‘Road diet’ proposed to Delaware City Council would trim Sandusky St. from 5 lanes to 3

DELAWARE — Some people think there will be flying cars by 2050, but GPD Group traffic engineer Kevin Westbrooks said Sandusky Street will see about 1,000 more cars per day by then.

Westbrooks and Delaware City Engineer Jonathan Owen gave a presentation to Delaware City Council on Monday describing what a Sandusky Street “road diet” would look like, and ultimately determined that trimming the street to three lanes could be good for the downtown area in the future.

“The purpose of the study, and really what the study is, is to evaluate Sandusky Street from Olentangy Avenue north to Central Avenue to determine if a road diet is feasible,” Owen said.

Owen and Westbrooks analyzed what the impacts of taking North Sandusky Street from four lanes without a designated turn lane to two lanes with a turn lane in the middle would be on traffic operations, safety and parking.

They also looked at this scenario for South Sandusky Street, taking four lanes with a turn lane in the middle to two lanes and keeping the turn lane in the middle.

Additionally, Owen said having this traffic analysis already done will help the city guide future decisions if officials decide to pursue a downtown streetscape project, or reconfigure Sandusky Street.

“We’re not advancing the construction of a streetscape, but we do want to have this traffic study in place to inform future decisions,” Owen said. “So why are we doing it now?”

Owen answered his own question: Members of council looked at parts of Sandusky Street’s traffic analysis in 2021 as part of the Downtown Delaware Action Plan, there is a potential Columbia Gas line project looming and the city plans to resurface parts of South Sandusky down the road.

“If [the Columbia Gas] project advances, we want to be able to tell Columbia Gas where to put their gas line,” Owen said.

“Then we have some future pavement resurfacing on South Sandusky that we want to be able to know if we can change the lanes, or add bike lanes and these sorts of things.”

Owen added that “in a few years” the city will likely look at repaving Sandusky Street starting around the city hall area and continuing south.

Nothing was approved relating to the project. The presentation was a largely a listening and learning exercise.

What are the benefits and data behind this?

Owen said the potential benefits from decreasing the amount of lanes include additional sidewalk space, more on-street parking, bicycle lanes and shorter pedestrian crosswalks.

“[The Downtown Delaware Action Plan in 2021] looked at the downtown area, produced some renderings and it basically proposed things like a streetscape that would reduce the number of lanes on Sandusky in the downtown area,” Owen said.

“However with that study, no traffic analysis was done to really see how this would work from a traffic standpoint, thus the study we recently prepared.”

Westbrooks shared the following vehicular and pedestrian safety numbers:

Westbrooks said it’s typical to look at three years for a traffic study. The 141 total crashes is “quite a few” and is “a little concerning” but is not a “terrible” number and noted that it “could be better.”

“[For the crashes in red, I] can’t guarantee that a [road diet] will get rid of all of them, but it certainly will help,” he added. “All of those [crashes in red] total up to be 106 of the 141, its about 75 percent.

“A road diet is one of the single most effective things to reduce crashes in a corridor like this. We have the potential to get rid of 75 percent of the crashes through there, so from a safety standpoint, man, there sure is a lot of benefit in my mind.”

More data behind this

Westbrooks told council that Sandusky Street experiences in the range of 8,000 cars per day. By 2050, he estimated the street could see 9,080.

Additionally, William Street would climb to 16,250 cars per day and Central Avenue could see 11,690. He did not say how many cars William and Central see per day today.

“There’s kind of a rule of thumb when it comes to road diets, if it’ll work or if it won’t,” Westbrooks said. “10,000 [cars per day] and under, usually you’re good to go and you can do one without too much thinking.

” Greater than 10,000 up to 15,000, you probably should think about it a little bit.”

With the safety issues, number of side streets, amount of turning vehicles and the fact the corridor figures are on the edge of the rule of thumb, Westbrook said this is why the traffic analysis was done.

Levels of service analysis

Westbrooks explained there are levels of service (LOS) when looking at a traffic study and they work similar to school report cards with an A-to-F system.

“A, B, C and even D is considered acceptable in traffic flow,” he said. “You get into E and F, and that’s when you’re starting to get gridlock. F is definitely unacceptable. E, if its maybe just the left turns are in E, maybe you’re OK. But you shoot for that A, B and C — D if you got to go there.”

Below is how different streets around Delaware scored according to this system:

“After all this analysis, we feel pretty comfortable that this is going to work,” Westbrooks said.

“You can go down to three lanes, things are going to operate well, we’re not going to have a parking lot and actually some things are going to be a little bit better than they are today.”

What about the possible new space? Next steps?

Should this road diet be implemented, Sandusky Street would have 26 feet of extra space on the northern end and the crosswalks would be 26 feet shorter, a pedestrian safety benefit Westbrooks highlighted.

The top image below shows the existing layout on North Sandusky Street, and the bottom image shows what the layout could look like for this section of the street with a road diet:

“The southern end … I think its five lanes and then goes down to three, going down to a three-lane, you’re picking up a good 17 feet of space that again is shrinking up your crosswalks and opening that space up for another use,” Westbrooks said.

The top image below shows the existing layout on South Sandusky Street, and the bottom image shows what the layout could look like for this section of the street with a road diet:

“Next steps could look like, if we repave South Sandusky Street in a few years, we have the very easy potential to redo the striping and pavement markings and can plan for the Columbia Gas project,” Owen said.

“In this year’s adopted capital improvement budget, we actually have some council-approved funding for taking the next steps and doing some preliminary engineering. This could involve some actual field surveying, some preliminary layouts, public involvement and that sort of thing.”

Owen added that the city could put out a Request for Qualifications (RFQ) to the engineering community this fall, receive proposals and make a selection this year. This would mean the preliminary engineering work would get moving next year.

“The bottom line result is that going down to three lanes is very doable, both in the downtown core and going south,” Owen said.