Plymouth City Engineer Dan Sellers came before the Board of Public Works and Safety to seek a study for a “road diet”.
Sellers presented the board with a contract with USI Engineering to do a study on Jefferson Street and East Lincolnway.
A road diet is a transportation technique that reduces the number of lanes on a road to improve safety and traffic flow. The extra space is then used for other purposes, such as bike lanes, parking, or transit stops.
The study would assess safety enhancements, provide conceptual ideas for ways to improve the corridor, and segment those ideas into segments by projects to possibly pursue that would enable the city to look into federal grants for those projects.
Sellers told the Board that the roadway was constructed in 1929 to provide a bypass for motorists of the city downtown. Over that time, the width of the road has become more of a city street than a highway, and said that currently, there are schools that sit on opposite sides of the road at one point, and it could be considered an obstacle to walking to school.
The contract for the study by USI would be for $40,000 and would be completed in segments already formatted to be used as applications for federal grants and could be used as such if the city should decide to pursue them.
Any federal grant award would be an 80/20 government-to-city match, and such grants are usually awarded five years before any work would take place. The study will take three months to complete. Grants are awarded between November and December each year.
Sellers told the Board that the money for the study was included in his budget for the year. It was unanimously approved.
