The interchange with the Edsel Ford Freeway, next to Wayne State University, occasionally called the Ford–Lodge interchange, was built in 1953; it was the first full freeway-to-freeway interchange built in the United States. Engineers at the time rejected the conventional design to connect two freeways, the cloverleaf as too hazardous, instead initially preferring a rotary interchange. Such a design would only accommodate 3,000 vehicles per hour, far less than what the Michigan engineers anticipated, so the design was changed to a full interchange, with ramps on the both right and left sides of the roadways. This "right-to-go-right-left-to-go-left" design was considered progressive for its time. The interchange, which cost $15.3 million (equivalent to $ in ) to build and used 14 bridges to complete its connections, was heralded as an engineering marvel. The interchange opened in stages during 1955. At the time, "The Detroit News" reported that the rush of traffic created "a haze of concrete dust" as traffic passed through, but by the next day, the interchange was the site of traffic jams and head-on collisions because of bad design, according to the "Detroit Free Press".