It was a busy time of year for Howard Ballein the day he received the phone call that changed his life.

It was a Saturday afternoon in September 1974, and the owner of the Student Book Store was hard at work. The female voice calling over the phone urged Ballein to go to the corner of Saginaw Street and Hitching Post Road.

"Your wife needs you," the voice said.

Fearing that his wife, Viv, had been hurt, Ballein rushed to the area.

Although there was no sign of his wife, he did see his son's mangled bike strewn in pieces across the street. An onlooker told Ballein there had been an accident.

By the time Ballein reached the hospital, his son, Jeff, was dead.

The 14-year-old boy, a freshman at East Lansing High School, was on his way downtown to buy a present for his mother's birthday when he was struck by a car and killed while crossing Saginaw Street on his bike.

The driver had been going faster than the 45-mph speed limit, and from the angle Jeff first entered the street, he never saw the car.

"We were just in shock," Ballein said, still choked up three decades after the incident. "These are the memories we have about speed."

In the nine years following Jeff's death, a rash of other deaths involving vehicles prompted East Lansing residents to take a stand against the state about Saginaw Street's speed limits.

A similar struggle also is being played out in recent weeks, as residents grapple with the Michigan State Police and Michigan Department of Transportation about proposed speed increases on Saginaw Street and Grand River Avenue.

Challenging the system

When East Lansing resident Carol Horowitz moved to East Lansing in 1978, Jeff Ballein already had been killed. Jeff's classmate Amy Gochberg also had been killed on Saginaw Street just months later.

But when back-to-back deaths occurred on Saginaw Street over two days in October 1983, Horowitz decided to challenge the system.

"This was a terrible thing," said Horowitz, who lived in a neighborhood near the thoroughfare. "The cars were going like a bat out of hell, and that's where the accidents were."

In late 1983, Horowitz organized Safety on Saginaw in order to unify an opinion that she heard so often: Speed limits on Saginaw Street were too fast.

The group began a long debate with state officials about the proper speeds for the street, which eventually culminated in a meeting at East Lansing High School that brought together state and city officials and hundreds of residents, Horowitz said. Later, the Michigan State Police announced the limits would be decreased to 35 mph.

But earlier this year, in February, city officials were dumbfounded when state officials announced the road would once again be set at 45 mph and Grand River Avenue would be changed to 35 mph in certain sections, despite never consulting local police or the city.

Residents, city officials and staff, business owners, local police and Rep. Gretchen Whitmer, D-East Lansing, all expressed concern with the change, citing the street's troubled past and current problems with speed.

"Here are streets that we have to patrol and entry points into our neighborhoods," East Lansing Mayor Pro Tem Sam Singh said. "It's difficult when the city itself has no say in these decisions."

The science of speed

For Sgt. Gary Megge, of the Michigan State Police Traffic Crash Reconstruction Unit, the controversy is just part of the job. In the past five years, Megge has made hundreds of recommendations to change speed limits in nine Michigan counties.

In determining the proposed speeds for Saginaw Street and Grand River Avenue, Megge used the nationally recognized 85th-percentile method, which sets the ideal speed limit according to the speed at or below which 85 percent of drivers travel.

Megge argues that on Saginaw Street, drivers feel comfortable going faster than posted speed limits. The varying speeds between the few cars driving at the posted limits and the majority of cars, which are driving at the 85th-percentile speed, could actually be dangerous, Megge said.

He said by increasing the limit, the drivers who stick to the signs would drive at the same speed as those who are driving the 85th-percentile speed - about 45 mph.

"We could take the signs down and people would drive the same," Megge said, arguing that speed studies on Saginaw Street have showed the same 85th-percentile speed for more than 30 years. "The public perception is that things are going to change, but that just isn't right."

Up in the air

East Lansing Mayor Mark Meadows has met privately with Michigan Department of Transportation and Michigan State Police officials, but no compromise has been made yet.

Ballein said despite what state officials say, he is leery about increasing speeds on the East Lansing roadways, fearing the repeat of history.

"I go down Saginaw every morning just to make myself think about what happened," Ballein said. "Time only helps, but nothing ever heals this.

"It's something a father or mother never forgets."

Don Jordan can be reached at jordand3@msu.edu.