Posted on by bunnyhugger

N. Aurelius Rd., Orphaned Sidewalk

I would say this might be the most forlorn stretch of sidewalk in Lansing, except I’m not sure I should dignify this narrow strip of asphalt by calling it a sidewalk. It’s along the former ramp that serviced East Malcolm X Street from northbound Aurelius Road. It must have been laid along the ramp with the intent of serving as a sidewalk, yet I don’t know why. Until I walked on it to take these pictures, I had never walked down there myself and was surprised to discover it even had a sidewalk. It makes a sharp turn under the overpass and eventually comes out in the Potter-Walsh neighborhood. There are at least two better and shorter ways for a pedestrian to get to Potter-Walsh from here, and walking so close to the ramp when there was any traffic on it must have been unpleasant to say the least.

Looking north along the ramp. The raised area on the left is Aurelius Road.

I walked it, though, and since I’m a rules-abiding person (probably to a fault) I got a little thrill from this laughably minor transgression. This ramp has been amputated from Aurelius Rd. and, despite still having street lamps beaming down on it at night, it now has no purpose. When they rebuilt the railway overpass recently, they also quietly decommissioned the ramp. The southern end of it, where the ramp splits off from Aurelius, has been removed. The rest has been left alone, with a surprisingly neat curb capping its new end.

And looking back south, from whence I came. The curb they put in to (needlessly?) cap off the start of the road is visible in the distance.

When I moved to town and for a while after, there was a sign on northbound Aurelius directing downtown traffic to use what was then the Main Street ramp. I was mystified by this when I first saw it. What crazy person would use that spooky alley to get downtown when you could just go up to Michigan and turn left? And why the heck is that nothing road called “Main Street”?

What I was looking at was the remnant of some previous attempt to stop traffic on Aurelius, which was then a four-lane road, from blazing right into a residential neighborhood at highway speeds as Aurelius became Clemens Avenue. This had been a sore point for Clemens residents for a long time by then. The ramp was an attempt to funnel downtown-bound traffic away from Clemens. As far as I can tell, no one was fooled. I’m not sure when the sign went away but it might have been when they tried the next (and possibly more successful) traffic calming measure: around 2002, they reduced Aurelius to two lanes and lowered the speed limit.

I guess they must have decided that the ramp was a failed experiment and took the bridge reconstruction as an opportunity to remove it. Northbound traffic headed for Malcolm X can still get there by the more direct route, taking a left turn a little way further north.

Posted on by bunnyhugger

N. Aurelius Rd., East Jordan Iron Works manhole cover

This manhole cover is in the sidewalk (if you can call that asphalt mess a sidewalk) that accompanies North Aurelius Road as it climbs over the railroad tracks. It’s on the west side of the street, roughly between Walsh and Perkins.

All over Michigan, when you see a manhole cover or a sewer grate, the odds are good that it will display the name of the East Jordan Iron Works. They were founded in 1883 as the Round and Malpass Foundry and made cast iron parts for the lumber industry, ships, machinery, agricultural equipment, and railroads. East Jordan is in the northwest of Michigan, so the connection with the lumber industry is unsurprising. In 1885 their name changed to the East Jordan Iron Works. Since 2012, they call themselves just plain “EJ,” which I find a little disappointing. Their corporate headquarters are still in East Jordan, but they are now a multinational company, having acquired a lot of other foundries over the years. In 2017 they built a new foundry after almost 135 years in their original location, which is amazing. Happily for the town, I’m sure, they built the new one just 14 miles away from the original.

EJ has a detailed company history and timeline on its Web site. I wish all companies did this.

The Potter-Walsh neighborhood can be seen to the west of the Aurelius overpass.

Posted on by bunnyhugger

N. Aurelius Rd., L & L, 2002

This L & L stamp is on a walking path that cuts down from the west side of North Aurelius Road to Clemens. To the north of this, Aurelius “becomes” Clemens and crosses I-496 as an overpass. To the south, it is an overpass over the railroad tracks. In the early 2000s there was a project that both reduced the number of lanes on Aurelius to try to calm traffic, and made the overpasses more pedestrian-friendly. I would guess this sidewalk installation was part of that.

Looking down from Aurelius toward Clemens. Most people say that Clemens “turns into” Aurelius as it goes south but in some sense that isn’t true because they do exist side by side for a couple of blocks.

I refer to the streets here as “the other Clemens,” “the other Regent,” and so on, or sometimes “the alternate universe streets,” because they seem to be in a different world from the streets of my neighborhood despite sharing their names. It’s always hard to believe that they are just down the way as the crow flies, and once upon a time they would have been been one unbroken street. That ended with 496.

Looking back up to Aurelius.