Why is There a Giant Pipe in the Middle of the Street in Lansing?
While we're all glad that Governor Gretchen Whitmer said that her goal was to "fix the damn roads", we can still admit that some construction can be annoying. Especially when it's slowing down your commute.
Why would they put a makeshift smoke stack in the middle of the road? A few twitter users from the area had some hilarious guesses as to what they think it could be...
So THATS where the clouds come from...Hey, maybe the roads need to relax too
No one on twitter seemed to have the answer, so I decided to do a little investigating myself...
Why would there be a giant smoke stack in the middle of the street?
I tried to search city website, social media pages and more, I couldn't find an answer directly from the city about it's existence. But, I did find information about ones in bigger cities.
While you may not see these often in Michigan, New York City frequently uses these steam stacks to help release pressure from the pipes that they use underground for utilities.
And what do you know, according to the Langsing BWL website, the city has 9.7 miles of steampipes running throughout the city to help service 200 customers.
While we don't know WHY they're venting the pipe, we do know that they exist and need to be vented at times. I'm guessing the barrels are a makeshift version of the fancy cone stacks they use in NYC since we don't need to do this that frequently.
So if you see these, don't panic, but also don't hit it either. You'd hate to be the reason traffic is moving even slower at this intersection.
And while you're thinking about the road, what about a trip to see some of these?
