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Despite population loss, traffic congestion persists
YOUNGSTOWN
The Mahoning Valley is faced with the paradox of traffic congestion along some key roads and at certain major intersections, despite many decades of population decline triggered by job losses.
U.S. Census figures show Mahoning County’s population has declined steadily from its peak of 303,424 in 1970 to 238,823 in 2010.
Trumbull County’s population has declined steadily from its peak of 241,863 in 1980 to 210,312 in the most-recent complete Census in 2010.
The explanations for this paradox vary, depending on the specific locations.
Interstate 80
The Ohio Department of Transportation kicked off on June 16 the repaving and widening of six miles of Interstate 80 from Austintown to Liberty to accommodate increasing truck traffic on this major cross-country route.
The Mahoning Valley is a “major convergence point” for interstate highways, noted Hunter Morrison, senior adviser to the Northeast Ohio Sustainable Communities Consortium, a long-range regional planning organization.
That three-year, $108.4 million safety-improvement project will widen the road from four to six lanes and include replacement of six bridges.
“We have over 60,000 vehicles [a day] passing through the area. They’re not all staying in our area,” said Kathleen Rodi, transportation director at the Eastgate Regional Council of Governments, which is the metropolitan planning agency for Mahoning and Trumbull counties.
“As engineers, our goal is to have safe roadways, regardless of where they live,” Rodi said of road users.
One third of the vehicles using that section of I-80 are trucks, said John Picuri, ODOT project manager.
In 2004, trucks constituted less than 25 percent of that traffic, Rodi said.
“It’s projected to continue to increase significantly for the next 20 years,” said John Getchey, Eastgate’s executive director, referring to the truck traffic there.
“Shippers are preferring truck” to rail transportation because truck transportation goes directly, door-to-door, to all locations, Morrison explained.
“It’s also a reflection of international trade growth,” Morrison said of the truck-traffic increase.
major retail areas
Locally, traffic congestion issues have plagued Trumbull County along the U.S. Route 422 corridor in Niles and Warren and Mahoning County along U.S. Route 224 in Poland, Boardman and Canfield.
Much of that congestion is related to traffic going to retail establishments in and near the major regional shopping malls, Eastwood Mall in Niles and Southern Park Mall in Boardman, which draw customers from multiple counties.
“There’s a destination there” for shoppers, Rodi said.
Some of the congestion is linked to population shifts in recent decades from central cities to suburban areas, Morrison said.
Many road construction and traffic-flow improvement projects in recent years have been designed to alleviate traffic congestion and improve safety along the U.S. Route 224 corridor in Mahoning County, Rodi noted.
These have included synchronization of traffic lights to improve traffic flow, addition of turning lanes at the intersections of Route 224 with Clingan Road, South Avenue and Lockwood Boulevard, and the addition last year of a turning lane and a traffic signal where southbound Interstate 680 traffic exits onto Route 224, Rodi said.
The current $6.5 million replacement of the bridge carrying Route 224 over state Route 11 in Canfield also will include addition of turning lanes.
“Generally, what’s happened here and in other parts of Northeast Ohio is development has shifted from one part of the metro area to another, and you’ve seen additional development — housing, commercial and industrial — in places that had little 20, 30 or 40 years ago,” Morrison explained.
“It’s not a growth, but it’s a shift” from older to newer parts of the metropolitan area, Morrison said.
Despite the many areas of the Mahoning Valley where traffic congestion occurs, the traffic backups here are not nearly as severe as in larger metropolitan areas, observed Ken Sympson, Eastgate’s transportation improvement manager.
inadEquate planning
Fifty to 60 years ago, before the major indoor shopping malls opened here, community planners lacked some of the strategies currently in use for traffic management in major retail areas, Morrison said.
“The way we handle traffic in retail and commercial districts today is quite a bit different from what was done back then,” Morrison said.
“The parallel feeder roadways, the setbacks, [the effort] to minimize curb cuts — things that you routinely do today in newer developments, both for aesthetic and traffic control purposes, weren’t known at the time,” he explained.
Outlying areas
Traffic congestion has gone well beyond the Route 224 shopping strip to Western Reserve Road, where an additional turning lane will be installed as part of the current $8.9 million replacement and widening of the bridge that carries Western Reserve Road over I-680.
That bridge, which closed for 75 days beginning June 15, carries an average of 21,800 vehicles a day.
Some 14,400 vehicles a day from outside Mahoning County normally pass through the I-680 and Western Reserve Road intersection, Rodi said.
The congestion extends to the stop signs at Western Reserve Road’s Five Points intersection with Springfield and North Lima roads, where a roundabout will be built in 2017 to improve traffic flow and safety.
Much of the congestion results from Columbiana County and Pennsylvania residents using the I-680 interchange with Western Reserve Road, Rodi explained.
The I-680 exit to Western Reserve Road is the last free exit for southbound traffic before the I-680 interchange with the Ohio Turnpike, where tolls are charged.
Additional residential and commercial development in southern Mahoning County add to the congestion, Rodi said.
entertainment venues
Mahoning Valley traffic congestion isn’t limited to the suburbs.
It occurs near Youngs-town’s Covelli Centre on major event days, Rodi noted.
It also occurs along Mahoning Avenue in Warren when major events are scheduled at Packard Music Hall and at the riverfront amphitheater in Perkins Park, Rodi added.