The Secor Road corridor between Central Avenue and I-475, once blighted by a vacant supermarket and an empty lot where a cinema once stood, is booming again, but with that revival comes traffic congestion.
And while pending construction of the Secor Gardens commercial project on a former hotel site on Secor’s east side north of Executive Parkway portends to add to the chronic afternoon backups, City Councilman Tom Waniewski said that problem could be eased if the city were to follow a traffic study’s recommendations and alter the timings of nearby traffic signals.
In particular, Mr. Waniewski said Monday, the amount of time allocated for left turns from southbound Secor to eastbound I-475 should be shortened to allow a longer green for northbound traffic.
Northbound Secor routinely backs up from I-475 past Executive Parkway in the afternoon, and the study prepared for developer Secor Executive, LLC by DGL Consulting Engineers Inc. of Maumee predicts the Secor Gardens project will add just under 200 daily vehicle trips to peak-hour traffic volume between Executive Parkway and the freeway.
Mr. Waniewski said it seems obvious enough to him that lengthening the green for northbound Secor would help traffic.
“An eight-second adjustment would do wonders for that traffic flow,” Mr. Waniewski said. “It just seems to make common sense.”
The study report found delay time to be even worse on the eastbound I-475 exit to Secor, but said the current “unacceptable” congestion there could be reduced to an “acceptable” level with “moderate timing changes” to signals.
The consultants recommended several changes to signals at Executive Parkway to accommodate altered traffic flow there. While two signalized driveway intersections and the Central Avenue intersection all now have “acceptable” service levels, adopting a new timing plan for that entire section of Secor would help there too, DGL said.
Sherri Frederick, Toledo’s transportation commissioner, said her division is indeed reviewing the consultant’s report.
“We are going to be implementing some of those recommendations,” particularly regarding signal timings near Secor Gardens, she said Monday evening.
Mr. Waniewski said the city should also look at restricting the northerly of the two private driveway intersections south of Executive to right turns only, which would eliminate a stoplight and its associated congestion there.
“We haven’t looked at that yet,” Mrs. Frederick said, noting that changes to private property access farther south was beyond the scope of DGL’s work for its client.
“The real problem is there’s too much traffic for the lanes we have,” she said.
The only one of the seven intersections studied where the consultants said “geometric changes” might be needed is Secor and Monroe Street, already well known as one of Toledo’s most congested corners.
The report did not make any specific recommendations for design changes there, but Doug Stephens, Toledo’s commissioner of engineering services, said a “safety project” planned for 2019 will make two changes that should help once construction is finished.
Those changes are addition of a right-turn lane on northbound Secor approaching Monroe and construction of a median on Secor just north of I-475 to prevent left turns in and out of the parking lot at what is now a Kroger supermarket — albeit one Kroger wants to replace, controversially, with a larger store on the other side of Secor.
Mr. Stephens said the city also has a “safety project” on tap next year to add a median on Central just west of Secor, also to prevent left turns to and from driveways that contribute to congestion and accidents.
While not directly on Secor, he said, that work should improve traffic flow through the Secor-Central intersection.
Toledo spent $6.5 million four years ago to rebuild Secor between Central and Monroe, including replacement of a water main beneath the street. Mr. Stephens said the smaller projects scheduled for 2018 and 2019 couldn’t also be done then because the extra money — including 90 percent federal funding — wasn’t available then.
They are also separate from a controversial widening project the city is planning for Secor south of Central. That project will be the subject of a public meeting at 6 p.m. today at Old Orchard Elementary School on Cheltenham Road.
Contact David Patch at: dpatch@theblade.com or 419-724-6094.
First Published January 31, 2017, 5:00 a.m.
