Latest / Talking Michigan Transportation / What’s next for the iconic Tunnel of Trees?

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What’s next for the iconic Tunnel of Trees? · Talking Michigan Transportation

• 0:07
  Jeff Cranson: Hello, welcome to the Talking Michigan Transportation Podcast.
• 0:10
  Jeff Cranson: I'm Jeff Cranson.
• 0:12
  Jeff Cranson: This week I wanted to catch up on what's going on with the iconic tunnel of trees, which is also M119, a state route in northern Michigan.
• 0:24
  Jeff Cranson: Many people across the state are familiar with it.
• 0:27
  Jeff Cranson: It's one of those things kind of like the Dune Climb or Mackinac Island the Taqhuamenon Falls that everybody does as sort of a rite of passage if you grow up in Michigan or even from neighboring states.
• 0:40
  Jeff Cranson: It was badly damaged by some heavy rains and flooding in the spring.
• 0:45
  Jeff Cranson: And then just when MDOT crews thought they were going to be able to get things back in order, another deluge hit in June and really wreaked havoc on many sections of the route.
• 0:56
  Jeff Cranson: So following completion of a $300,000 project to stabilize one of the slopes beneath a section of the road near West Stutsmanville Road, MDOT in early September reopened that segment between Stutsmanville Road and Turpening.
• 1:12
  Jeff Cranson: I wanted to talk to Bill Wahl, who is the North Region Engineer for MDOT and was previously the Associate Region Engineer and was heavily involved in overseeing this and trying to make some decisions and a lot of public engagement with people, business owners, uh especially who are affected by the road being closed, washed out.
• 1:34
  Jeff Cranson: So he had a lot of really good things to say about what's happened and what's going to need to happen going forward, including a study, some real hard look at what the cost is going to be and what's even doable to restore some of the sections that are on bluffs that just can't really be stabilized in any traditional ways.
• 1:56
  Jeff Cranson: He also talked a little bit about the Diverging Diamond Interchange that's going to be built at M32 and I-75 in Gaylord, which is a huge deal.
• 2:05
  Jeff Cranson: It's the first time one of those innovative interchanges has been done anywhere in the northern part of the state.
• 2:11
  Jeff Cranson: So that was an interesting discussion too.
• 2:13
  Jeff Cranson: I hope you enjoy what Bill had to say.
• 2:16
  Jeff Cranson: So once again, as mentioned in the introduction, I'm talking to Bill Wahl, who is newly ensconced as the North Region engineer for MDOT.
• 2:25
  Jeff Cranson: And to further explain that, each of the seven regions in MDOT has someone who is the region engineer, which basically means they are the top administrator for that region.
• 2:35
  Jeff Cranson: All the big decisions flow to their desk, and eventually they are the ones that have to weigh in or consult with other people, perhaps in Lansing in the central office.
• 2:46
  Jeff Cranson: Bill, congratulations again on being named North Region Engineer, and you took over at a pretty tumultuous time.
• 2:52
  Bill Wahl: Thanks, Jeff.
• 2:52
  Bill Wahl: Yeah, it's been an interesting amount, interesting spring and summer, and a lot of things going on as we've dealt with storms this summer, storms last year, and then some real heavy-duty storms that happened later in the summer that really impacted a lot of our roads, specifically up on M119 and then down in the entrance county area.
• 3:10
  Jeff Cranson: So, yeah, let's talk mostly about uh M-119 because that's it's I don't want to say it's more important than those other roads because everybody's road is important, but uh downstate uh to tourists, especially everybody knows the tunnel of trees in M-119, and you're wrestling with a lot there.
• 3:27
  Jeff Cranson: You and I last talked in June after some serious uh rains in April and flooding, and you thought you could get things back on track, and then you had more, but recently you have made some progress a couple of weeks ago.
• 3:40
  Jeff Cranson: You were able to reopen an important segment.
• 3:43
  Bill Wahl: So yeah, so things are progressing forward.
• 3:46
  Bill Wahl: Um, yeah, we had failures early this spring after melt off and storms, and we had another set of storms right at the end of June that created a lot of devastation up there, not just in our roads, but individual properties all over through that area.
• 3:59
  Bill Wahl: But we are moving forward.
• 4:00
  Bill Wahl: We were, as you mentioned, able to open one important section that was actually some damage from the earliest storms this year, back in the early spring.
• 4:08
  Bill Wahl: So in the area around Stutsmanville Road on M-119, which is on the south end of the tunnel of trees, that had been closed ever since April, early May after the spring storms.
