Ferndale seeks to address parking issues on new Woodward Avenue

FERNDALE — The majority of the Woodward Avenue streetscape project has been completed since the fall, but some incomplete elements have led to parking issues on the street.

The project from the Michigan Department of Transportation along Woodward Avenue between Eight Mile Road and Interstate 696 has included bike lanes in the right lane of both northbound and southbound Woodward, sidewalk upgrades, drainage improvements, resurfacing and signal work.

Since work was completed for the winter season, there have been issues reported to the city regarding people parking their vehicles in the bike lanes on Woodward.

According to City Manager Joe Gacioch, the state plans to come back to the project to complete the unfinished elements when the weather is warm, such as finishing the paint, which will help make distinctions on the road between the bike lanes and the vehicle lanes better.

“There are hundreds of delineators that are not installed. And those delineators will be giving you a very clear distinction between what’s a bike lane, what’s a parking space and what’s the vehicle lane,” he said. “So those delineators, they could not install the majority of them because the temperature has dropped too quickly. And you can’t install the delineators until you paint, and you can’t paint at this temperature. So the project just kind of ran out of time. Unfortunately, they couldn’t finish what we would have liked to finish.”

Downtown Development Authority Executive Director Jennie Beeker said that Woodward is now different and that it will take people time to get used to the changes.

“It’s a transition that people are experiencing between what Woodward used to be and what Woodward is now,” she said. “Some folks who might not even be from the area, if you’re coming in from out of town, you might not have any idea that (the updates have) happened.”

“We’re also working with increasing visuals, whether it’s signage, road striping and eventually in the spring, we finish putting in the delineators. That’s gonna help a lot to show people … you can’t park here, or here’s where you can park, because we’re still seeing some folks who, yeah, they’re expecting (where) a space used to be, it might not be there anymore,” Beeker said.

One of the bigger issues with the road, Gacioch said, is with areas called “dead zones,” or spaces that aren’t clearly marked, which the state came back recently to clean up.

“They were confusing to people because people didn’t know, ‘Could I park there? Can I not park there?’ So the state did that … and that has substantially helped our situation. We’re seeing nobody park in these dead zones where people were parking.”

“The state did that and that has curbed a lot of the illegal parking that we saw,” he continued. “There’s still people that are either getting used to the systems or may just choose to park in the bike lane, and I find that unacceptable. We actually had a case over the holiday. I was sent the video of 18 double-parked cars along Woodward, where they were parking in the bike lane. And next to those cars, there were people parking in the actual parking spaces, which results in a double-parking situation. That’s unacceptable. That’s a safety issue for me.”

The city did initiate a grace period in December to allow drivers to have time to adapt, but the period is now over and Ferndale now is issuing $50 tickets to people for flagrantly parking in the bike lane.

“In December, we issued warning tickets and we were tracking license plates for those warning tickets. So, if you were issued multiple warning tickets, that means you should know better,” Gacioch said.

Beeker also stated that they are working on communication materials to help businesses engage with their customers on the new parking.

“I think if some of the shops, like if they’ve got a customer who’s come in, the customer is going to ask that business person about the parking and we need to equip them with the answers on how to explain, like, where parking is allowed, where alternate parking is and help enforce this, because they’re the ones who are really on the front lines,” she said. “We want to make sure that they’ve got a clear understanding and clear communications on how they can explain parking to their customers.”