The Ile Camera
A Heritage Newspaper
Weekly Publication
Changes improve flow
Residents, officials continue discussions
By Lena Khzouz, The Ile Camera
PUBLISHED: May 11, 2007
Traffic is flowing smoother at the toll bridge this week, and Grosse Ile Township officials continue to make efforts to communicate with residents.
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The free bridge closed for repairs last Wednesday morning and is expected to be closed through Dec. 15. The only other roadway to get onto the island is the Grosse Ile Toll Bridge.
Last Wednesday, vehicles were backed up for miles while drivers waited to pay the toll. Drivers waited from 30 minutes to two hours to cross the bridge.
The wait led to fights due to road rage and to individuals refusing to pay tolls.
Government officials from Grosse Ile Township, Wayne County, Riverview, Wyandotte and Trenton and members of the GIBC worked together in an "emergency" mode after that incident in order to settle the problem.
The main change is that traffic signals at the Meridian-Bridge and Bridge-West Jefferson intersections have been rewired, Police Chief William Barron said.
Originally, Wayne County had set up the signals to favor Meridian Road in the morning and Bridge Road at night. That's the opposite of the way traffic flows during the morning and evening rush hours, so that has been reversed and corrected.
Now, morning traffic will favor Meridian Road with a 50-second cycle while Bridge has a 28-second cycle. In the evenings, Bridge Road will be favored with 50 seconds and Meridian will have 28 seconds, Barron said.
Attendants working at the bridge will also direct traffic during busy hours.
Currently, without any traffic backups, the bridge has one toll lane and one bridge pass lane for people coming onto the island and one toll lane and one bridge pass lane for people coming off the island.
When necessary, GIBC employees will open up the speed pass lane to additional drivers in order to help clear traffic, Barron said.
During heavy traffic periods, attendants will redirect traffic into empty toll booth lanes, and additional attendants will be used to help expedite traffic, he said.
"They'll regulate and monitor that by traffic flow," Barron said.
Even further if necessary, for about 10 to 15 minutes, all the traffic on the bridge will be eastbound, while officers hold westbound drivers on the island for that amount of time.
"We don't anticipate having to do that though," Barron said, adding that everything has been working well in the past several days.
Barron and Detective Lt. Joseph Porcarelli said the hold will only be 10 to 15 minutes, and the Riverview and Grosse Ile police departments will implement this action only on an "as needed basis."
Having 50 people wait for 10 to 15 minutes is better than having 300 to 400 people wait for an hour, Barron said.
Traffic has not been backing up on Grosse Ile as much as on West Jefferson because the GIBC has changed the way it takes tolls.
When the free bridge was open, drivers paid $1.50 to get onto the island and $1.50 to get off. Now, drivers pay $3 to get onto the island and get off without paying.
Several residents said that on that first day of the bridge closure, they did not think they should have been charged the "roundtrip" toll of $3 because they had used the free bridge when they left home in the morning.
Greg Karmazin, spokesman for the Grosse Ile Bridge Co., said they had to start somewhere regarding charging the roundtrip toll.
He said it would have been very difficult to gauge who had used the free bridge in the morning.
Karmazin said that was the same thing they did when the free bridge closed for a short time in 2004 and in 1979; they started the round-trip fare collection once the county bridge was closed for the day.
"It was impossible to treat everybody exactly the same (on May 2)," he said. "We had to start the roundtrip fare at some point."
He said that this was the most feasible way to do so.
While some people who crossed the bridge in the morning may have paid $1.50 extra, others actually received a bonus trip if they used the free bridge to enter the island and later used the toll bridge to get off the island.
The attendants had no way of knowing who crossed which bridge in the morning, and it all evens out in the end, he said.
Regardless, the GIBC is planning to take no tolls on the day after the free bridge reopens, he said.
Therefore, it should all balance out, he said.
Wednesday afternoon, Supervisor Kurt Kobiljak said that now that they have a plan for major backups, they would continue to tweak the normal daily traffic to expedite the flow.
Additional signage may be placed at the Meridian-Bridge and Meridian-West Jefferson intersections as well.
To keep residents informed about the changes and to receive feedback, township leaders held a special meeting Monday.
During the meeting, Barron, Porcarelli and Fire Chief Duncan Murdock explained the changes in the traffic pattern, discussed the problems that occurred and urged drivers to be courteous.
Residents had a variety of things to say.
The Grosse Ile Bridge Co. has been urging residents to obtain bridge passes, which offer discounted rates to cross the bridge and allow for a speedier passage.
Both at the meeting and throughout the past two weeks, however, residents have said that representatives of the GIBC told them that it would take four to six weeks for a bridge pass to be sent to them.
Resident Richard Nielsen asked why the GIBC is saying four to six weeks if it's that important to have the bridge passes.
Residents said that the GIBC should have been prepared with a stock.
Karmazin said later this week that they had contacted the manufacturer of the electronic toll collection devices.
They asked for a supply of 4,000 additional bridge pass tags as soon as possible, and they have been told that they would receive them no later than the end of May.
Karmazin said they believe that will take care of any shortfall and provide enough reserve to take care of the demand.
The bridge company did everything possible to promote the purchase of bridge passes far before the closure, Karmazin said.
They even established a donation program with the Grosse Ile Youth Recreation Association.
In that program, GIYRA helped promote the sale of the passes, and for every pass that was purchased from Sept. 1 through Dec. 1 of last year, $5 was donated to GIYRA.
Only 103 passes came in, Karmazin said, resulting in a donation of $515 to GIYRA.
Unfortunately, now they are trying to process about 2,000 bridge pass applications that have come in recently, he said.
If those 2,000 had come in during the fall, the bridge company would have written a check to GIYRA for $10,000, he said.
"It's really tragic that we didn't get a higher response last fall to that donation program because we would have been able to make a fantastic donation to GIYRA," Karmazin said.
Regarding applications that were received in the days prior to the closure, he said they are processing those as fast as possible. Five employees are now processing those tags, he said.
Processing the applications is a time-consuming process because it requires such things as entering data and verifying credit card information, he said.
One of the serious problems with the bridge pass application processing is that their office space is limited. Therefore, they have limitations regarding the number of people they can hire, Karmazin said.
At the Monday meeting, Karmazin apologized about the inconvenience and thanked those who assisted that day.
Kobiljak said that he has received and responded to hundreds of e-mails from concerned residents.
He said that, in relation to his conversations with residents, this is a "pretty sensitive" time.
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