You know I must have gotten off at that State st exit 2,000 times and never turned left. Always right going to either Briarwood Mall, the Football/basketball game or further up to the University of Michigan. Although when I ran the tutoring center at Eastern I used to go across the bridge on the #6 bus. Which went to the Members on Carpenter rd and I could get the #4 or 5 to EMU.
Great video! How do you get all the guide signs for your videos? Some of them I see are taken directly from the video feed but others look like you made them yourself
Thank you! For the "fake" signs I use a mixture of SignCAD for Michigan signs and Word/Photoshop for everywhere else. MDOT has example SignCAD files for freeway guide signs that are available to the public and are easy to modify. Thanks for watching!
That bulldozer track at the 19:43 mark is actually a safety feature to alert a driver they are headed off the road. Very effective on drivers falling asleep. The rumble is sure to get your attention. Great video.
Thanks for the update! I got to see the bridge from both sides back in July, but progress has been quick! Hope to take a ride on it, if it opens by next fall 2025. Also nice seeing a civil highway design perspective on it! I work in a section of transportation engineering, but much more on the urbanism side of things.
I too am stoked for the opening of this bridge. It's a once in a life time project! I'm still a pretty new civil engineer yet but it's nice to work in a field of our interests 🙂
My grandfather worked on the freeway south of the bridge on the segment going from Exits 313 to 337. That section opened in November 1960 and allowed motorists to bypass the city of Cheboygan on US-27 (now M-27). I remember he said something about doing sod work? I assume for the roadway. He also has some 2x2 Kodak color slides of the actual Mackinac Bridge under construction taken around 1956 I would guess. They have never been seen before. However, he didn't work on the actual bridge and I'm not sure who took the photos. They were just in his closet and I found the boxes containing family photos and the carousel projector. Also, the bridge at 4:58 (Rondo Road) is a rare example of a bridge with a unique railing that the MSHD (now MDOT) was using on their overpasses from 1960-1962, when I-75 was built between Grayling and Mackinaw City. Most of the bridges that had this type of railing have had the railing replaced by an ugly Jersey barrier, but this is one of the only examples in Michigan/Ontario where it has never been replaced. 11:00 and 11:55 are examples of the famous "R4" railing, which was used in Michigan for many years until the early 1960s. However, these examples have had modern Armco guardrails bolted on for safety purposes, but the original railing is still there. Many of these railings have been replaced with Jersey barriers like I mentioned earlier, which is sad. I think it's because they aren't up to freeway specifications anymore and they aren't "safe" enough.
Thanks for the brief history on this section! The section of concrete pavement just north of Exit 326 still looks like the original pavement. I agree with your take on the new bridge railings MDOT is putting up now. The guardrail placed in front of the older R4 and open parapet railing is known as a thrie beam retrofit. I think the concern with the older railings was probably due to the brush block at the base of the railing being a vaulting hazard. I do think the new MDOT bridge railing standard is quite ugly - especially the new Type 6 and Type 7 ones. They look more like a trapezoid now instead of the older jersey barrier look. I also think we should taper the concrete railing down at the ends to match the guardrail bridge anchorage height too like other states do. The aesthetic parapet tube bridge railing is the only bridge railing I like in the current MDOT bridge standards, but these railings are usually only used when there's sidewalk in conjunction with the railing. Anyways, thanks for the comment and I do think MDOT should be preserving more of these older railings.
Can't wait to drive on it once it's fully opened. I went down there in November and snapped some photos on my 1999 Sony Mavica camera. I've surprised it's taken so long to build, the Mackinac Bridge was completed quicker back in the 1950s.
It appears that the project is a bit behind schedule and over budget but it'll be a good day once we're able to drive directly from I-75 to the 401 over in Ontario. Hopefully the tolls will be cheaper than the tunnel and the Ambassador Bridge.
Great work on the video, it was nice to see such detailed progress on the US side of the Gordie Howe Bridge. I've never seen pre-cast concrete piles used for bridges in Ontario either. Typically bridge pies here are steel H-beams. I suppose it must be a thing somewhere here though.
Ah I probably shouldn't have assumed it was an Ontario thing lol. But same here in Michigan though, we usually just see steel H piles or cast in place pipe piles. There were issues with the ends of the precast concrete piles being damaged from the hydraulic hammer and probably won't be used too often in Michigan again. Thanks for the comment!
