Dayton plans to apply for millions of dollars in low-interest loans to put Gettysburg on a “road diet” — shrinking the roadway and likely the lanes of traffic — and the city also wants to make some immediate, temporary interventions until permanent ones can be put in place.
“We’ve got to address and try to minimize the ability for the disruptive, unsafe behavior to be occurring,” said Dayton City Manager Shelley Dickstein.
Dayton wants to make safety improvements to a 3.5-mile stretch of Gettysburg Avenue from West Third Street to Salem Avenue.
Along that section, the street has two lanes in each direction, as well as middle turn lanes in some areas and medians in others, often supporting turn lanes.
Since 2015, that segment of Gettysburg has had 1,400 crashes, which led to 10 fatalities and 59 serious injuries, according to the city.
Earlier this month, four people between the ages of 16 and 34 were killed in a one-vehicle crash on the roadway by St. James Avenue.
Traffic investigators said the car evidently was traveling at a high rate of speed when it spun out, hit a fire hydrant, flipped over and collided with a utility pole.
The city has wanted to make infrastructure improvements to Gettysburg for years, but the fatal crash has underscored the dangers of the roadway and increased the sense of urgency to make upgrades, officials said.
During the pandemic, motorists on Gettysburg and other local roadways increasingly engaged in “clown acts” and “hooning” — a term used to describe reckless driving behaviors like drifting, burnouts and donuts, Dickstein said.
Cars, trucks, ATVs and motorbikes have taken part in these rash and foolish activities, she said.
Gettysburg Avenue’s design made sense in the 1960s, when Dayton was home to 262,300 residents and there was more traffic on the roadway, Dickstein said.
But today, Dayton’s population is about 137,650 people, and Dickstein said the road is larger than it needs to be to handle current traffic volumes and its design is conducive to unsafe driving behaviors.
The city is considering putting Gettysburg on a road diet, similar to what it has done to Brown Street by the University of Dayton and Springfield Street in East Dayton.
The city also is working to shrink Salem Avenue and plans to do the same thing to parts of Wayne Avenue and North Main Street.
Commonly, road diets reduce the lanes of travel in each direction, add middle turn lanes and sometimes involve constructing street parking, bike lanes, curb extensions and pedestrian islands or refuges.
Specific recommendations for improvements will be determined after getting feedback from neighborhood leaders, business owners and other community stakeholders, Dickstein said.
Recommendations will be presented to the city commission for consideration.
The city expects to look at adjusting the timing of the roadway’s traffic signals to try to discourage and minimize speeding.
Dayton routinely gets federal transportation funding through the Miami Valley Regional Planning Commission, but the process takes years, and the city wants to expedite the reconfiguration of Gettysburg Avenue.
The city plans to apply for a state infrastructure bank (SIB) loan for the project.
The city would like to start making permanent improvements sometime next year, officials said, and it also hopes to obtain funding through the normal channels to pay itself back for project costs.
The state loan program is designed to expedite the construction of urgent or emergency projects at a reasonable cost, said Brian Martin, executive director of the Miami Valley Regional Planning Commission, which administers federal transportation funds on behalf of the region.
“SIB was recently used for the Deeds Point Bridge which was an emergency project,” he said. “The SIB is a loan that will provide funding for a project much sooner than grant dollars are available.”
The city likely will improve Gettysburg through three phases of construction, with each expected to cost several million dollars, said Fred Stovall, Dayton’s director of public works.
“This is not an easy fix,” he said. “We’ll have to do it in phases — we’re not going to be able to afford to do it in one lump sum.”
The first stage likely will be to improve the section of roadway between Hillcrest Avenue and Little Richmond Road, which carries about 18,000 vehicles each day, Stovall said.
Parts of Gettysburg rank among the Miami Valley Regional Planning Commission’s 100 high-crash road segments, including a section from Hillcrest Avenue to Cornell Drive.
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