• 4:18
  Bill Wahl: We were able to get a contractor in there to do some repairs and some slopes to stabilize the road, which allowed us to open up about a four-mile section of road that had been closed since the spring.
• 4:27
  Bill Wahl: Um, so that's now open fully to traffic, which is a great thing.
• 4:31
  Bill Wahl: We're able to do that just before Labor Day.
• 4:33
  Jeff Cranson: That's probably the segment that most people are familiar with because they approach the tunnel of trees from the south from Harbor Springs, right?
• 4:39
  Jeff Cranson: So if they don't even do the whole route, they at least know that part of it.
• 4:44
  Bill Wahl: Yeah, and that's in the early, the in the early portion of the tunnel of trees.
• 4:49
  Bill Wahl: Um, so that was nice.
• 4:50
  Bill Wahl: Is it opens up a big portion of it that people can go all the way through?
• 4:54
  Bill Wahl: The rest of the route, for the most part, is open to local traffic, but we still do have two spots within there that it's closed down completely due to the storm damage.
• 5:03
  Bill Wahl: So there's a section towards the way towards the north up by Cross Village near Division Road that that's been closed since the spring.
• 5:10
  Bill Wahl: We had a major culvert washout and roadway failure there.
• 5:13
  Bill Wahl: That one's been lots of pictures in the media over the over the months of that section.
• 5:17
  Bill Wahl: But then further south, the storms at the end of June created a major washout at a section uh called Devil's Elbow, which is about halfway through.
• 5:26
  Bill Wahl: It's a little bit south of Goodhart area.
• 5:28
  Bill Wahl: Um, and that section also remains closed at this point.
• 5:31
  Bill Wahl: Um, the devastation there was just amazing.
• 5:34
  Bill Wahl: How much soil got washed away, how much of an impact it is, not just along the section that's right next to the road, but just for hundreds of feet in either direction.
• 5:44
  Bill Wahl: The road hits one little corner of a bluff, but then it just keeps going.
• 5:47
  Bill Wahl: Um, and seeing the devastation is just amazing.
• 5:50
  Bill Wahl: I've seen pictures and drone videos, but it just doesn't do it justice compared to seeing it in person.
• 5:56
  Bill Wahl: Um, and that area is closed and will remain closed for the foreseeable future due to the level of damage and trying to protect the roadway in that area and any drivers that are there as we try to figure out how to go about doing repairs to read to restore that section.
• 6:12
  Bill Wahl: Locals can get in, but you can't get through.
• 6:15
  Jeff Cranson: Do you have any idea on the history of the devil's elbow name?
• 6:18
  Jeff Cranson: Because there are so many.
• 6:19
  Jeff Cranson: There's devil's curves and devil's elbows and devil's bends around the country.
• 6:23
  Jeff Cranson: And that one always struck me.
• 6:25
  Jeff Cranson: I get it because of the angle of the curve, but it's not a place where you should be going very fast anyway.
• 6:31
  Bill Wahl: Right.
• 6:31
  Bill Wahl: And that name predates, I believe, us having a road there and all, or that's M-119, I believe, started as a Native American trail long, long ago.
• 6:41
  Bill Wahl: And I think at that one, there's actually a marker there and a plaque that gives a little bit of the history.
• 6:46
  Bill Wahl: I can't remember all the details off the top of my head, but I think that name precedes it being a road.
• 6:51
  Jeff Cranson: Oh, if I can find an image of that, I'll include it in the show notes.
• 6:54
  Jeff Cranson: And we'll also include uh the map that outlines the things you're talking about in terms of what's open and what's still being detoured.
• 7:00
  Bill Wahl: Yeah, yeah.
• 7:01
  Bill Wahl: As right now, we do when you hit the Stutzmanville Road section on M119, there is a detour in place.
• 7:08
  Bill Wahl: It takes traffic over about half a mile to a county road that lets you parallel M119 and brings you up to the village of Goodhart, at which point you can get back on M119 and then go north until you hit our other closure up closer to Cross Village.
• 7:22
  Bill Wahl: So most of the section is traversable.
• 7:24
  Bill Wahl: And as I said, it's all open to local traffic.
• 7:26
  Bill Wahl: Everyone can get to their houses.
• 7:28
  Bill Wahl: Um, and if there's businesses through there, you can get to them, but you just may have to backtrack afterwards if you're trying to keep going the rest of the way north or south, because there's a couple of full closures, and those are spots where we've got barricades and um on the road to and concrete barrier to stop anyone going through because it's just not a safe spot or traversable spot for people to go.
