Township safety path routes set for 2019

Three safety path routes were added to the existing paths in Bloomfield Township for 2019, along with a proposed crosswalk and a maintenance budget for 2019, and unanimously approved by the township board of trustees at their meeting on Monday, October 22.

Olivia Olsztyn-Budry, engineering and environmental services director, explained, “This is the time of the year we present our plans, because over the winter is when the designs happen so we can be ready in the spring.”

Three routes were recommended to be added to continue the township safety path program for 2019, as identified in the safety math Master plan, she said. The first proposed path is on the east side of Telegraph Road, from Lincoln to Maple, “because we completed Lincoln this year,” she said, for a cost of $946,000.

Also proposed is Cranbrook Road, from Middlebury Lane to Westbourne Drive, where it will connect two existing paths, for $148,000.

The east side of Woodward Avenue would receive a safety path, from Oak Street to Manor Road. “In 2017, the township extended safety path on the east side of Woodward from Big Beaver Road to Manor Road. Since then, the township has received several inquiries for continuing the safety path to the existing path at Oak Street. A difficulty of extending the safety path in a continuous manner on Woodward Avenue is that two of the commercial developments have parking in the Woodward Avenue right of way,” Olsztyn-Budry said. “At this time, the recommendation is to complete the safety path within the available right of way, between Oak Street and Maywood Road, and evaluate how to complete the safety path between Maywood Road and Manor Road.”

The cost to complete the safety path from Oak to Maywood is $213,000; to complete it from Maywood to Manor is another $220,000.

A request to put in a pedestrian cross walk at Big Beaver and Woodward, as a joint project with the city of Birmingham, would cost Bloomfield Township $60,000, for a total of 5,375 feet of paths and the cross walk, $1.32 million for 2019, which trustees approved.

In addition, Olsztyn-Budry said, “we also do repair and maintenance to existing paths. We are recommending doing heavy maintenance to retaining walls and existing safety paths,.”

A total of $215,000 for maintenance was approved.