The Michigan Department of Transportation is lifting some restrictions for transporting certain hazardous substances across the Ambassador Bridge this fall.

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MDOT will ease restrictions on transporting fuels and materials for batteries beginning Oct. 29. The bridge’s owners requested the looser restrictions, saying it can respond quickly to a fire or spill. 

MDOT commissioned a technical study  in June 2021 to evaluate the risks associated with transporting restricted materials on the Ambassador Bridge from Porter Street in Detroit to Canada, the state reported. MDOT subsequently collected more than 80 letters from elected officials, business owners and community members, many expressing support for the looser restrictions.

Restricted materials will only be transported during off-peak hours, under the supervision of vehicle escorts, according to the state.

Other headlines for Tuesday, Sept. 3, 2024:

• The city of Detroit is holding informational sessions this month to teach local nonprofits how to apply for grants to expand or improve their programs.
• Detroit is also offering free estate planning workshops to residents during the month of September.
• The Brightmoor Artisans Collective is recruiting volunteers for its Beautification Day event Saturday, Sept. 7. 
• The Paradise Wellness Academy is hosting a free Community Health Education series this month, featuring live cooking demonstrations and tips for preparing nutritious meals, from 6 to 8 p.m. on Thursdays, Sept. 12, 19 and 26. 

Do you have a community story we should tell? Let us know in an email at detroiteveningreport@wdet.org.

When relying on clean sources of energy, like the sun and the wind, we need a way to store that energy for later use.

Subscribe to The Metro on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, NPR.org or wherever you get your podcasts.

That’s where battery technology comes into play. Batteries are used to store and transfer energy from solar panels and wind turbines. The problem with batteries is they’re expensive and can be dangerous. In some cases, people have died in explosions involving batteries in electric bikes.

UL Solutions hopes to change that. The global safety science company recently opened a new $100 million safety lab in Auburn Hills to conduct comprehensive testing on electric vehicle batteries.

To discuss the new facility and how battery technology works, Vice president and General Manager of Energy and Industrial Automation Milan Dotlich and Senior Vice President of Communications Kathy Fieweger joined The Metro.

Use the media player above to listen to the interview with Dotlich and Fieweger.

More headlines from The Metro on Aug. 29, 2024: 

• WDET’s comedy showcase “What’s so Funny about Detroit?” takes place at the Old Miami tonight! We’ll talk about the event, and some of the most interesting comedians in town with WDET’s Ryan Patrick Hooper.
• Lots of music events are taking place this Labor Day weekend, including the Detroit Jazz Festival. Chris Collins, president of the Detroit Jazz Festival Foundation, joined The Metro to share details about this year’s event.
• The Hamtramck Labor Day Festival is also happening this weekend. To discuss the festival, we were joined by WDET’s Mike Latulippe and festival organizer John Szymanski, whose band The Hentchmen are playing at the festival with Jack White on Monday.

Listen to The Metro weekdays from 11 a.m. to noon ET on 101.9 FM and streaming on-demand.

At the Democratic National Convention in Chicago this week, Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan is taking the opportunity to talk up the city’s plan to use previously blighted spaces as solar farms.

The city of Detroit’s climate strategy calls for a transition to clean renewable energy by 2034. City officials say the Solar Neighborhoods initiative is the first step toward achieving that goal.

The program aims to create 200 acres of solar arrays to generate enough clean energy to power all 127 of the city’s municipal buildings. While the project will not directly affect residents electric bills, Duggan says, the solar farms could potentially cut the city’s power bill by more than 50%.

Three solar farms are expected to be online in the city within the next year.

I was able to speak with Duggan at the convention about the city’s solar project, as well as the future of transit in Michigan and the growing excitement around the new Democratic presidential ticket.

Listen: Duggan talks public transit, city’s solar program at DNC

The following interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Mike Duggan: The U.S. Conference of Mayors has asked me to speak at a number of events for other mayors that relate to climate change, and I think the reason is that the eyes of the country are now on Detroit, with the adoption last month of City Council, the plan to take 200 blighted acres of the city and turn them into solar fields to power all city-owned buildings.

Russ McNamara: Has there been some pushback from residents who would rather have more houses near them than solar fields?

MD: No, the residents were overwhelmingly supportive. That’s how we got this passed. So we allowed the residents of the community to pick the areas they wanted in their areas, basically they have maybe one occupied block per house that weren’t going to be coming back for decades; and the adjoining homeowners who stayed are getting $15,000 a house for energy efficiency upgrades for their houses — new furnaces, new hot water heaters, new windows. And so the community, neighbors came out overwhelmingly for this, and now we’re moving forward.

RM: Has this works in other cities, or is Detroit on the cutting edge?

MD: You’ve had two or three cities that have built solar fields out in farmland, 30-40 [miles] — in Chicago’s case, 200 miles outside of city, which is a step in the right direction. We’re the first city to step up and say, “We don’t need to go build in a farmland in somebody else’s community. Let’s take responsibility for moving off fossil fuels to renewables for city buildings right within our own city. And the people of Detroit have embraced that.

RM: You’ve mentioned the environmentally friendly upgrades. What are the benefits when it comes to the electrical bill of a Detroit resident?