• 7:50
  Jeff Cranson: So I always say that by the time you get to be a transportation service center manager, or in your case, an associate region engineer and now a region engineer, most of what you do isn't about engineering anymore.
• 8:01
  Jeff Cranson: It's all public relations.
• 8:02
  Jeff Cranson: And uh what you and Jay Gailitis have had to do these past few months in terms of talking to these business owners and talking to the residents.
• 8:11
  Jeff Cranson: Um, I mean, it's a full-time job, right?
• 8:12
  Jeff Cranson: It's just one road, but it's what you're doing all the time.
• 8:15
  Jeff Cranson: And you've done an incredible job.
• 8:17
  Jeff Cranson: Talk a little bit about that and the feedback and how you've managed to keep communication open with some of those business owners, especially.
• 8:25
  Bill Wahl: Yeah, so it's thankfully up in that area, it's such an iconic section of roadway that we've had really strong relationships already with the Chamber of Commerce and the legislators and the business owners that those communication networks were already in place.
• 8:40
  Bill Wahl: Um, so once we started seeing these issues and realizing how substantial they were, we started talking to the chamber and to a couple of the individual businesses that are very influential in the area and just giving them continuous and ongoing updates of where we're at, what the reality was that we were dealing with, and working with them.
• 8:58
  Bill Wahl: So some of the maps that we share were actually maps that the Chamber of Commerce developed so they could share them to their members and get them pushed out on their social media because oftentimes they have a bigger reach than what we do.
• 9:09
  Bill Wahl: Um, so we're trying to use it.
• 9:11
  Jeff Cranson: This is the Petoskey Area Chamber of Commerce, which takes in a lot geographically, right?
• 9:15
  Bill Wahl: Yeah, so they had a large reach and having that relationship up front already.
• 9:19
  Bill Wahl: And that's one of the things we work really hard as a department and as a region at doing is building those relationships ahead of time with communities so that when bad things happen, and unfortunately with roads and weather, sometimes they do, um, you're not trying to start from scratch at that point.
• 9:36
  Bill Wahl: You have that relationship, so you know who to reach out to, who to contact, and help get that information out to people.
• 9:42
  Bill Wahl: That's been the key through here is just being open and transparent with what's going on.
• 9:47
  Bill Wahl: Um I know our TSC manager, Jay Golitas, is going to a symposium.
• 9:51
  Bill Wahl: It's either next week or the week after on M119 that's that they hold every year to update everyone on where we're at and what the next steps are going to be, because this is going to be there's some long-term impacts we have up in that area.
• 10:03
  Jeff Cranson: And for the most part, we find across the state that once you explain it to them, even if they don't like the answer, if you're transparent, as you said, that goes a long way.
• 10:13
  Jeff Cranson: But you've still got a number of people who you wonder how, when we've talked so much now for decades about underinvestment and infrastructure and the need to build for resiliency, that we're going to need to rebuild things like the roads in the north region where we've had a lot of weather events so that they can withstand more things that used to be 500-year events that are now 50-year events, right?
• 10:34
  Jeff Cranson: But how do you deal?
• 10:36
  Jeff Cranson: How do you have the patience for the people who say, I know, I know there's no money, but you have to do this?
• 10:51
  Bill Wahl: The key part, I lived through last year's ice storm at my own house, um, which put a different perspective on things for me.
• 10:58
  Bill Wahl: Um, sometimes when you when you're dealing with these events and you haven't gone through them yourself, of realizing that whatever issue it is that they're bringing up is clearly really important to them, is directly impacting their life, their livelihood, their business, all whatever it may be where the impact is, and really trying to understand their perspective.
• 11:19
  Bill Wahl: It may not change the response we're able to give or the response that we have, but under trying to build that understanding of why their perspective is where it is, and how they've been impacted helps us at least explain what's going on and what is happening, what we can do, the things we are, the steps we are taking, even if we can't get to the full level of what they're looking for us to do.
• 11:43
  Bill Wahl: Um, but I found that over the years in my career, it really is important across all issues to understand if someone's coming to us with an issue, it means it's important to them.
• 11:52
  Bill Wahl: And trying to understand why it's important to them, even we may not understand Britain immediately, really helps build that rapport and understanding to be able to help explain the reasoning of why our answer is what it is, and potentially point them to other resources that may be able to help or give support if it's not something that we can work on.
• 12:13
  Jeff Cranson: So let's talk about M-119 long term.
• 12:16
  Jeff Cranson: Um, I in an ideal world, you've got all segments reopened by next summer, right?
• 12:21
  Jeff Cranson: About a year from now.
• 12:23
  Bill Wahl: Potentially.
