GREEN OAK TOWNSHIP, MI - Major changes are coming to a series of traffic roundabouts near Brighton.

The Livingston County Road Commission recently announced a $1.1 million project to change the roundabouts at Lee Road and U.S. 23 in Green Oak Township.

The roundabout at Lee and Whitmore Lake roads is a three-lane roundabout and the busiest of the three.

The others are a two-lane roundabout at southbound U.S. 23 and a two-lane roundabout at northbound U.S. 23, the Green Oak Village Place Shopping Center and Fieldcrest Road.

The road commission will remove the outside lane on two of the three circulating roundabouts.

Here is a Youtube video of someone navigating the three roundabouts:

Mike Goryl, traffic and safety engineer for the road commission, said 40 to 60 crashes take place at the roundabouts each year and he expects that number to drop in 2018 once the changes are made.

"We're not going to get rid of all the crashes," he said. "But, we should get less crashes by reducing the conflict point of the roundabout."

Goryl said the roundabouts were overbuilt in 2006. He said the mall and county expected more traffic through the area, but the third lane has proven confusing for drivers when merging and exiting the roundabouts.

"They were designed for some large growth that never occurred," Goryl said. "Then we had the recession and traffic went down and now it's picking back up again. We never saw the traffic growth that we anticipated, nor did the mall see the growth that they expected, either."

A federal grant will pay for $600,000 of the project, while the road commission will cover the remaining $500,000, Goryl said.

Construction will begin in mid-June and hopefully be completed in mid-August, Goryl said.

Goryl added that the roundabout at Lee and Whitmore Lake roads will close for 14 days during construction, while the southbound roundabout will close for three days.

The roundabouts also will be resurfaced during construction and a durable marking will be installed under the surface to protect it from snow plows.