Construction. It’s a driver’s worst nightmare. For residents near Virginia Avenue and Abbot Road, it’s a nightmare that won’t end for quite sometime.
Virginia Avenue has been undergoing a housing makeover for some time. The project was supposed to be completed by next week.
Now the city says it won’t be done until next year. To add to the mayhem, the original budget for the Virginia Avenue project was $3.3 million, and the city has overspent by millions of dollars.
Abbot Road is one of the main arteries to several large apartment complexes. Construction to widen the road began in early January and possibly won’t be finished until mid-October.
This has become a daily hindrance for residents in these areas, especially students commuting to and from campus throughout the day.
Construction is necessary, but the city needs to consider who travels these roads — in this community, a majority of these drivers and commuters are students.
The city should have planned the construction so that it would inflict as little inconvenience to students’ lives as possible. Instead, it employed construction plans that impede the residents who bring a majority of the business to East Lansing — students.
It’s understandable that roads and living areas need to be improved, but the question is why didn’t they outline a better plan to execute it?
East Lansing’s reason for failing to meet the original deadline for the Virginia Avenue project is that it ran into some “challenges.”
That’s no excuse.
Every project has challenges. Anyone who plans a major project should keep in mind that they may face difficulties and should plan ahead for them. If the city had done this, students may not be in this predicament.
As for the work being done on Abbot Road, the road itself has been in bad shape long before several hundred apartments were built, adding 8,000 more commuters a day.
The city knew this and waited until after rental units were built and occupied — by many frustrated drivers, no doubt — to fix the road.
On the flip side, MSU has had numerous construction projects within the past several years, and managed to get the jobs done within a reasonable amount of time and with limited interference to students’ lives — mainly by completing them during the summer. East Lansing doesn’t seem to care whether it disrupts students’ routines, and it should.
Perhaps East Lansing could take a few pointers from MSU, or better yet, collaborate with the university to coordinate projects for when students are commuting the least.
There is a time and place for everything.
Bottom line, East Lansing should have planned better and planned ahead because students are residents too.
Support student media! Please consider donating to The State News and help fund the future of journalism.
