Detroit City Council urges MDOT to prioritize Complete Streets work on Gratiot Avenue

DETROIT — Detroit City Council voted Tuesday to press the Michigan Department of Transportation to put Gratiot Avenue higher on its safety agenda, BridgeDetroit reported.

The resolution, authored by Council Member Scott Benson and joined by Council Member Latisha Johnson, urges MDOT to prioritize a Complete Streets design on the corridor and to work with the city on community-centered fixes under a Safe System Approach. It also backs safer speed limits and attention to high-injury crash zones, and it ties the request to Detroit’s Vision Zero resolution from 2022, which aims to eliminate traffic deaths and severe injuries.

Gratiot is about 120 feet wide, with three travel lanes each way, a center turn lane and curbside parking on both sides, the coverage says. It sits on Detroit’s High Injury Network — roughly 3% of streets that account for 34% of serious crashes. One segment alone, from Eight Mile to Randolph near Greektown, saw more than 2,500 crashes, nearly 40 fatalities and more than 1,200 injuries from 2019 to 2023, according to the resolution as described by BridgeDetroit.

That stretch received a $12.5 million Safe Streets for All grant last year, the report says, but the grant’s terms keep the city from removing lanes or cutting vehicle capacity. A 2024 MDOT study cited in the story found Gratiot’s width and auto-oriented design push people to pass through rather than linger and split neighborhoods instead of connecting them.

Council expanded the resolution’s recipients to include the Federal Highway Administration and Detroit’s congressional delegation — Sens. Gary Peters and Elissa Slotkin and Reps. Rashida Tlaib and Shri Thanedar. Johnson told BridgeDetroit the vote recognizes the corridor’s death and crash toll and the need for traffic-calming tools even as federal rules make lane reductions harder to fund.

MDOT Metro Region spokesperson Diane Cross said the department is already working with the city and the Suburban Mobility Authority for Regional Transportation on safer crossings and better bus stops, and that a planned 2033 reconstruction of M-3/Gratiot from the I-75 connector to I-94 could add Complete Streets elements. She noted Gratiot’s truck-route role and said speed enforcement rests with Detroit police.

Sources:
Jasmine Snow, “Detroit City Council calls on MDOT to prioritize Gratiot Avenue safety,” BridgeDetroit, Oct. 14, 2026, https://www.bridgedetroit.com/detroit-city-council-calls-on-mdot-to-prioritize-gratiot-avenue-safety/
Photo: WMrapids, “Coleman A. Young Municipal Center 2025.jpg,” Aug. 26, 2025, Wikimedia Commons, CC0 1.0 (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/), cropped and color-adjusted, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Coleman_A._Young_Municipal_Center_2025.jpg

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