• 12:23
  Bill Wahl: Um, with the exception, I mean, so there's the two sections closed right now.
• 12:28
  Bill Wahl: In an ideal world, for sure, we would hope to be building, rebuilding a bridge or culvert or whatever ends going in at division road area by end of next summer, next fall, ideally.
• 12:40
  Bill Wahl: The Devil's Elbow section, that one it's harder to say there because the scale of the damage and figuring out how and where to fix it and what all that's gonna entail, that's a really complex set of engineering that goes well beyond the MDOT area and expands out much broader.
• 12:59
  Jeff Cranson: This is what you and I have talked about before.
• 13:00
  Jeff Cranson: This is like out west mountain road kind of thing.
• 13:02
  Bill Wahl: Yeah, right.
• 13:03
  Bill Wahl: So, and so much of it's not inside the at the roadway right of way.
• 13:09
  Bill Wahl: The issues expand way, way outside.
• 13:12
  Bill Wahl: So you could do a fix that would fix the section that's right there at the road, but if nothing's done anywhere else, then you have a storm that could potentially come in and cut out from behind what we've just fixed.
• 13:23
  Bill Wahl: It really gets complex there because there's so many areas that have been impacted, and it's not all directly next to the roadway.
• 13:30
  Bill Wahl: Um, if it was all if the road just kind of followed along the edge and it was all in our right of way, it wouldn't make the engineering any easier, but it could make figuring out the right solution easier.
• 13:40
  Bill Wahl: But what we have done and we are working through right now is we recognize that this area has been has a lot of different challenges and issues that have popped up a little over a little bit at a time year over year.
• 13:53
  Bill Wahl: So we've got a study started right now.
• 13:55
  Bill Wahl: We're looking for the vendor that's going to run it for us to really look at the resiliency of the corridor and identify we know the spots that have had problems the past couple of years, we know the spots that have had problems the years before that.
• 14:07
  Bill Wahl: But are there other areas of concern that we need to look at?
• 14:10
  Bill Wahl: How do we look at that corridor as a whole as opposed to just a fixing the most recent fire that popped up or response, um, and really trying to look at the corridor as a whole and understand what are all the factors there's that are going into it to really build a response plan to understand how do we fix it, how do we restore it, to the goal of having traffic be able to go through there.
• 14:34
  Bill Wahl: What's that right solution to get that done?
• 14:37
  Bill Wahl: Who all needs to be involved in it?
• 14:39
  Bill Wahl: Because it's likely going to involve more than just MDOT to really get to a point that we can get things restored and as you said, build for that resiliency of the future of how do we understand the future challenges and risks that are there beyond what we're seeing today.
• 14:54
  Jeff Cranson: And where would those millions of dollars come from?
• 14:56
  Bill Wahl: And that's the elephant in the room question is where would all that funding because it's gonna be a very, very expensive proposition.
• 15:04
  Bill Wahl: So, where is that funding coming from?
• 15:05
  Bill Wahl: As we're also looking at the I-75s of the world, US-31, all these routes that have a lot more traffic and carry a lot more commercial traffic and vehicles, but don't have the same impact from a tourism standpoint and the iconic standpoint that a route like M-119 does.
• 15:23
  Jeff Cranson: Is that Devil's elbow segment the one where basically you couldn't rebuild the roadway as is?
• 15:28
  Jeff Cranson: It would have to be a pretty long bridge.
• 15:32
  Bill Wahl: So that's the spot where, yeah, whether it's a long bridge, whether it's a huge set of retaining walls that start way at the bottom and get built up.
• 15:41
  Bill Wahl: And like you're really, like you mentioned before, you're really getting into more of like mountain engineering of the types of things you'd see out west or in a mountain chain somewhere versus what we're normally dealing with in Michigan.
• 15:52
  Bill Wahl: It's safe to say that if you were starting from scratch, you probably wouldn't build a road there.
• 15:56
  Jeff Cranson: That's a very safe statement.
• 15:59
  Bill Wahl: Um, and that's the hard part is that we have a road there.
• 16:02
  Bill Wahl: It wasn't ever designed as this it's just kind of occurred over time.
• 16:08
  Jeff Cranson: It wasn't designed to be a state highway.
• 16:10
  Bill Wahl: Right.
• 16:10
  Bill Wahl: And it wasn't so there's a lot of things that are there, and there's a lot of roads out like that as you go along through these natural, really beautiful areas we have along our coastlines that the roads were created there for a reason.
• 16:21
  Bill Wahl: That's where people want to drive, it's how people got places, but now over time, erosion happens, natural changes to those bluffs and slopes occur, and now we have a road there.
