By David Skolnick

skolnick@vindy.com

YOUNGSTOWN

City council is expected Wednesday to approve legislation authorizing the board of control to enter into agreements with the Ohio Department of Transportation for improvement work to main streets that won’t start in one case until 2022.

The reason for the legislation is to get lengthy design work started this year as it may not be finished until 2019, said Charles Shasho, the city’s deputy director of public works.

In total, there are three projects.

One would start in 2019 along Fifth Avenue from Federal Street to the Madison Avenue Expressway and cost about $3 million with the state paying 80 percent and the city paying the rest. The work includes paving, storm-sewer separation, curbing, sidewalk replacements, a landscaping median near Stambaugh Stadium and creating turning lanes in sections where there currently are three lanes in each direction, Shasho said.

The work should take six months to complete, he said.

Another project won’t begin until 2022 and improve Front Street from the Marshall Street Bridge to South Avenue. The work would cost about $1.24 million with the same 80/20 split as the Fifth Avenue project, and primarily be paving, curbing and sidewalk improvements, Shasho said.

The project should take four months to complete, he said.

Neither street would be closed during the improvement work, Shasho said.

The third project on council’s agenda would cost about $3.14 million for traffic signals on the stretches of Fifth Avenue and Front Street that will be improved as well as Wick Avenue between Commerce Street to the Eastbound Service Road of the Madison Avenue Expressway, Shasho said.

The signals are scheduled to be replaced in 2021, but the city is trying to move the project up to 2019, Shasho said. The cost is being covered by a state program using federal funding, he said.

Wick from Wood Street to Eastbound Service Road has been closed since October 2016 for a $4.1 million improvement project. That work, scheduled to be finished in September, includes moving above-ground utility poles underground, replacing two waterlines with one, replacing a sewer line, installing new traffic lights, reducing the three-lane road to two lanes with the middle being a turning lane, plus paving and new signs.