Columbus officials want Near East Side drivers to slow their roll.
That's the goal of a pilot project launching soon in the King-Lincoln Bronzeville neighborhood that aims to calm traffic and reduce fatal crashes around the city. Columbus will work on what it calls a "Slow Zone" on streets between I-71 and Nelson Road north of East Broad Street and south of I-670.
Columbus Transportation Planning Manager Brian Ashworth said the city is ironing out the details, but the project could include lower speed limits, pedestrian-friendly infrastructure projects and some collaboration with the police department to deter speeding.
"Other more permanent solutions could be speed humps or speed tables or raised intersections. But those are all things that we would be first pulling together our (Department of Public Service) team to help us establish what that toolkit could include," Ashworth said.
The funding for all of this came from the U.S. Department of Transportation Safe Streets for All grant program. The city will spend more than $200,000 on the initial part of the project.
Ashworth said the program could be expanded to other neighborhoods in the future. He said the Near East Side has several crashes with serious injuries and fatalities yearly, which prompted authorities to choose the area for the pilot project.
"It's already seeing several crashes, some of them being serious injuries or fatalities. But we also do collect a lot of 311s in this area and a lot of others. But certainly we get a lot of 311s about wanting to see lower speed limits," Ashworth said.
Lowering a speed limit on East Broad Street may take some work, because it is also a state highway. The project will also address other major arterial roads like Mt. Vernon Avenue as well as neighborhood side streets.