• 16:32
  Bill Wahl: We have houses that are built there, we have people that need to get there.
• 16:35
  Bill Wahl: So it adds a real extra challenge on how do you protect that asset and maintain accessibility for everyone in something that is now the natural changes to the landscape that are always occurring with dunes moving and bluffs moving and shorelines moving?
• 16:51
  Bill Wahl: We see that whenever the Great Lakes go up, that area is cutting in, then the water goes down and new sands being deposited.
• 16:58
  Bill Wahl: Shorelines move constantly.
• 17:00
  Jeff Cranson: Exactly.
• 17:01
  Jeff Cranson: And I think you take these things for granted because of your background as an engineer.
• 17:06
  Jeff Cranson: But do you find when you talk to people and they're talking about a shoreline property or a property on a bluff, um, and that you know, trees can impede their view, right?
• 17:16
  Jeff Cranson: And the whole reason you want to be there is so you can view the water.
• 17:18
  Jeff Cranson: But if you cut the trees, you create more erosion.
• 17:22
  Jeff Cranson: So do you find yourself having to explain that to people?
• 17:25
  Bill Wahl: We do.
• 17:26
  Bill Wahl: It's definitely a challenge.
• 17:27
  Bill Wahl: Um and really figuring out how to properly balance the safety of the road, protecting the right of way, with the fact that people, like you said, the reason they're there is they would love the view.
• 17:39
  Bill Wahl: They want to be able to see the lake.
• 17:41
  Bill Wahl: And um, sometimes there's extra impacts that may not be realized initially when you make when people make some of the changes that they do.
• 17:49
  Bill Wahl: Um, and one of the real challenges, too, that you get up on a section like M119 and some of these other roads that have just kind of come into existence over time is they would never plat it as a road like you have for a lot of other roads where someone went through and built a road and bought the property that goes with it.
• 18:08
  Bill Wahl: They're there under statute, the road has right of way that goes with it, but it just it's kind of there because the road's always been there.
• 18:15
  Bill Wahl: Um, so the underlying property owners have a lot of rights to their property, and balancing that out with the impacts to the road and how you make sure the road can maintain its purpose, um, with the fact that people have really valuable property that they want to take care of and make sure that they're maintaining their property values.
• 18:34
  Bill Wahl: It adds some unique challenges compared to if you're in the middle of a spot where we just own 200 feet of road and everything in that area is ours to take care of the way we need to from a road standpoint.
• 18:46
  Jeff Cranson: Stay with us.
• 18:47
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• 19:16
  Jeff Cranson: So your region, the North Region, as MDOT defines its regions, includes several miles of shoreline on two Great Lakes.
• 19:24
  Jeff Cranson: Um, somehow I suspect that you don't have the same problems on Lake Huron that you do on Lake Michigan.
• 19:30
  Bill Wahl: Uh not as much.
• 19:31
  Bill Wahl: The we have issues anywhere we have shoreline.
• 19:34
  Bill Wahl: The big thing with Lake Huron is in most areas, you don't have the same um dune and bluff type scenarios on that side that you do, just the way the geography and the topography is.
• 19:45
  Bill Wahl: Now, when the Great Lakes were high, we sp had a lot of issues along US 23 because there's some areas where the lake and the road are the next thing, yeah, the road is here, and the next thing over is the lake.
• 19:57
  Bill Wahl: And as those lake levels came up, we had to do a lot of work protecting the shorelines and armoring the shorelines to try to protect our road.
• 20:04
  Bill Wahl: So I think we just have different issues.
• 20:07
  Bill Wahl: Anytime you're near a lake edge, there's as water levels change, as things occur, there's just different sets of issues that come in.
• 20:15
  Bill Wahl: And um, there's definitely when you're in those dunesy type areas and high sandy bluffs, they bring a new set of challenges that you might not see in other areas of the well.
• 20:31
  Jeff Cranson: Michigan natives on the Lake Michigan side, not as much.
• 20:36
  Bill Wahl: Yeah, there's a lot of variety out there.
• 20:38
  Bill Wahl: And um, like I said, a lot of it, because you see the same challenges that we have up there as you get down by South Haven and Grand Haven, and any of the spots where we have these do the natural, natural landscape is you have dunes, and like I said earlier, the reality is that they move over time.
• 20:56
  Bill Wahl: Um, and that's always occurred when heavy weather is always gonna change how those want to be.
• 21:03
  Bill Wahl: Um, there's certain aspects of it that water wants to go downhill.