Hey Maggie great to hear from you and thanks! I never knew what those were for either prior to working in construction so now I feel like I need to spread the word (always thought those were extra construction decoration myself lol)
Great video. It was nice to see the HOV lane markings finally installed on I-75, and it was great to see an update on both the I-696 resurfacing project, as well as the flex lanes on I-696. I'm happy to see that they actually fully reconstructed I-96 with new concrete pavement as part of their installation. Has the work on I-275 been completed yet?
Thank you! Still not used to seeing concrete on I-96 but it's a change I can appreciate. I haven't been out on I-275 in a few months but I think they got traffic switched back to both bounds now with some landscaping work left.
As you take Maryland Route 414 towards Oxon Hill, Maryland, which is a city that lies in Southern Prince George's County, Maryland, did you know that there's a Checkers by Rivertowne Commons Shopping Center, which is currently located on Oxon Hill Road in Oxon Hill, Maryland?
Nice work on the video. I hadn't seen the reconfigured interchange between I-196 and I-96 at the East Beltline since it was reconstructed. Definitely an improvement, although it kind of still sucks that I-196 is reduced to a single lane before the merge.
The Country Dairy (at time mark 1:36) I was hooked on their Boston Coolers when I had moved back to St Clair Shores in 1976 living on Trombly at the Jefferson end. The Shish Kabob place at 9 Mile & Harper (time mark 2:08) was a Red Barn fast food restaurant my grandfather back in 1969 would take me & my brother thru their drive thru for milk shakes, I ended up working for Red Barn in Maryland when I was in High School.
Thanks! Yeah despite all the construction complications I think it's pretty unique to Michigan. Not many precast segmental bridges in the state I can think of. This bridge is probably one of the reasons why
Great video! You had commented on my community post a while back about getting summer internships. Well, this summer I'm working with the bridge team at MDOT Metro Region. It's neat to be at the same organization as a fellow road videographer!
Michigan's traffic signals are obsolete! Old-fashioned design with span wires, signal heads not centered with the lanes, no reflectorized backplates, etc.
Your video and camera quality is really impressive! The DVP is such a nice drive, had the chance to head down during the daylight back in October, smooth sailing until the Gardiner, but it’s very rare to have a smooth journey unless it’s the middle of night.
Same here, I guess if I can't live there then I'm only 4 hours away to visit frequently. I'm sure Metro Detroit's depressed freeways were a engineering marvel at the time when they were built. Just years of neglect gives the freeways a "ghetto" look in my opinion. Not to mention that MDOT only budgets 2 mowings/year for all the slopes. If the city doesn't step in for some of the landscaping costs then the surrounding freeway ROW really begins to fall apart...
@@EdwardW98 I heard that the I94 widening and modernization project through Detroit will be replacing the grassy slopes with a concrete retaining wall on that stretch.
Great work on the video. I always enjoy watching content from the GTA from non residents. You did well not to encounter any congestion on the Parkway or the Gardiner. Too bad you didn't catch a subway train on the Prince Edward Viaduct. I always love catching something like that when I film a road.
Thank you! I feel exactly the same when driving underneath a railroad, especially now that it seems trains are crossing more and more infrequently in my area. I guess I used up all my luck on catching the CN/Maritime-Ontario train instead.
Pretty weird that Grand Rapids seems to have more… comprehensive of transit than most of Greater Detroit. No less than two BRT routes (albeit BRT Lite or what I call “half-assed BRT”) as things presently stand with potential for more as the years go on? By way of comparison, Greater Detroit is significantly larger than Greater St. Louis, Cleveland and other places that have pretty sizable transit options (to American standards) while the D just has the People Mover & relatively new Q Line Streetcar only within the core. I reckon a small number of weekend tourists use the Wolverine Amtrak between the burbs & midtown but I certainly wouldn’t call that a commuter rail even though the final miles north of Detroit appears clearly set up for just such a function…
The People Mover and the Q Line are really more of a gimmick more than anything. Until they extend the Q Line up to Royal Oak or even just Ferndale would make the Q Line 10x more useful. I like to think that Detroit will never have a successful transit system unless GM and Ford has some money to make. The "Cavnue" pilot is supposed to be the latest and greatest form of transportation the city is going to be adopting. Dedicated lanes for connected and autonomous vehicles (CAV). I can see this succeeding in the city of Detroit due to Ford and GM being major stakeholders in this project. Until the city is able to get funding from other sources, I'm not too sure effective transit will really exist in the city. Thanks for the comment.
