Detours, delays for over a year - Okemos Road Bridge still under construction

LANSING, Mich. (WILX) - After more than a year since its construction began, the Okemos Road Camel Back Bridge project in Meridian Township is still underway. Drivers can only travel northbound on the bridge while those heading southbound have to make detours.

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The Ingham County Road Department’s managing director Kelly Jones said in a statement sent to News 10 that “the bridge will likely be opened in the next week or so.”

People living in the area are hopeful the project will end sooner than later.

“It’s getting closer. It’s getting closer to completion, I’m excited about that,” said Penny Swartz.

Swartz lives in the Indian Hills neighborhood and said that drivers who need to use the Okemos bridge to travel southbound are making detours and cutting through her neighborhood. She said it has been a big issue.

Related: Meridian Township construction already causing headaches for neighbors

“The bridge needed to be done – there is absolutely no question in my mind about that,” Swartz said. “And I originally had hoped that people cutting through the neighborhood, because they are public streets, would have been a bit more respectful of the fact that this is a neighborhood.”

Signs like “no thru traffic” and “drive slow” are posted throughout the neighborhood, but drivers making detours don’t acknowledge them.

“I’ve been very disappointed at the kind of disrespect that the neighborhood has been subjected to,” Swartz said. “And what we have observed in the last year is that people will slow down to go over the speed bumps and then they’ll just accelerate like crazy until the next one.”

Meridian Township officials had no comment.

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