• 21:07
  Bill Wahl: We have, and we always have to be very careful and thoughtful as we're working on things to recognize that the water is gonna find the simplest way it can to go downhill.
• 21:16
  Bill Wahl: Um, and there's spots it's gone for millennia because that's where it wants to go.
• 21:22
  Bill Wahl: So sometimes it seems like an easy face, oh well, just put a culvert here or move this here.
• 21:26
  Bill Wahl: Well, now that water's going to a place that it's never wanted to go before, and what's that impact going to be downhill?
• 21:33
  Bill Wahl: It's gonna continue to go downhill, and that's one of the challenges we often have to have to discuss with property owners of we can't just move where the water goes without really understanding the unintended consequences of yes, it's no longer going on your property, but now it's going on your neighbor's property or it's going on someone else, and is it going to create a different set of problems for someone else who's that was never where the natural Water course flag to begin with.
• 22:01
  Jeff Cranson: Nice that in a complex world with so many difficult things to deal with, that some axioms hold true, and that's the water is going to go downhill.
• 22:09
  Bill Wahl: Yes.
• 22:10
  Jeff Cranson: So let's talk a little bit about uh the other challenges in the region that like you've mostly uh recovered from those storms and those other roads that I mentioned earlier, right?
• 22:21
  Bill Wahl: Yeah, so um we're actually in really good shape overall.
• 22:24
  Bill Wahl: Um so as the late June storms had a lot of damage along M-88 and M-66, there's a very narrow corridor.
• 22:32
  Bill Wahl: Um, those areas, our maintenance crews and our partners from the County Road Commissions did amazing work.
• 22:37
  Bill Wahl: It was mostly in Antrim, it was almost exclusively in Antrim County, but it wasn't just the Antrim County Road Commission.
• 22:44
  Bill Wahl: We had staff from Ross Cameron County and Mason County and Emmett County and all over working with our maintenance staff and our internal MDOT staff to get in there and just go like crazy for a couple weeks, rebuild the sections of roadway where the shoulders had all washed out, fix the culverts, um, and get that road restored really quickly.
• 23:04
  Bill Wahl: Um, within a handful of weeks, we had everything open.
• 23:07
  Bill Wahl: So that's been great.
• 23:08
  Bill Wahl: Long term, there's some spots where we know we're gonna need to replace some culverts, upsize them, just because as you mentioned, we're seeing heavier storms.
• 23:15
  Bill Wahl: The way we design things today is different than what it was 70, 80 years ago when a lot of these were built.
• 23:20
  Jeff Cranson: Is that segment of M-88 between Mancelona and Bel Air, basically?
• 23:24
  Bill Wahl: It's actually between Central Lake and Eastport.
• 23:26
  Bill Wahl: So it's the farthest north section of M-88.
• 23:30
  Bill Wahl: Um where it's basically running east-west.
• 23:32
  Bill Wahl: But another, I mean, it's important to the locals, but it's also another huge tourism route.
• 23:36
  Bill Wahl: It's another huge tourism route.
• 23:37
  Bill Wahl: There's not Torch Lake is on one side of it.
• 23:40
  Bill Wahl: Um, to this south, you have a bunch of lakes on the north.
• 23:43
  Bill Wahl: There's not a lot of alternate routes because there's some really huge lakes in the lake.
• 23:46
  Jeff Cranson: Yeah.
• 23:47
  Bill Wahl: Um, so it was really important to get that opened up as quickly as we could.
• 23:51
  Bill Wahl: Um, so we've done a lot a lot of stuff there.
• 23:53
  Bill Wahl: We do have some projects still going right now, restoring areas along US 31 where we had washouts that weren't as significant.
• 24:00
  Bill Wahl: They're important um and critical, but we're lower, we could still keep the road open, um, but we want to make sure they're fixed before this winter.
• 24:07
  Bill Wahl: So we've got some work going on there.
• 24:09
  Bill Wahl: Um, up towards the village of Conway, north on US -31, north of Potoski area.
• 24:15
  Bill Wahl: Um, Crooked Lake comes up right next to the edge of US- 31 there.
• 24:19
  Bill Wahl: And we had had to put massive sandbags all along the lake shore there because the water was just so high.
• 24:25
  Bill Wahl: The water's finally starting to recede enough there that we can get in and do some work on those shorelines to restore them, to armor them, protect them from future high water.
• 24:34
  Bill Wahl: We know it's coming, so we've been working with uh EGLE as well as the Army Corps to get all our permits in place so we can get in and put large stone along those shorelines to protect them from washing out the next time we get high water like that again.
• 24:49
  Bill Wahl: It's just finally getting to the point where the water was low enough that we could take the sandbags out.
