Neighbors voiced right-of-way and traffic safety concerns Thursday when the Toledo Department of Transportation unveiled its $5 million proposal to improve a section of Secor Road in West Toledo.
“You are taking a lot of property for [the sake of] some future projects. — It’s like a bridge to nowhere,” said Mary Karazin, one of about 150 who filled a meeting room at the Toledo Lucas County Public Library’s Sanger Branch beyond its capacity of 100, with at least 20 standing in the hallway.
Another attendee who spoke during the meeting, James Skowronski, said in an interview his concerns are also about “losing” parts of his Secor roadside property.
“They [would] move the roadway too close to my house, and I [would] have no privacy between my house and Secor,” Mr. Skowronski said. “ ... The road should be left alone or turned into a single lane in each direction.”
Physically blocking most left turns and all cross traffic with a median divider while providing wider lanes is how Toledo officials propose to reduce crashes on a trouble-prone stretch of Secor Road between Central Avenue and Kenwood Boulevard.
The proposal also calls for a new roundabout at Secor and Kenwood, replacing a traffic light there.
A few voiced concerns similar to that of Ms. Karazin’s while others talked about their traffic-safety worries.
“This will not alleviate the [traffic] problem that already exists,” said Peggy Daly-Masternak, coordinator for the I-475 Neighborhoods Coalition. “... This will bring more traffic down Secor Road. ... Many, many people will leave [the neighborhood]. And that’s the bottom line.”
Doug Stephens, acting director of public utilities and former transportation director, said the 10-foot median, pavement widening of 6 feet, and a multiuse path along Secor’s west side all can be done within the existing Secor right-of-way. Some partial, triangular land takes will be needed to build the roundabout at Kenwood, he said.
“Our goal is as much as possible to give this a neighborhood feel” while increasing safety and multi-modal choices, Mr. Stephens said.
Construction is scheduled for 2026, and Mr. Stephens said that the timing is fairly solid. The project’s $5,022,400 estimated budget includes a $4,017,920 federal grant for which the city applied to the Toledo Metropolitan Area Council of Governments three years ago, he said, while $488,130 is budgeted to come from the Ohio Public Works Commission and the rest from the city Capital Improvement Program.
A key element to the proposal is physically blocking left turns out of the Westgate Village Shopping Center’s two driveways on Secor. Both driveways now have signs and pavement markings designating them for right turns only, but motorists frequently disregard those restrictions.
Secor’s new median between Central and Kenwood would have breaks for northbound traffic to make either a U-turn just north of Westgate’s southerly entrance or a left turn into the northerly entrance. But its curbing would be designed to block anyone trying to turn left or go straight across at the northerly entrance to Markway Road from the northerly entrance.
Markway would become right-in, right-out on the northbound side of Secor, forcing westbound traffic on Markway to turn toward Central. Anyone wishing to go south on Secor or into Westgate from that neighborhood would need to approach Secor from Hughes Drive and then turn through the median.
The city did not consult with Westgate Village’s owners about the proposal, Mr. Stephens said, since “we’re not actually prohibiting anything that isn’t already prohibited,” but simply adding a physical barrier.
The median also would block all left turns to and from four side streets west of Secor and Hughes and Christie Street to its east. Motorists wishing to reach eastbound Hughes and Christie from southbound Secor would need to continue to the roundabout at Kenwood if they did not opt to enter the neighborhood from Central.
Drivers on northbound Secor would have to use the new U-turn lane between Hughes and Markway or, Mr. Stephens suggested, they could go west on Kenwood and then enter that neighborhood via Manchester Boulevard.
Secor currently has four lanes 9 feet wide over all except the northernmost few hundred feet of the project area, which results in numerous sideswipe collisions along with angle and rear-end crashes arising from left turns.
The project plan calls for the left lane to become 10 feet wide and the right lane a standard 12 feet, Mr. Stephens said. The wider right lane provides more wiggle room before vehicles hit the curb, whereas with “the inside lanes, we can take it down to 10 feet,” he said.
“As densely populated as this stretch is, to reconstruct it and make it safer but keep it narrow” is a good outcome, Sam Melden, whose Toledo City Council district includes the Westgate/Old Orchard area, said Wednesday afternoon. He conducted the meeting Thursday.
The Kenwood roundabout is proposed to have two lanes for north-south movement on Secor but only one lane on each east-west arc for Kenwood. Motorists planning to turn from Secor onto Kenwood will need to be in the proper lane for left or right as they approach.
The project does nothing about Secor’s narrowness south of Kenwood, Mr. Stephens said.
From just south of Kenwood to Bancroft Street, that narrow roadway runs along the city’s boundary with the village of Ottawa Hills, and the latter in 2017 vetoed a widening project that would have required condemning about a dozen houses.
Since then, Toledo has not talked about Secor with Ottawa Hills, but is open to discussion, Mr. Stephens said.
“That stretch of improvements right there [north of Secor] is pretty critical,” he said. “We see a lot of complaints about that.”
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