Talk:M-8 (Michigan highway)/Archive 1

Archive 1

"Urban depressed freeway"

What does that mean? The article mentions it twice without explaining its definition. 68.40.65.164 04:14, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Agree. There is no article on it, and searching google "urban depressed freeway" it seems to mostly come up with the davison. It seems pretty selfexplanatory, but english is not my main language and especially for 'people like me' it should be explained..

The short of it is: it's a highway that is recessed relative to the surrounding landscape, kind of like a tunnel with no top. They are relatively frequent in urban areas. I'll try to look for a source sometime. Stratosphere ^{(U T)} 17:13, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

The freeway was the first to be below street level. This was so that tanks, or whatever else they were making at the factories, could be trucked across town over to Detroit City Airport, without disrupting city traffic, and vice versa. I'm sure I read about it in the Detroit papers if you want to know more. MMetro 19:43, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

Woodward Interchange

Does anybody know if the Woodward interchange was part of the original design? The renovation didn't happen until the 1990's, so it is important to know in the Vincent Chin case. The Fancy Pants was right on the SE corner of Davison and Woodward and if the on ramp to WB Davison existed, it would have been a quicker route to the hospital (Lodge->Henry Ford, but 75 -> Warren/Mack DMC is also better) than Woodward, and maybe Vincent Chin would be alive today, if Ebens alibi was the truth. MMetro 19:43, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

The list

The following list was in the article, and information from it could be reintegrated back into the article in prose form, if sourced.

Notes

• As metro Detroit's freeway system developed in the 1960s, an extension of the Davison freeway was intended to connect the Jeffries freeway (at the time planned to run parallel with Grand River Avenue into Farmington) with a southerly extension of the M-53 freeway via Mound Road. Even after the Jeffries was realigned to an east-west route overlaying Schoolcraft Avenue, the Davison expansion plan continued, and the Jeffries interchange with Davison was designed and built to be a freeway-to-freeway connection. With the same master plan in mind, a massive stack interchange was constructed at Mound Road and I-696 in Warren. However, in the early 1970's, the city of Detroit blocked further freeway development; leaving both interchanges with only a pittance of the traffic flow they were designed to handle.

• The freeway portion of M-8 is virtually always referred to as the Davison Freeway, or just "the Davison," rather than by route number.

• The original concrete road surface of the Davison Freeway was exceptionally hard and dense - sections of roadway were 'diked' during construction and the concrete was poured under water in the diked areas, the water covering giving the concrete exceptional strength as it cured.

• Before its total reconstruction in 1996-1997, there was talk of filling it in and returning it to its pre-freeway status as Davison Avenue.

• There were concrete stairs leading down to the edge of the non-shouldered freeway for Davison bus route passengers to board/unboard, that ended during the 70's.