Traffic chaos: Lansing homeowners livid with detoured drivers

LANSING, Mich. (WILX) - A group of Lansing residents is livid because drivers are speeding through their neighborhoods.

“From the moment that they blocked it off there, it’s just been traffic chaos in here, for a lack of better words,” homeowner Shawn Dyer said. “It’s usually a really really quiet residential neighborhood. Cars driving as anywhere as from 10 mph to 50-or-60mph through the neighborhood.”

Dyer said he has had it with the construction on the Grand River Avenue stretches of the I-96 business loop which began almost 2 weeks ago. Since construction began, Dyer placed speed limit signs in the Tecumseh-River neighborhood in an effort to slow people down.

He said speeding isn’t the only problem: traffic has increased as well.

“Right now, it’s a steady stream of traffic, coming through here,” he said. “This was not commonplace before. You’d be lucky to see what we’ve seen in the past five minutes, we’d be lucky to see what we saw in a period of an hour or two.”

Neighbors told News 10 that the speed limit signs Shawn placed outside his home have helped. But, children in the neighborhood said they still can’t play on the street like they used to.

“We can’t ride our bikes in the road or anything, they keep honking at us,” said 10-year-old Cameron Hammond.

“Oh my god, these people get on my nerves because it’s they just flying through here,” added DeLon Vaughn. “One almost hit me!”

In a neighborhood where there are no sidewalks, children are already limited in what they can do. Rose Jangmi Cooper started to drive her motorcycle around with a speed limit sign attached.

She said more speed limit and detour signs are needed.

“The frustration is not specifically at the people, it’s at the city and MDOT (Michigan Department of Transportation) who did not plan this construction well,” said Cooper. “Because people get lost, they don’t know where they are, they’re going fast because they’re frustrated.”

News 10 checked on The Grand River project with MDOT. It said one lane should be open, in each direction, by Tuesday morning. Crews have been replacing a culvert near Delta River Drive.

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