(New Buffalo Township, MI) - Work is scheduled to begin on Monday to downsize another stretch of the Red Arrow Highway closer to New Buffalo.

 

The 1.9-mile stretch of four-lane highway will be reduced to one travel lane in each direction, with a middle lane strictly for left-hand turns from U.S. 12 to Community Hall Road. The same work occurred in 2020 on a 1.2-mile stretch of the Red Arrow Highway in Union Pier.

 

During a meeting at the New Buffalo Township Hall on Monday to go over the project, Berrien County Road Department Engineering Supervisor Kevin Stack said the portion of highway already narrowed has worked as designed to improve safety in areas like slowing down traffic and reducing the odds of a rear-end collision. He said another reason for the work at both locations is to improve safety for pedestrians and bicyclists.  A trail running beside the soon-to-be narrowed highway will run beside one of the travel lanes as it does along the previous stretch of lane-reduced road.

 

A four-foot-high barrier wall will also be constructed between the trail and highway to keep vehicles from endangering bicyclists and people on foot using the path.

 

Stack said there’s been a secondary benefit more drivers on the already lane-reduced stretch of highway feel safer now to stop and patronize businesses.

 

“It’s becoming a destination point so people are wanting to go there. We want you to go slower through that town for safety mainly but then also welcome to Berrien County. Enjoy what we have to offer,” he said.

 

Stack said Red Arrow Highway was originally two lanes when originally constructed in the 1920s before being widened to four lanes about twenty years later.

 

Currently, Stack said, only about 4,500 vehicles a day travel the stretch from New Buffalo to Union Pier. Usage dropped significantly following the construction in the 1960s of Interstate 94, which handles more than 50,000 vehicles a day in that same area.

 

Stack explained that the Red Arrow Highway will be closed during the initial phase of the construction, which will include asphalt removal, repairs to the concrete base of the road, and culvert replacement. The road will reopen with one lane in each direction on May 1st, with substantial completion of the work scheduled for August 31st and completion set for November 1st.

 

Rhonda Sobecki, co-owner of Skips Restaurant and Catering, said she welcomes the reduction in travel lanes, especially the addition of a continuous left-hand turning lane, to make traveling that stretch of road less dangerous. She also asked if the project would improve drainage after a storm in the restaurant parking lot, which she described as looking like it has a river flowing through it after a heavy rain.

 

“We have paid ourselves to fix it but nothing has worked,” she said.

 

Stack said the highway should drain much less into the parking lot due to the upcoming changes.

 

If not for inflation, he said the $3.6 million project would cost about half as much if construction materials were at prices from three years ago. Stack said the hope is to begin work on reducing the highway from four lanes to two lanes on a 2.9-mile stretch from Berrien Street to Lakeshore Road sometime this summer or fall.