If you look to the south of town, things start to get a little less congested.  Wyoming is still somewhat of an extension of Grand Rapids itself, but the new get into Byron Center, Cutlerville, and even Caledonia if we stick to the southeast side a little bit.  Let’s hit them one by one.

Wyoming, as I said, is kind of like Grand Rapids Junior.  There’s a lot of older commercial areas that have been around for a long time and are in need of repair and updating.  There are a lot of small developments that have been around since the late 50’s.  It is home to the somewhat famous Frederick Meijer Gardens, a botanical garden and museum owned by the Frederick Meijer Foundation.

Byron Center definitely has a small town feel to it, because that’s what it is.  It has a small city center with a hardware store, some restaurants, churches, grocery stores, and so on.  The surrounding land is either developed into sub divisions, farmland, or single family homes on a large parcel of land.  If you venture out farther south you’ll find less and less people and more and more farms.  It has easy access to both M6 and US 131, so the ride into town is low impact.

Caledonia is to the east of Byron Center, mashed between the Cascade/Kentwood area and Byron Center.  It is closer to the airport than Byron Center, and is what I would describe as a more modern, planned version of Byron Center.  Many people that work over on the southeast side of the city make their home in Caledonia because it’s a nice compromise between pricey East Grand Rapids and Byron Center, which is a little farther away and a little bit more of a drive.

The city of Grand Rapids is cut in half by US 131 and I-196, and both can be real disasters during rush hour.  There has been a lot of construction on both over the years, and I have to believe that there will be plenty in the years to come as well.  Grand Rapids, and as an extension Western Michigan as a whole, are terrible when it comes to road repair.  It’s a never ending cycle of tearing them up in the winter with the salt and plows and filling the holes back in during the spring and summer.  It’s quite amazing, actually.

But back to the point of this article.  Those two highways are the main north-south and east-west routes through the city, but they do have some helper-roads that make commuting easier if you live to the north or south of town.

M-6, also known as the Paul B. Henry freeway, traverses from Hudsonville all the way east to Cascade.  It’s new, it’s fast, and it’s a real life saver if you need to traverse east or west but don’t feel like fighting the traffic trying to get into the city (which most people don’t).

I-96 is another major thoroughfare that passes just north of the city of Grand Rapids, and meets up with M-6 on the east side.  It continues to Lansing from there.  Following it to the north and west will take you all the way up to Muskegon, which is a great area in its own right.  That’s the subject for another post, though.

Traffic into the city is by far the worst traveling south into Grand Rapids on US 131 from the Rockford area.  Due to a combination of high population growth and road construction, it is the bane of many peoples’ existence, and I wouldn’t recommend setting yourself up for that life if you have a choice of where to live.