ASHLAND — Ashland City Council gave its administration the green light to proceed with a project in the works for around four years that involves building the city’s first roundabout.
The $2.2 million project will likely go to bid by March 17, said Ashland Mayor Matt Miller, in order to break ground by June. Construction has been estimated, by ODOT, to last 120 days once started.
The roundabout, at the intersection of Cottage Street, U.S. Route 250 and Faultless Drive, received $1.8 million in funding from the Ohio Department of Transportation safety fund, a federal program that flows through ODOT.
The cost of the design portion of the project amounted to $472,000, leaving the city with a local share of $281,580.
“However, we got an Ohio Public Works grant to cover our share. So we have zero dollars in it. It’s entirely paid for through grant money,” Miller said.
The mayor said the reason for the roundabout is rooted in increasing safety at the intersection.
“We want to make it safer for traffic to move through that intersection, at the entrance into the industrial park. It’s a very dangerous traffic situation,” he said. “You have employee traffic with truck traffic and also, you have thousands of cars that come down U.S. 250 everyday.”
The mayor said the roundabout’s design will leave a northbound slip ramp.
ODOT officials have said there were 12 crashes at that intersection within a three-year period, 2014-2017. Of those crashes, eight resulted in injuries.
The state’s transportation department said the causes of those crashes are because people aren’t able to find gaps in traffic for safe crossing. The agency studied the intersection for alternative traffic control and has tried different low-cost countermeasures, such as signalization.
Installing a traffic light there was deemed not warranted and “all-way stop control would increase delay would increase delay for U.S. Route 250 traffic,” according to an ODOT press release issued in December 2020.
Miller also said ODOT has given the city permission to install a donated silver “A” in the center of the roundabout, along with the industrial park’s existing flagpole and possibly its sign. The goal would include lighting those fixtures, too.
“Not only does this have the practical purpose of making the intersection safer, but it also will modernize that entryway into our city,” Miller said.
