Hynes Avenue May be Michigan’s Most Misunderstood and Least Used Freeway Exit

It's a humble freeway exit - number 82B - off northbound US 131 in the heart of Grand Rapids. But Hynes Avenue may be Michigan's most misunderstood and least used exit.

It is almost literally an exit to nowhere.

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Hynes Avenue is today nothing more than a frontage road to US 131 for a few blocks between Burton Ave and Martin Luther King Jr Street. Frontage roads are very common in the Detroit area with nearly every freeway there built with them. Outside of Metro Detroit, they are nearly unheard of.

Hynes Avenue Access to Grand Rapids Railroad Yard

That makes Hynes Avenue little more than an extended on and off ramp to the free way. At the 82B exit, Hynes serves a single driveway to the Hughart Yard, a railroad freight yard.

Hughart dates back to the late 1800s and was once a bustling railyard building and switching train cars.

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Hynes Ave between Hall and MLK Streets in Grand Rapids

That's the only thing along Hynes Ave between its exit and Hall Street. Traffic from northbound US 131 looking to exit onto Hall actually merges onto Hynes Ave. Past Hall Street, Hynes Ave continues as a narrow one-way street that looks like a freeway ramp to serve a few more businesses, famously the footprint of the former Union Station and now home to packaging company Pregis at 1100 Hynes Ave and Founders Brewing's barrel house at 900 Hynes. A few other businesses have set up shop at the bright red building today called Union Station.

Between Pregis and Founders, Hynes Ave does technically meet another Grand Rapids surface street, an unmarked Albany Street which wanders back to curve onto Wallen Ave then Canton Street to end at Buchanan.

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North of the driveway exit for Founders, Hynes again meets traffic coming from US 131 exiting the freeway for MLK Street at Exit 83B.

So in total, Hynes Ave runs for a single mile narrowly divided from US 131 by a low barrier and appearing much like an extended on/off ramp and serves a small handful of businesses that likely benefit from the easy semitruck on-off access.