SOUTHFIELD — An investigation by WXYZ-TV into broken highway lights in southeastern Michigan has prompted the Michigan Department of Transportation to announce a sweeping effort to repair approximately 1,300 lights by the end of the summer.

“We’re going to spend four million dollars to address this problem in the next 6 months,” MDOT Director Kirk Steudle said. “It’ll be a combination of additional electricians and additional contractors.”

MDOT maintains approximately 11,000 lights on highways in Wayne, Oakland, Macomb and St. Clair counties. Approximately 3,500 are not working, leaving miles of area highways dangerously dark.  MDOT says aging infrastructure is largely to blame for the outages.