News Photo by Steve Schulwitz Alpena City Engineer Steve Shultz looks at design plans for a road project in Alpena. The city has several large projects in the works for this year and next.

ALPENA — Officials plan to make significant changes to an Alpena intersection that has been the scene of numerous crashes.

The changes should help motorists and pedestrians navigate the intersection more safely, officials say.

The reworking of the intersection at 3rd Avenue and Hobbs Drive is one of several big road projects planned in the city.

The reconstruction of a portion of Ripley Boulevard and the improvement of streets in the Gilchrist Street subdivision also are in the cards.

Alpena City Engineer Steve Shultz last week explained the projects, laid out their timelines in detail, and explained how the changes will impact motorists.

The intersection near Alpena High School has been an issue for years and is a hotspot for crashes and is potentially dangerous for pedestrians, especially students who walk in the vicinity before and after school.

Shultz said the design phase of the project will occur this summer, but construction won’t take place until 2024 because the project is budgeted by the state next year.

“There will be lighting upgrades and a modernization of the interaction and stoplight,” he said. “It will be the quad-span, like the ones people are seeing now at Long Rapids and Bagley and Golf Course Road and U.S.-23. Depending on what the consultant says, we could have a pedestrian-only cycle during certain times of the day so you could have students crossing multiple streets at the same time while all traffic is stopped.”

Shultz said the light will also change how often it cycles between red, green, and yellow depending on the amount of traffic at a given time.

The construction on Ripley Boulevard will begin in the coming weeks and will encompass Ripley from Washington to 3rd Avenue. Shultz said contractors will redo the ramps at the ends of each block to bring them up to Americans with Disabilities Act standards before the current pavement is milled away and new pavement is applied.

The city will pay just under half of the estimated $600,000 job, with a grant from the Michigan Department of Transportation covering the balance. The project is expected to take about five weeks or less to complete.

“We have done some crack filling around there, but it is to the point now that it needs a resurfacing job,” Shultz said. “We have been trying to get this done for some time, and it is much needed.”

Shultz said the road project on Gilchrist is also a large one that is overdue.

“It is a fairly big stretch of resurfacing we have to do there, and we want to get it done because it has been a long time coming,” he said.

Like most other communities, there are still many roads that need improvement in Alpena. Shultz said that, overall, when water and sewer issues arise, they negatively impact the roads, as does weather and old age.

Still, he said, the city is doing the best it can to keep maintaining the streets.

“They are holding up as good as can be expected,” Shultz said. “For the most part, I think we are in good shape and we try to keep up on stuff. Sometimes, you feel like you’re chasing your tail, but I think we are holding our own.”