City of GR: 90% of traffic lights restored after outage

The traffic light at Wealthy Street and Division Avenue was out Wednesday afternoon.

by: Katie Rosendale

Posted: Aug 30, 2023 / 04:09 PM EDT

Updated: Aug 30, 2023 / 09:53 PM EDT

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — Most traffic lights in Grand Rapids are back on after many of them went out Wednesday afternoon, the city says.

Steve Guitar, city spokesperson, said several primary circuits had been tripped because of construction work at the intersection of Coldbrook Street, Monroe Avenue and Ottawa Avenue.

It was not clear precisely how many lights were out. The city of Grand Rapids said in a Facebook post that downtown and surrounding areas were experiencing outages.

As of around 3:30 p.m. Wednesday, traffic lights at intersections like Wealthy Street SE and Division Avenue SE and Cherry Street SE and Madison Avenue SE were out.

The outages caused traffic backups in the city.

Guitar said power restoration crews were on site.

Around 9:15 p.m., the city posted on social media that over 90% of the city’s traffic lights and 18,000 street lights had been restored. A few blocks were still experiencing outages near the intersection of Coldbrook Street and Monroe Avenue, which is where the fault was.

The city said non-functioning traffic lights work like four-way stops and asked drivers to allow for extra travel time.

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