UPDATE @ 9:19 p.m.
Oakwood City Council in a unamious vote approved changes to Shroyer Road including lane reductions.
FIRST REPORT
Oakwood City Council is expected to decide tonight whether to move forward with a proposal to improve safety on a one mile stretch of Shroyer Road.
Oakwood hired Columbus-based CMT Engineers to conduct a study of the road that runs between Dellwood Ave. in Oakwood and Dorothy Lane in Kettering.
The study recommended implementing a road diet, which consists of reducing the number of lanes from two in each direction to one, with left turn lanes at intersections.
The proposal also calls for a bike lane on each side of the street between the road and the curb, as well as raised center medians with grass.
The study found there were 180 crashes in five years on the 1.1 mile stretch of road, city manager Norbert Klopsch previously told the Dayton Daily News. Forty-eight of the crashes resulted in injuries.
“We do a heavy amount of traffic enforcement on Shroyer. About 15% of our total number of moving violations from the safety department are written on Shroyer and yet speeds are still higher than we want them to be there, so we were looking to see if there’s an engineering solution to part of that issue,” said Oakwood Public Safety Chief Alexander Bebris.
A pedestrian strike on the roadway within the last year and a petition from concerned citizens also spurred the study, according to Bebris.
The city held public meetings in February and March to to explain the findings and get feedback from residents. More than 50 people attended the sessions and others submitted citizen comment forms, Bebris said.
“Overwhelmingly, I would say the feedback at the meetings and the feedback in written responses back to the city was positive in moving forward with this project,” Bebris said.
However, some residents of Shroyer Road expressed their concerns about raised median impeding their ability to turn into their driveways, Bebris added. Others expressed concerns about the reduction of lanes impact on traffic since there are bus stops on the roadway.
“That was taken into and factored into the engineering portion of that so it shouldn’t add a significant portion on to travel times,” Bebris said.
The city did make some changes to the proposal after receiving feedback from citizens.
“In the original plan, there were some things that may have been conceptualized for happening later or maybe as a different phase that were incorporation into this plan as seeing they are a high priority for the citizens,” Bebris added.
One of the aspects that is a high priority for citizens who offered their feedback are some pedestrian crossings which are now part of the proposal in front of council tonight.
The section of road is part of a larger Shroyer Road resurfacing project planned 2017 or 2018 by the Miami Valley Regional Planning Commission, Klopsch said.
“If the city of Oakwood decides to make this significant change, now would be the time to do it, obviously, rather than do this resurfacing project and then a couple years later, consider some major change,” Klopsch told this paper in February.
Oakwood City Council will hear a presentation on the proposal and comments from the public before making a decision. The meeting begins at 7:30 p.m. in council chambers at 30 Park Ave.
