peninsula that were experiencing increasing traffic problems. Instead of developing plans to create bypasses of those two cities, MDOT nixed those plans and instead tried developing plans to improve the stretches of highways entering and exiting those cities. Four lanes of traffic became five and the roadways have received surface improvements. But yet, the traffic is still heavy and it's only predicted to get worse in the coming years. I realize that when communities get bypassed by new highways, it leads to decreased traffic within that city. Communities like Peshtigo and Oconto in Northern Wisconsin are facing that same dilemma these days when US-41 traffic was bypassed around their cities. However, when your community is the only major commercial and retail center for miles, I don't believe that problem will exist so much here in the Upper Peninsula. I know it's a very touchy subject for some, but I don't believe it would hurt communities in the U.P. like it would in other areas of the country.

For roadways to become reconstructed and expanded, it's going to take money. Unfortunately, the state of Michigan can barely fund essential services these days - let alone building new highways in the Upper Peninsula. It's why these dreams of east to west or north to south divided highways in the U.P. are a long way off. Believe me, the roadway infrastructure in the U.P. needs to be expanded. I know because I've seen it for my very eyes. Even U.P. representatives to the Michigan State Senate and House have bemoaned the fact that it takes so long to drive down to Lansing because the U.P. highways are so small and are only 55 MPH. So it's not like no one has complained about the issue. But right now, it all comes down to money. And in a state where they are actually talking about decreasing the amount of road projects that are completed in a year rather than increasing, I'd say those dreams of more U.P. highway work are a long, long ways off.