THE PLAINS, Ohio — Around 50 people attended a public meeting Wednesday night to learn more about and comment on the Ohio Department of Transportation’s plans to install two roundabouts at the intersection of on U.S. 33 and State Route 682 in The Plains.
Starting next year, ODOT wants to replace a traffic light on the westbound ramp and a stop sign on the eastbound ramp with roundabouts. Wednesday night’s meeting at The Plains Community Park featured project mock-ups, engineers and other information presented to the public.
ODOT District 10 Public Information Officer Ashley Rittenhouse added in an email Thursday that the project is estimated to cost $2 million. From 2017–2022, nine crashes have occurred at the intersections where the roundabouts are proposed, four of which were injury crashes.
Among those at the meeting was Athens County Commissioner Charlie Adkins, who told the Independent, “My issue is Johnson Road,” which closed more than two years ago, despite objections from local officials and residents.
“I think [Johnson Road] should have a right turn. I think it’s totally ridiculous they don’t have a right turn. They could even (have) added onto it a little bit, to allow people to get over,” Adkins said. “I was totally against them closing it.”
The Plains Volunteer Fire Department Chief Dave Williams also disagreed with the Johnson Road closure as well as the proposed roundabouts.
“If I leave my station in light traffic conditions … driving the speed limit, going down Johnson Road, it takes me 2 minutes and 11 seconds to get to route 33,” Williams said. “If I leave the station, go up 682 to go through the interchange and back down to Johnson Road, it takes me 3 minutes and 30 seconds. It’s almost a minute and a half longer. Like I told them, it can be a difference in somebody’s life.”
Williams also expressed concern over construction, especially because The Plains VFD is the first responder to Chauncey via a mutual aid agreement. “How much are they going to delay me getting through? It’s an unknown,” he said. “Their big thing is safety — well, they’re not regarding the safety of the rest of the community.”
Williams suggested reopening Johnson Road and installing a merge lane, as well as perhaps installing traffic lights at the U.S. 33 and SR 682 intersections, instead.
Another attendee, who declined to share her name with the Independent, was unpleasantly surprised to learn at the meeting that the plans call for modifications to her driveway. She was not notified before the meeting, she said.
“They want to take this whole corner of my property [and] reroute my driveway to be in the middle of the roundabout,” she said. “Because that’s a great solution.”
Rittenhouse clarified in an email: “There will be a need to acquire additional right of way for the project. These would be strips along the edge of the existing right of way and will not involve purchasing residences. With how closely the drive and Sunset Lane are to the ramp intersection, it is better to integrate all of these access points into one roundabout instead of having multiple, closely spaced access points/intersections.”
According to Rittenhouse, traffic signals typically increase the number of crashes that occur — whereas roundabouts reduce crashes by 35%, and injury crashes by 76%.
“A roundabout is also more effective at alleviating congestion than a signal,” Rittenhouse said in an email. “Adding another traffic signal for the eastbound ramps would cause more delay and could cause traffic to block the Sunset lane intersection. One of the benefits of roundabouts is it doesn’t require bridge widening to accommodate storage of left turning vehicles. With two [closely] spaced traffic signals at an interchange, a left turn lane is typically required across the bridge.”
A red circle marks the location of a driveway included in a roundabout. Keri Johnson / Athens County Independent
Meredith Erlewine, the Athens City-County Health Department coordinator for Creating Healthy Communities, expressed concern for pedestrian and bike traffic through the proposed roundabouts. In her opinion, the current intersections are not particularly safe for those not traveling in automobiles — the safest part, when traveling by foot in the area, she said, is the bridge.
“It’s like the only place that you feel like you can tell what you should be doing or that you have somewhere to be, but then it’s very, like, unclear how to make your way across the whole thing,” Erlewine said.
ODOT District 10 Capital Programs Administrator Planning Engineer Alan Craig assured Erlewine that the roads would be built with curb cuts to accommodate foot traffic.
“We’re not gonna build sidewalks all the way through since we’re not doing anything with the bridge,” he said, adding that the road shoulders would be built wide enough “so that in the future, a sidewalk or path could be added.”
Craig told the Independent that the origins of the roundabout developed from the Johnson Road closure. “We told people that we would take a look at this interchange and this is a result of doing that,” he said. Traffic count data was collected during the school year, he noted.
Craig said that he had heard the same concerns from several people at the Wednesday evening forum.
“There’s people concerned about access to the properties during construction,” Craig said. “There’s people that’s concerned about having enough gaps, or time, to turn from a side road onto the highway. That’s probably been the most prominent question.”
ODOT says it wants to make the U.S. 33 corridor safer. “And part of that is trying to reduce the reliance on at-grade intersections … where you don’t have a bridge crossing the highway,” Craig said. “You have to make a left turn or right” in an intersection, whereas an interchange uses bridges to separate roads.
ODOT always accepts feedback, Rittenhouse stated, and comments received regarding The Plains project within the next 30 days “helps us determine if we’ve overlooked anything and see if we are on the right track.” Comments to ODOT may be submitted online here.
