What’s the deal with the highway interchanges where North Main St. meets M-14? I’m talking about the Barton Dr., Whitmore Lake Rd., and North Main St. entrances and exits. They are confusing at best and often quite dangerous. Isn’t there a better idea?

Well, there was an idea, and much of this Medusa-like snarl of exits and entrances was intended to be only temporary, until the plan could be completed.

This plan was for an “inner belt” of high-volume surface streets that would wrap around three sides of the city within the “outer belt” of freeways. Though large segments were built, it’s defined today by absences–gaps that have endured so long they seem almost like someone intended them: those strange exits on M-14; broad Maple Rd. speeding southward, only to stop short at Scio Church, confronted by a guardrail and a two-headed arrow commanding all traffic to turn; Huron Pkwy. losing its parkway as it crosses Plymouth Rd., shedding lanes as it passes Nixon, and disappearing completely at Tuebingen Pkwy.

A ring with gaps is no ring at all. To imagine driving the inner belt today requires the vision of Robert Moses, the autocratic road-builder whose highways still hold New York in their grip. In Moses’s spirit, perhaps construction could be assigned to the titanic “jungle road builder” General Motors proposed at its 1964 “Futurama,” atomic powered and capable of laying a mile of expressway an hour.

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It didn’t seem so far-fetched in the middle of the twentieth century. It seemed modern, forward thinking.

Like the rest of America, Ann Arbor was growing by leaps and bounds. Between 1940 and 1970, the population tripled, from 29,815 to 100,035. In 1965, city administrator Guy Larcom predicted another 50,000 would arrive by 1980.

It was just assumed that those people would all drive cars, and that it was the city’s job to get them where they wanted to go as quickly as possible. But in the 1950s, that wasn’t happening.

Before the interstate highway era, most traffic flowed (or didn’t flow) through the middle of towns. Even though there were far fewer cars and trucks than now, roads that were developed for the horse and buggy were overwhelmed. City planning documents over the years expressed concern about the need for traffic to go through the center of town to get from one neighborhood to another. A planning commission report from the early 1950s put it this way: “Workers living on the west side of the city and employed in the north [Main St.] industrial area must pass through the central area in going to and from work. Workers employed [downtown] at Argus and King-Seeley and living north, northwest, and east must do likewise.”

It was a common problem in growing cities, and ring roads were a favorite solution. In Detroit, first Grand Blvd. and then Outer Dr. were built around what was then the edge of town. Plans for an even larger ring road through the suburbs were interrupted by WWII.

And so it was that when members of the Ann Arbor Planning Commission reviewed the city’s streets in the early 1950s, the only thoroughfare they looked on with any favor was Stadium Blvd. Built in 1926 as the “M-17 Cut-off” (the name was changed in the following year, after completion of the new football stadium), it had five lanes that sped cars around the city’s then-undeveloped south and west sides, bypassing growing congestion downtown.

The new ring road was planned in the same spirit. It would link Maple Rd. on the west side with Packard on the south, then run east to Platt. A new, scenic parkway would run northward past Plymouth before turning west to deliver its traffic to the outer belt at M-14. A short stretch on the freeway would close the circle back to Maple.

“Huron Parkway was first conceived of as an ‘inner belt’ roadway providing a new direct route for traffic between the developing south, east, and north sections of the city,” Larcom explained in a 1964 report to city council. “When the original route of the state 23 (US-23) bypass was relocated to the east (it originally followed the route of Huron Parkway when it was proposed in the early 1950s, but the state needed more land than was available in order to construct modern-design interchanges at the exits and entrances to the new highway), the need for a local highway and inner route became obvious. Failure to construct such a road would mean the routing of a large volume of traffic through main roads into the center of the city and out again or along indirect routes via Arlington, Geddes, Fuller, and Beal.”

Larcom went on to explain that as first approved in 1959, the plan called for a typical four-lane road, like Stadium Blvd. But in 1962, the city’s Park and Open Space Plan urged instead building a parkway with “a 300-foot minimum right-of-way to insure a scenic recreational drive along its length. Where this is clearly impossible, at the very least, scenic easements should be acquired.

“This is not a limited access highway such as the state builds, but is intended as a controlled access road with access carefully limited to the number and location points necessary for public convenience. With some exceptions, most stretches of the road will not be accessible directly from private property.”

By the time of Larcom’s report, construction was already underway on the north-south portion of the parkway, following the unused US-23 right-of-way. The stretch from Platt to Nixon was completed the following year.

The next phase was to run west from Nixon to M-14. In anticipation, when the freeway was built in 1965, space was left for entry and exit ramps to the parkway. An overpass would allow traffic to pass under the highway and connect to Whitmore Lake Rd.

