It’s 6 p.m. on Monday, and traffic is at a standstill on Conant Street in uptown Maumee.
Police Chief Josh Sprow briskly clicks on his laptop, checking street cameras and intersections.
“There is no perfect route right now,” he said. “There’s definitely a construction fatigue.”
Compounding the traffic that tries to squeeze into two lanes, plus a turn lane, on Conant Street, is the untimed traffic signals, Chief Sprow said.
“One of the bigger problems we have is these lights are out of timing,” he said after Monday’s city council meeting. “I am very confident, once the new controllers get put in, a lot of our issues uptown are going to be eliminated.”
The controllers will incorporate artificial intelligence and will monitor and regulate traffic past the uptown area, Chief Sprow said.
“The new controllers that are going in, that set the cycles and all that other stuff, will be between Illinois Avenue and the bridge, but then will also tie in all of the Anthony Wayne Trail,” he said. “They will be able to communicate, and they have the capability to learn traffic patterns.
“I am confident that the uptown will function properly when the lights are fixed,” Chief Sprow said, adding there is not an official timeline to install them.
In the meantime, city officials have no tolerance for drivers encroaching into an intersection when the traffic signal turns red, Chief Sprow said.
Last weekend, an Ohio State Highway Patrol officer was posted on the corner of Conant and the Trail. He waved over drivers to cite them if they came into an intersection after a light change.
“There’s no doubt that people are also impatient and blocking intersections, which, once you block that intersection, then now you screw up the traffic the other way,” Chief Sprow said. “We do write tickets.
“If you can’t make it through the intersection, you shouldn’t go,” he added.
A spokesman at Maumee Municipal Court on Friday said the number of citations for blocked intersection could not be immediately accessed.
Maumee City Council President Gabriel Barrow said even a pedestrian punching a crosswalk button can throw a “lightning bolt” into Conant right now.
“We’re real anxious to get those in place,” he said about the controllers. “It’s a process; everything doesn’t happen at once.”
Bumper to bumper
Traffic through Maumee most of the day is slow or stopped through the uptown area, down Conant Street, from the Trail to the Fort Meigs Memorial Bridge over the Maumee River into Perrysburg.
Orange barrels crowd many streets as road projects are ramping up on Ford Street and the Trail. There’s also an entrance ramp being repaved on I-475 between Maumee and Waterville.
At Monday’s council meeting, Mayor Jim MacDonald said road construction through town has resumed in full force.
“All around us, it’s created increased traffic. The expressway is causing a lot of traffic to come into our town,” he said. “Really, patience will prevail the day.”
The eastbound U.S. 24 entrance ramp to southbound I-475 will be closed for a couple more weeks, opening sometime in May, according to Kelsie Hoagland, public information officer for the Ohio Department of Transportation. The ramp is being resurfaced, she said.
The westbound U.S. 24 ramp to southbound I-475 will be closed the entire summer, she said.
The posted detour is for drivers to go northbound on I-475 and flip around at the Dussel Drive exit, not go through Maumee, Ms. Hoagland said.
ODOT is overseeing the city’s $11.65 million Trail project, repairing and resurfacing between Detroit Avenue and Monclova Road.
“That job is really fulfilling what Maumee envisioned,” said Patrick McColley, ODOT’s district deputy director in Bowling Green.
The project will add curbing, trees, and turn lanes and reduce speeds to 35 mph.
“You’re seeing a lot of communities [contemplating] how do they add more life to their downtown,” he said. As a Napoleon city councilman, Mr. McColley said he was part of an initiative to widen sidewalks and add seating areas downtown.
“There are different mechanisms and visions to revitalizing and reimagining the downtowns,” he said.
The interstate approach — or a way to drive quickly to a destination — has not been abandoned.
I-475 is being widened to three lanes. There is also going to be a 20A exit that will drop drivers just past Illinois Avenue in Maumee opening later this year, Mr. McColley said.
“There’s always other ways. It’s really up to where the driver needs to go and the best way to get there,” he said.
Strongest Town
This week, Maumee won the Strongest Town contest, beating Norfolk, Neb., Grand Rapids, Mich., and Selma, N.C., among others.
A strong town is any town, big or small, that prioritizes making progress in transportation, housing, and fiscal resiliency for the long-term benefit of its people.
In an interview for the contest, Maumee Administrator Patrick Burtch talked about the challenges of implementing the Strong Towns philosophy.
“Not everybody in Maumee loves what we’re doing. It’s inconvenient sometimes — although intentional. We intentionally have tried to slow traffic down and some people are frustrated by that,” he said.
They try to educate people on the Strong Towns concept, Mr. Burtch said. The city has purchased over 250 copies of the Strong Towns books to hand out to citizens, he said.
“We know at some point you have to do what you think is right, and then duck,” Mr. Burtch said. “Some people aren’t going to like it, and you’re going to have to educate people on a long-term basis. We’ve found a lot of people coming around to this theory.
“We live, sleep, and breathe this concept,” he said. “We understand that this is transformative. We’re going in the right direction. It just takes a while for people to recognize it.”
In addition to the road changes, the city has also added 2,000 trees and 217 parking spaces in the uptown area.
Charles Marohn, Jr., is the founder and president of Strong Towns; he also wrote the books Strong Towns: A Bottom-up Revolution to Rebuild American Prosperity and Confessions of a Recovering Engineer: Transportation for a Strong Town .
In a Friday interview, he said narrowing streets and making them more friendly for pedestrians and bicyclists costs less money, improves the tax base, and makes areas safer.
“In general, we spend a lot of money over-building, over-engineering, and over-designing our streets,” Mr. Marohn said. “It’s not only really expensive, it also tends to lead to development that is not financially productive.
“It also tends to be very dangerous, people tend to drive faster, there are a lot of conflicts with pedestrians, biking and walking, and cars trying to turn,” he said.
He acknowledged that the Strong Towns approach is different and a change. Maumee, Mr. Marohn said, needs to be praised for its commitment.
“We’re not saying that Maumee is the greatest city there ever was, but if you want to be smart about ... investing in and developing your city, cities around the country can learn a lot from Maumee, Ohio,” he said.
Over 60,000 votes were cast during the Strongest Town contest. Half of the votes were from Strong Towns membership.
“Internally, a lot of it did come down to the local leadership. They were taking some strong incremental steps to improve things,” Mr. Marohn said of Maumee’s edge.
The Strong Towns philosophy is meant for Maumee, Mr. Barrow said.
“Our road diet is meant to slow traffic down, not stop it,” he said, adding there have already been improvements in quality of life uptown. “It’s safer and quieter. You used to ... sit at Dale’s [Bar and Grill] or one of the restaurants there, and you couldn’t even hear yourself talk because of all the traffic that was flying by. And now it’s safe.”
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