Macomb County road projects announced for 2025

MOUNT CLEMENS — As the Macomb County Department of Roads begins to fill its trucks with winter salt, department and county leadership announced a slate of construction projects for the coming year.

Unveiled at the roads department’s Mount Clemens headquarters on Nov. 7 were 34 projects totaling nearly $90 million pending approval by the Macomb County Board of Commissioners.

Projects noted by Macomb County Department of Roads Director Bryan Santo include the over $15 million reconstruction and rehabilitation of 10 Mile Road between Ryan Road and Lorraine Avenue in Center Line and Warren, the $8.3 million reconstruction of Garfield Road between 14 and 15 Mile roads in Fraser and the $16.5 million reconstruction and widening of Romeo Plank Road between 21-and-a-half and 23 Mile roads in Macomb Township.

Santo gave special notice to the department’s bridge program, which is planned to tackle 10 projects next year.

“Through strategic investments capitalizing on state funding programs, we’ve made significant progress on our bridges,” Santo said. “As of today, out of the 225 bridges we have, we have 201, or 89%, that are in ‘good’ and ‘fair’ condition. We have 13, or 6%, that are in ‘poor’ condition. We have 11, or 5%, that are in ‘critical’ or ‘serious’ condition. Of the 11 ‘critical’ or ‘serious’ bridges under our jurisdiction, we have secured funding to replace five of those within the next two years. As far as the 13 ‘poor’ rated bridges, we have funding to replace or rehabilitate five of those within the next two years, also.”

Serving as both an update on the state of the township’s roads and an announcement of the 2025 projects, Santo’s remarks highlighted 2024 projects like the completion of the Innovate Mound reconstruction through Sterling Heights and Warren and the Garfield Road extension between 23 and 25 Mile roads in Macomb Township.

Deputy Macomb County Executive John Paul Rea addressed how the county decides which road projects it will take on.

“Our team is programming hundreds of millions of dollars annually in every corner of Macomb County, and this is not done in a bubble,” Rea said. “This is done in a dynamic ecosystem which engages our community leaders, local neighborhood associations, road builders, state transportation experts and what it has yielded is seven-dozen primary local road projects that are currently being facilitated right now.”

Where county officials spent much of their focus, particularly in the beginning of the conference, was to call upon Michigan legislators to revise the state’s roadway funding mechanisms.

“Right now, the biggest challenge we are having is with funding and it will continue to be the challenge,” Macomb County Executive Mark Hackel said. “There isn’t a road or a bridge we can’t fix if we have the funding. I’ve always said this, and I continue to say it: It’s not about fixing the damn roads or fixing the damn bridges, it’s about fixing the damn funding.”

Hackel’s complaints over road funding point at Public Act 51, which established the formula of allocating funds collected by the state through registration fees and fuel taxes to county road departments, as well as the limited funding sources for roads. A list of possible ways to generate more funds — such as creating an electric vehicle-specific tax, establishing toll roads or implementing road usage charges — was included in Hackel’s segment of the presentation, but the county executive noted the issue could only be handled by the Michigan Legislature.

“Until such time where the Legislature picks one of these (funding solutions) or multiple or a combination of them, we’re going to be stuck with this deficiency in funding and we’ll get further and further behind when it comes to our roads,” Hackel said.

The county is pursuing federal funding for projects alongside using its state allocations. Several projects targeted for potential federal funds include Mound Road south of Interstate 696 and the bridge along 16 Mile Road that crosses railways between Van Dyke Avenue and Mound Road.

Rea claimed that with the current funding, it would take 30 years to fix roads in their current state and that there is a $2.5 billion deficiency between what the county is getting and what it would need to address countywide road projects.

For more information about Macomb County roads, visit www.macombgov.org/departments/department-roads.