But in 1967, a developer proposed building apartments on thirty-seven acres adjacent to the planned route. The land was zoned for single-family homes, but in exchange for rezoning the parcel, the developer offered to donate 13.6 acres for use as a park or nature area, sparing a little vernal pool called Black Pond.

Residents of nearby neighborhoods, fearful of increased congestion and traffic (and whatever else they associated with apartment living), urged the city to deny the rezoning. One was quoted as saying, “If it’s a choice between Black Pond and single-family dwellings, we will take the single-family homes.”

Thomas H. Green, a local attorney representing the developer, said, “I wish to remind the Planning Commission that this is private property.” Commissioner John R. Laird acknowledged that preservation “can’t be done by the Planning Commission. We can’t forbid someone from using his land. If someone wants to stop the intrusion into the Black Pond area, some governmental unit will have to buy it.”

Ultimately, that’s just what happened. What began as opposition to apartments extended to opposition to the roadway that would serve them, then merged with a growing movement to preserve the city’s remaining natural areas. And though it’s hard to know what’s cause and what’s effect, Ann Arbor’s growth slowed. Instead of 150,000 people, the 1980 census found 107,969. (Last year’s estimate was 113,934.)

Although Black Pond itself was never in the right-of-way for the planned parkway, support for preserving it grew as the Leslie Park golf course and the science center were developed. In 1989, a final attempt to develop the apartment/subdivision site ended with its purchase by the city. It’s now the Black Pond Woods Nature Area. And any lingering thought of completing the parkway westward was officially abandoned.

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Google Earth now shows a belt of trees where the parkway was to have continued beyond Tuebingen. The would-be right of way is now incorporated into Tuebingen, Leslie, Cloverdale, and Onder parks, and the Black Pond Woods and Stapp nature areas (the latter honors the educator who founded the public schools’ Outdoor Education Program). Instead of being accessed from the parkway, Leslie Park’s golf course is entered from the south, on Traver Rd. Its picnic tables, basketball courts, and softball and soccer fields are reached from the north, via an easement from a subdivision on Dhu Varren.

The other missing link in the ring road is a ten-acre strip of land along I-94 between the intersection of S. Maple and Scio Church roads and the end of Brookfield, itself an extension of Eisenhower west of Ann Arbor-Saline Rd. Lightly traveled S. Maple was widened in anticipation of a connection to Eisenhower Pkwy.–which was originally known in planning documents as Maple Blvd. The unused right-of-way is now Eisenhower Park. It is difficult to find even a deer path through the dense underbrush that has grown up there alongside I-94 (neighbors have reported numerous coyote sightings in this thicket).

Natural areas and parks are an asset to our city, as are roads to get us where we want to go. The decision not to complete the ring road was a trade-off between development and preservation that could be argued either way. The terrible M-14 interchanges near the river were just collateral damage.

As recently as 2002, various alternatives for accessing M-14 were examined. These schemes included:

  • Removing all or part of the Barton interchange and building a full or partial interchange at Nixon.
  • Building a new interchange at Main St.
  • Building a new interchange at Joy Rd. and US-23.
  • Building a new interchange at Dixboro and M-14.
  • Adding frontage roads along US-23 between Pontiac Tr. and Nixon Rd.
  • Reconnecting Whitmore Lake Rd. and Main St.
  • Reconnecting Dhu Varren where it is split by US-23.
  • Building a new interchange at Newport (formerly Foster) Rd.
  • Building a new interchange at Beechwood.

For environmental and political reasons–concerns about damage to wetlands or parks, neighbors worried about increased traffic–none of these plans is likely to ever be developed.

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Robert Moses is dead and reviled. Mercifully, the atomic “jungle road builder” never existed. In a century that values nature more and cars less, no roads will ever fill the gaps in the inner belt.

They may, however, be connected in other ways. When the original 1965 overpass planned for the ill-fated Huron Parkway/M-14 interchange was replaced a few years ago, a small access tunnel was left to service a footpath that follows the route of the parkway’s right of way. This path goes from Whitmore Lake Rd., under the highway, up across Pontiac Tr., and through the woods to near Traver Rd.

The gap on the south side, Eisenhower Park, has no paths through it at this time. But Eli Cooper, city director of Transportation Systems Planning, reports that there are long-range plans to construct shared-use pathways there. Though no funding has been identified, the city also wants to improve the footpath that follows the unused Huron Pkwy. right-of-way.

In addition to recreational use, Cooper says, those paths will “serve a transportation function as well.” So the gaps in the ring road envisioned by planners fifty years ago may someday be filled–but for bicyclists and walkers, not cars.