MD: It won’t have a long-term effect on the electric bill. So all that’s going to happen is right now, the city is spending something like eight or $9 million a year to our energy provider to provide the energy. Instead, those costs will be offset somewhat by the renewable energy that we produce, so it will probably come out about the same. This is not necessarily to reduce the energy bill, but this is to have Detroit show that we don’t just have to talk about goals in 2035 or 2050, we’re a city that’s actually taking action on climate change,

RM: Is the city going to be in charge of maintenance?

MD: So we have two providers — one is our local energy provider, DTE, and the second is a Boston-based solar panel company called Lightstar. So each of them will be building about 100 acres of solar fields. They’ll have long-term leases for us, and we will then purchase that energy from them.

RM: What else can the city do to reduce the environmental impact? Because you know, cities — especially one as old as Detroit — are not necessarily built for changing green technology.

MD: No and so we have already converted all of our municipal parking fleet — the people who write your parking tickets — have all been converted over to electric vehicles. Our buses are now being converted to both electric and hydrogen. And the thing that I’m most focused on at the moment is building up a vehicle charging grid, because now we have General Motors with several thousand workers building the electric vehicles at Factory ZERO in Detroit, and they’re saying to me, “we want to make sure that people who buy the new electric vehicles aren’t anxious about whether they’ll be able to charge them.” And so over the next year or so, you’re going to see the city of Detroit build out a network on our main streets of chargers.

RM: I just got done talking with state Sen. Mallory McMorrow. She talked about one of the legislative priorities being changes to the SOAR fund, putting more money towards public transit. Do you see the city of Detroit like being flexible with that and wanting to work with the state to build out new public transit? We’re in Chicago right now where, and all I’ve done is ride the L this week.

MD: Yeah, we are completely supportive of the proposal. I hope they can get it through the legislature. So it’s been frustrating that our legislators haven’t been able to get it passed, but we support it 100%.

RM: Any changes to Detroit public transit?

MD: Again, depends on what version of the bill passes, but in the city what would be very helpful is to add bus rapid transit to have routes with more frequent service with bumped out boarding sites that would go quickly; potentially passing lanes would get you around backups at red lights and the like. So we have a significant plan to expand it, but the legislature has been talking about funding transit for most of my lifetime, so it’d be good if they actually stopped talking about it and passed it.

RM: A Democrat is in control of Oakland County — long gone are the days of L Brooks Patterson. Is this a regional plan, or do you think Detroit might have to go on its own?

MD: Oh, no. Dave Coulter has been a terrific leader on transit. In fact, he and I and Warren Evans — county executive of Wayne County — have been on this plan for quite a while, so we would like nothing better than to see that happen.

RM: You’re a delegate for the Michigan Democratic Party. So are you even kind of getting a little bit of whiplash after everything that’s happened over the past two months?

MD: I think I would say there’s more enthusiasm than anything else. Joe Biden was great for the city of Detroit — I think he was great for the country. But when he made the decision that I think was right for him and right for the country to step aside, there is a different level of excitement and energy and all the stuff that you were hearing from Trump about how Joe Biden is too old, you know now Donald Trump’s the president who can’t hold a press conference without meandering from subject to subject and getting names wrong and facts wrong. So it’ll be a different kind of a campaign, and think we feel very good about Kamala Harris and a lot of Michigan folks feel very good about Tim Walz — somebody that many Midwesterners can identify with.

Use the media player above to listen to the interview with Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan.

Read more:

• Fain at DNC warns of possible strike against Stellantis over delayed plant reopening
• Sen. Mallory McMorrow on her DNC speech, future priorities for the state
• Detroiter at DNC who attended more than a dozen conventions encourages younger generations to tune in

Detroit’s efforts to improve non-motorized transit were highlighted at this week’s Association of Pedestrian and Bicycle Professionals (APBP) Annual Conference, where local and national experts discussed the city’s evolving infrastructure.

Since adopting a non-motorized plan in 2010, Detroit has focused on adding bike lanes and cycle tracks as part of broader efforts to make streets safer and more accessible.

“It’s been a big difference,” said Michael Darga, a partner at Detroit-based engineering firm Giffels Webster. “Even in the Motor City, we have like 30% of our population without a car, so we have to look at options.”

Listen: Detroit showcases green transit wins at annual conference

Key projects include the Dequindre Cut, Joe Louis Greenway and bike lanes on streets like Jefferson, Cass and Livernois.

“The bike lanes in Jefferson are just their first pass,” Darga said. “But it’s infrastructure that can be built on over the years.”

The concept of “road diets” was a central topic at the conference, referring to the practice of reducing vehicle lanes to provide more space for pedestrians and cyclists.

“We’re just reducing the amount of active lanes without harming auto traffic, but giving more options for people to get places,” Darga explained.

While the changes have been largely positive, Darga acknowledged some resistance from drivers.

“Anytime you’re taking something away from somebody, even if it’s not hurting their travel, it’s still perceived as ‘us versus them,’” he said.

The 2024 conference was held in Detroit and aimed to showcase the city’s balance between maintaining its car culture and expanding non-motorized transit options.

“We can still be the Motor City and provide non-motorized options for pedestrians and cyclists,” Darga said.