Summit County’s improvement project on Kilby Road last year provoked some angst from local residents. Given that, the county solicited an independent review of the project.
The results of the study were presented to the County Council on Wednesday
We asked Council member Chris Robinson what criticism they’ve heard from locals about the Kilby project.
“We’ve had one prominent critic who wasn’t able to attend last night but who wrote us a letter,” Robinson continued. “His basic contention is that the bike lanes are improperly designed and dangerous. There’ve been other sporadic criticism that it’ll be difficult to plow snow on it because of the islands and things like that. This later issue has proven a problem and I jested that we just haven’t had a winter to test it but I think this winter was a satisfactory test.”
The Peer Review study was done by the Firm RB and G Engineering. It found some design errors, but they required a relatively easy fix.
“The study revealed that we should have designed some of the horizontal curves foot radius versus 150-foot radius the larger the radius the more gentle the turn,” Robinson explained. “That can be remedied by merely restriping the road. Where we put the painted lines, we need to restripe it anyway this Spring and so that’s not a big deal. It also revealed that we need to put in two conditional handicapped crosswalks that were in the plans but somehow slipped between the cracks. The peer review says it was an unusual design but that the bike lanes for this type needed to be at least four-feet in width. If there was a hard surface like a wall a retaining wall or something adjacent then it needed to be a minimum of five feet but that’s not our case here.”
Robinson said that basically, the Kilby project achieved its goals.
“I don’t know if we would’ve done anything in hindsight differently, but the road is accomplishing what we wanted it to do,” Robinson said. “Which was to increase capacity by having pullouts for the left-hand turning movements and slowing traffic down because you have to pay attention to it. It’s not just a straight shot it has these curves and things in it as you meander around islands and turnouts.”