• 24:53
  Bill Wahl: Yeah.
• 24:53
  Bill Wahl: Um, it was amazing how much water we had.
• 24:56
  Bill Wahl: So those are kind of the main spots we're still working.
• 24:59
  Bill Wahl: Um, the other spots, everything's restored.
• 25:01
  Bill Wahl: We do have spots like um we had a large culvert that washed out on M-68 over by Roger City area.
• 25:07
  Bill Wahl: That one we were able to get crews in really fast and get a replacement in in place on a temporary basis.
• 25:14
  Bill Wahl: We will have a project coming through sometime in the next year or to upgrade that to the size that it really needs to be long term.
• 25:23
  Bill Wahl: Um, we work with EGLE when these occur to get the road restored and try to make sure it's better than what it was, but that doesn't necessarily always mean that we can get all the pipes, get everything we need to do the perfect long-term design in that first three weeks.
• 25:39
  Bill Wahl: But it's more clearly definable for those than it is for M119.
• 25:44
  Jeff Cranson: Yeah, so so the future.
• 25:45
  Bill Wahl: Yeah, we could get in there, we could fix it, we could get it back open, which was really important.
• 25:49
  Bill Wahl: That's a major commercial route there um for large very large um business up on the M60 core, M68 quarter and on away.
• 25:57
  Bill Wahl: The Moran Ironworks is up there, and that's how they get their what they build to port.
• 26:01
  Bill Wahl: And with that not there, they there was stuff they couldn't ship.
• 26:05
  Bill Wahl: Yeah.
• 26:05
  Bill Wahl: Um, so it was really critical to us to get that restored as quickly as we could, knowing that without it, they had a boat that they built for DNR that they couldn't deliver because there was no way to get it there.
• 26:16
  Jeff Cranson: I didn't even know that.
• 26:17
  Jeff Cranson: Well, lastly, let's talk about I think one of the coolest projects in the North Region, and that's the first Diverging Diamond Interchange, really north of US -10.
• 26:26
  Jeff Cranson: There's only been a couple downstate, and this is going to be outside of Gaylord, very busy interchange, especially in the summer, but even in the winter with a lot of snowmobilers and skiers that get off of I-75 at M-32.
• 26:37
  Jeff Cranson: So, how's that project shaping up?
• 26:40
  Bill Wahl: So that's going well.
• 26:40
  Bill Wahl: That just kicked off right after Labor Day.
• 26:43
  Bill Wahl: We started work.
• 26:44
  Bill Wahl: The work going on this year is really preparatory for the next couple of years.
• 26:48
  Bill Wahl: The real meat of that project is going to occur during 2027, 2028.
• 26:54
  Bill Wahl: Um, so this fall, if you're up in the area, you are gonna see some work on the freeway.
• 26:58
  Bill Wahl: We're getting shoulders widened, building crossovers to allow us to replace bridges next year, but do it with minimal impact traffic.
• 27:06
  Bill Wahl: So that, and then you're also outside of Gaylord on the west side.
• 27:10
  Bill Wahl: We're doing some repaving work, adding some sidewalks in some areas that are ancillary to the main project, but things that are part of the job that really could have been done now, that could have been done at the end, and just from a contract standpoint and a schedule standpoint, made sense to get done now, but aren't really related to the main DDI.
• 27:27
  Jeff Cranson: Talk about the decision process that you would remake that interchange with a DDI in an otherwise, you know, Otsego County, very rural area.
• 27:35
  Jeff Cranson: So, what went into that?
• 27:37
  Bill Wahl: So that was a really involved process.
• 27:39
  Bill Wahl: So it first came out where we recognized that the bridges that cross M-32 at that area had reached the end of their life and they needed to be replaced.
• 27:48
  Bill Wahl: That was the driving factor behind it was we needed to replace those bridges.
• 27:52
  Bill Wahl: Um, so once we determined we needed to replace the bridges and we knew how much congestion would get in that area throughout the summer, throughout the whole year, we started asking the question of, well, if we're gonna have to replace the bridges anyways and do other upgrades, this is our moment to make any changes to how it functions.
• 28:10
  Bill Wahl: Because otherwise, once those bridges are built, the goals are there for 70 to 100 years.
• 28:14
  Bill Wahl: We don't want to have to mess with them at that point.
• 28:16
  Bill Wahl: So at that point, this is about five years ago, we started a very detailed public engagement process.
• 28:21
  Bill Wahl: We had a kind of a steering and support committee of local businesses and city officials and county officials to help discuss their goals, their what they were looking for, had multiple rounds of public meetings and input sessions to present a variety of options.
