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Idaho Road residents dread traffic increase
By Kristine Gill
AUSTINTOWN
Idaho Road residents aren’t thrilled about the new project that will open their dead-end street to a flow of school traffic.
“Forty buses, four times a day?” said one resident, who didn’t wish to be identified. She has lived at her Idaho Road residence for close to 40 years and has watched the township grow up around her. Her home is located on the portion of Idaho that intersects with New Road.
“When we picked it, there was nothing out here. No schools, no Central Park West. There was nothing. It was just starting.”
Now she’s worried about the noise and traffic that will find its way down the dead-end street where eight houses quietly sit.
“The ones that come back here are the ones that live here or are lost,” she said. “It will have a drastic effect on us.”
Township Administrator Mike Dockry said opening the road won’t necessarily mean all buses will filter down the street.
“It will be another avenue for bus traffic,” he said. “Instead of going to Bexley [Drive] and making a left turn, drivers can now go straight there.”
The project, which Dockry said he expects will start and finish in 2012, will cost $750,000.
The school district is funding $440,000 of the project using funds from the Ohio School Facilities Commission, which provides money for off-site traffic improvements.
Dockry said the project will involve clearing out a wooded area near the road, installing storm pipes and laying asphalt. At the intersection of New and Idaho roads, crews will install a traffic light.
Though the township would not have been required to improve the road, it’s a project Dockry said the township would not have taken on alone.
“It would not have happened without the school’s money,” Dockry said.
The road improvement is part of a $50 million project that will build two elementary school buildings behind Watson Elementary and Frank Ohl Intermediate School.
Mal Culp, supervisor of facilities and operations for the district, announced approval of the project at last month’s school-board meeting, saying that it would relieve some traffic congestion around the buildings.