ThisWeek CW 01/22/2015
http://www.thisweeknews.com/content/stories/canalwinchester/news/2015/01/19/officials-regrouping-after-opwc-rejects-request.html
City officials are trying to determine their next step after learning that Canal Winchester will not receive state funds to improve the intersection of Gender and Groveport roads.
Public Works Director Matt Peoples told Canal Winchester City Council Jan. 5 the Ohio Public Works Commission had rejected a grant application submitted by the city in 2014, which officials hoped would fund Phase 4 of the Gender Road project.
“Unfortunately, Gender Road Phase 4 was not approved by OPWC, so we’ll have to take a close look at the scoring and determine where we missed before deciding how to move forward,” Peoples said.
The proposed Phase 4 improvements were meant to ease congestion at the intersection of Gender and Groveport roads. The plan was to increase traffic capacity through the intersection by adding more dedicated turn lanes and through lanes.
Council voted in August to submit the grant application.
At the time, City Engineer Adam Voris, of EMH&T, explained that the nearly $1.6-million project should reduce intersection wait times and congestion through 2034, based on traffic studies and projections the city had completed.
“A couple of features of the project will include extending the bicycle path west from the intersection by several hundred feet, and we will reduce the wait time with two dedicated turn lanes on northbound Gender Road, along with additional right-turn lanes and two dedicated through lanes,” Voris said in August.
He said eventually, the bicycle path could connect to the new Walnut Woods Metro Park and then to Groveport’s trail system.
Residents in the area, particularly on the south side of Groveport Road, had expressed concerns about losing some of the property that buffers their yards and houses from the intersection, as well as the potential for increasing traffic.
The city responded by engineering the project to take advantage of available space north of the intersection as a way of allaying residents’ fears.
Peoples said city officials still believe the project is needed to improve traffic congestion at the intersection.
“Our plan is to analyze the OPWC scores the application received and see if we are able to increase them to make it a more competitive project,” he said. “We will then determine if we want to submit another OPWC application in late summer.
“At this point, we have not targeted any additional or alternate funding sources,” he added.