• 28:36
  Bill Wahl: The DDI wasn't the only one we looked at.
• 28:38
  Bill Wahl: We also looked at basically doing nothing, putting back what was there, doing just some minor improvements to how some of the ramps are fit together, and also looked at a single point urban interchange or a SPUI.
• 28:49
  Bill Wahl: We've got quite a few of those around different areas in the southern part of the state, and went through and presented all these different options, the pluses and minuses of each one's, um, where they worked well, where they didn't, and really built community consensus that as we came out of that, for the people that were engaged in those meetings, there's very strong consensus that the DDI was the best option long term given this what we have for traffic up there and what we expected.
• 29:15
  Bill Wahl: Yeah, so it was really a great process that really brought that engagement early on.
• 29:22
  Bill Wahl: And with any major change, there's gonna be detractors in the media, detractors on public.
• 29:28
  Bill Wahl: When you get on social media, you're gonna see the negative comments.
• 29:30
  Bill Wahl: But it's been interesting to see, too, how many people that are jumping in and saying, no, this is great.
• 29:38
  Bill Wahl: This is what like we were there, we've we listened to the presentations, we've driven these elsewhere.
• 29:43
  Bill Wahl: We can't wait for this to happen.
• 29:44
  Bill Wahl: And you're you're never gonna get every person on social media to be in love with your decision, as we all are aware.
• 29:51
  Jeff Cranson: But to see the community support in terms of axioms, that's right up there with water flowing down.
• 29:56
  Bill Wahl: Yeah.
• 29:57
  Bill Wahl: Um, but to see that community support and see oftentimes it's not someone from the department or our social media team speaking out and saying why the decision made, it's members of the public.
• 30:06
  Bill Wahl: It's the community that's coming back and saying, no.
• 30:09
  Jeff Cranson: That often happens.
• 30:10
  Jeff Cranson: Yeah.
• 30:11
  Bill Wahl: These are great.
• 30:11
  Bill Wahl: This is we were involved, we heard it.
• 30:13
  Bill Wahl: This is a great decision for the community.
• 30:16
  Bill Wahl: I that's really nice to see.
• 30:17
  Bill Wahl: Um, it's gonna be a challenging couple of years because not only are we rebuild really rebuilding the bridges, rebuilding the interchange, we're also rebuilding a good chunk of M-32 for probably about a mile from the major main intersections east and west of the interchange, is all getting fully reconstructed while we're there.
• 30:34
  Bill Wahl: Heavy commercial corridor.
• 30:35
  Bill Wahl: It's a very heavy commercial corridor, very heavy tourism corridor.
• 30:39
  Bill Wahl: It's a very heavily trafficked corridor.
• 30:41
  Bill Wahl: So um we know there's gonna be a lot of impacts and challenges over the next two years as we're doing that.
• 30:46
  Jeff Cranson: But and yet you took this job.
• 30:48
  Bill Wahl: And yet I took the job.
• 30:50
  Bill Wahl: But I have great confidence our construction staff is working really closely with the city and the county and the local police departments to try to figure out, make sure we're doing all we can to keep things as smooth as we can while you go through the challenge.
• 31:04
  Bill Wahl: That anytime you do major construction, it's a challenge and it's an impact.
• 31:07
  Bill Wahl: We can't avoid it, but we're working all we can to try to minimize it and keep things as smooth as we can and make sure people are aware of what the impacts are going to be and when they can expect it.
• 31:18
  Jeff Cranson: Yeah.
• 31:18
  Jeff Cranson: Well, thank you, Bill.
• 31:19
  Jeff Cranson: We covered a lot of ground.
• 31:20
  Jeff Cranson: I appreciate it, and I know we'll be talking more, especially about M-119, the tunnel of trees, um, going into next year and seeing what we find out from an independent study and review, and uh there'll be a lot to think about.
• 31:33
  Jeff Cranson: So thanks again.
• 31:34
  Jeff Cranson: No problem.
• 31:35
  Jeff Cranson: Thank you.
• 31:35
  Jeff Cranson: I'd like to thank you once more for tuning in to Talking Michigan Transportation.
• 31:39
  Jeff Cranson: You can find show notes and more on Apple Podcasts or BuzzSprout.
• 31:43
  Jeff Cranson: I also want to acknowledge the talented people who help make this a reality each week, starting with Randy Debler, who skillfully edits the audio, Jesse Ball, who proofs the content, and Jacke Salinas, who posts the podcast to various platforms and transcribes the audio to make it accessible to all.