Riverside will receive a total of $700,000 to accomplish this task and to develop a safety action plan.
“The idea behind the plans is to identify opportunities to reduce things like traffic fatalities, incursions or excursions off of the roadway,” Josh Rauch, the city manager for Riverside, said.
The safety action plan will look at Woodman and Harshman Roads near Wright Patterson Air Force Base. This corridor, which also includes State Route 835, is important to the city.
Not only does it stretch the entirety of the city from south to north, it also is the only way for employees of Wright Patterson to get to work.
“This corridor is the one thing that the entire city has in common,” Riverside’s mayor Peter Williams said. “Everybody in the city is close to Harshman Road in the north, Woodman Drive in the south side, [and] State Route 835. So it’s very important to us as a major connector. It’s our main commercial corridor.”
However, the corridor isn’t always safe. People often speed around curves, often resulting in cars going off road.
“We have a lot of cars that perhaps go around the curves on Harshman a little too quickly, and they wind up inside the base and into the base fence,” Rauch said. “[It] creates a bit of a headache for all of us, especially the drivers.”
There is also a concrete barrier that has suffered from decades of collisions with vehicles and Ohio’s weather, resulting in expensive repairs and upkeep.
Finally, there are pedestrians and cyclists to consider as well.
“On a typical day, I can say very anecdotally, you’ll see people just walking next to the road, either on the shoulder or in the grass,” Williams said.
There aren’t any sidewalks in the corridor, resulting in locals walking in unsafe conditions to get to a public bus stop. There aren’t any crosswalks as well, resulting in a potentially dangerous crossing for pedestrians.
But officials are optimistic and excited to get to work.
“I just keep coming back to what a tremendous opportunity this is for our community to continue moving forward and trying to build a place that our residents can grow into for the next 10, 20, 30, 40, even 50 years,” Rauch said.
“This kind of big swing that we’re taking at redefining, reconfiguring and rebuilding the Woodman corridor. It’s a big deal for us, and it’s really a once in a lifetime opportunity for the city to do this,” Williams said.
Riverside is still working on the final details with the U.S. Department of Transportation.
