Drivers who use the Anthony Wayne Trail’s bridge over the Ohio Turnpike at the Maumee/Toledo city line likely have noticed the road’s expanse of extra pavement to the right of the northeast-bound lanes.
That extra width — provided generations ago when the Trail’s bridge over the turnpike was first built and preserved when that bridge was replaced during the mid-2000s — finally will get some use. It will be part of an upcoming Trail resurfacing project in Maumee for which the Ohio Department of Transportation recently awarded a contract.
Along with resurfacing the roadway, modifying some intersections, and installing curbs and planting street trees along its blocks closest to downtown Maumee, the upcoming $11 million project includes a multi-use path along the roadway. The bridge’s extra width on its east side and a merge lane on the west side will become sidewalks for the multi-use path, Maumee city Administrator Patrick Burtch said.
The project was developed and largely funded by the city of Maumee but managed by ODOT.
Removal of the continuous-movement merge lane, which allows all traffic turning right from southbound Detroit Avenue to the southwest-bound Trail, is among multiple changes planned at that intersection. The work seeks to simplify the intersection and make the area more pedestrian friendly.
City officials in March, 2020 held a public meeting to take comments on the most radical change. That involved severing Detroit’s southerly leg at the intersection, which will divert that roadway’s traffic to either Town Street or Country Boulevard. Those are two short streets associated with the neighboring Parkway Plaza shopping strip.
Early this month, ODOT awarded a contract of more than $11 million to the Shelly Company of Findlay for the repaving and intersection work that will stretch from the Maumee/Toledo line to Monclova Road.
While some work may begin during the current construction season, most of the project will occur in 2023 and 2024, said Kelsie Hoagland, an ODOT spokesman in Bowling Green.
What’s planned
For at least part of 2023, the Maumee project will extend a work zone in neighboring Toledo, which is rebuilding its part of the Trail between the Maumee line and Glendale Avenue.
In Maumee’s downtown area, a current 35-mph zone close to the main intersection at Conant Street will be extended as part of the new project to run between Ford and Key streets.
Also, new curbs will allow the planting of more than 1,000 new trees between the roadway and the new path. The roadway also will get “low-level, pedestrian-style lighting,” Mr. Burtch said.
Those project elements are “going to change the Anthony Wayne Trail a lot, from being a thoroughfare to being part of our community,” Maumee Mayor Richard Carr said Tuesday.
The lower speed limit near downtown won’t be the only places where drivers will have to slow down.
A right-turn lane on the Trail’s southwest-bound side at Gibbs Street will be eliminated, and a separate exit lane on the northeast-bound side just before Michigan Avenue that connects to Trailview Drive will be taken out.
In addition, drivers coming out of Toledo on southbound Detroit will no longer have a continuous green light to continue southwest on the Trail with the merge lane’s removal.
But rerouting Detroit Avenue traffic that now crosses the Trail at the city line will be the biggest change for drivers. Northbound drivers on Detroit will be able to use Country Boulevard to get onto the northeast-bound Trail a short distance to the south.
But those coming south will need to turn right onto the Trail, then left onto Town Street to get back to Detroit if that’s the way they want to go.
Study, reaction
A city traffic study from 2017 forecast that without the lightly used southerly Detroit leg, average traffic delay at the intersection would be cut in half and crashes would be reduced by 24 percent, including a 39 percent reduction in injury or fatal crashes. The Trail/Detroit intersection had the seventh-most crashes in Maumee during both 2014 and 2015, according to a study summary.
"Removing the south leg of the intersection allows for extra signal time that can be reallocated to better serve the major traffic movements of the AWT and the busier north leg of Detroit Avenue," the summary stated. "It allows for improved progression of traffic and reduces delays and traffic queues that currently build up during peak traffic periods."
Eliminating Detroit's southerly leg also will allow the stop bar on the northeast-bound Trail to be moved forward, which will allow creation of a better crosswalk governed by countdown walk signals, the city study noted.
All of the feedback Maumee received about severing Detroit was positive, Mayor Carr said, and it should promote an eventual development of the former Value City store site on Detroit’s east side south of the turnpike. The mayor said he expects that property to be redeveloped for residences in the future.
“That’s going to be some prime residential real estate, but the price is too high now,” the mayor said.
Mr. Burtch said continuing the multi-use path across the bridge over the turnpike, meanwhile, will allow it to continue along a path he expects the city of Toledo to build on its side of the city line. The path would then connect to the Chessie Circle Trail on the former Toledo Terminal Railroad route a short distance away.
At least for now, however, there is no plan for that connection to be built.
Amy Voigt, a Toledo city spokesman, said it isn’t in the city’s plans. Scott Carpenter, a spokesman for Metroparks Toledo, which owns that stretch of the Chessie Circle, said his agency isn’t building it, either.
Any such link would involve crossing part of a 15.6-acre, landlocked parcel of vacant land belonging to America First Title Agency, Inc., trustee. The multi-use path planned along Maumee’s part of the Trail is to be built on right-of-way the city already owns.
Toledo’s project to add a multi-use path along the Trail between the Chessie Circle and Glendale Avenue is the subject of an ongoing eminent-domain lawsuit. The suit involves the city and the Toledo Country Club, which objects not only to the land take but also to the liability hazard it says wayward golf balls would pose to path users.
First Published August 23, 2022, 11:40 p.m.
