New apartment complexes on Chandler and Abbott roads have East Lansing city officials and residents worried about increased traffic.
Abbott Road becomes Chandler Road at the Clinton County Line north of Lake Lansing Road.
Resident Terry Linger said he avoids the road as much as possible because of its poor condition.
The two-lane road is under the control of the county and can’t support the amount of traffic renters going back and forth from work and MSU create, he said.
“Most of them will be going during rush hour,” he said. “They will have to get to Lake Lansing Road or Saginaw when they are going to work and Abbott Road when they are going to school. It should be very interesting.”
The majority of the traffic will be coming into East Lansing instead of going north into Bath Township, East Lansing Councilmember Bill Sharp said.
“How many people are going to go north?” he said. “Most of these kids are going to want to drive into town.”
Ingham and Clinton counties are debating widening the road, but nothing has been made official yet.
“It’s going to be astronomical what it is going to cost,” he said.
But the complexes are trying to decrease the traffic by working with public transportation outlets to lower the number of students using their cars.
Traffic will increase but it won’t be a problem for the city, said Jeff Coppersmith, leasing specialist for Melrose Place Apartments, 16789 Chandler Road.
“It’s not like there has ever been a three- or four-car pileup,” he said. “It will definitely increase, but I don’t think it will be a huge change.”
To help reduce the traffic, the complex is providing bus passes for the Capital Area Transportation Authority.
CATA is working to develop a bus route that will run every 10 minutes at peak times, director of strategic management Debbie Alexander said.
“They are heavily supporting it and the residents are using it as an option,” she said.
A bus travels to Capstone Commons, 2501 Abbott Road, every 20 minutes. But while apartment owners hope to lessen the traffic, city officials are working to find out how much it will change.
More than 6,000 vehicles travel each day just north of Lake Lansing Road, city engineering administrator John Matuszak said.
It’s not known how the problems will be fixed, he said.
“We haven’t gotten that far, but certainly people living there and most of them being students, I know they are going to have to travel to campus,” he said.
