The city of Dayton has been awarded $2 million to reimagine U.S. 35, which currently divides neighborhoods and has a complicated network of exits.
The money will go toward a study of U.S. 35 in the city. The Biden administration has awarded similar funding across the country, aiming to reconnect communities divided by past infrastructure decisions.
U.S. 35 was completed in the 1980s. Its construction cut through thriving neighborhoods, leveling homes and businesses.
David Escobar, Dayton's city engineer, said the city will look at reconfiguring the highway’s complicated ramp system – limiting confusion for motorists.
“There's a lot of that underpass area that can be revitalized,” Escobar said. “Then we looked further and thought, how far west could we go and deal with some of the issues that we're seeing out there with speeding and at-grade crossings that are dangerous? And how can we reknit that fabric back together of those neighborhoods?”
He said they’ll also look at adding accessibility for pedestrians by considering ideas for walkways and green space. It also hopes to address public health and environmental concerns brought by the highway’s emissions.
“I want to hear the input from the citizens, from the stakeholders, from interested users,” Escobar said. “Just so we capture and are able to develop a plan that is significant and matches the needs, the desires of the region as a whole.”
Escobar says the study will likely take more than two years to complete.
Reconnecting the grid
Matt Sauer is an architect who grew up in Dayton and has worked in the city since 2007.
“It just really struck me how much the freeway influences your willingness or your desire to walk places or to bike places that are outside of the neighborhood,” Sauer said.
He’s advocated for a renovation of the U.S. 35 corridor, creating a Facebook movement in 2016 called Dayton Freeway Removal. He notes the “urban renewal” period of planning and development between the 1960s and 80s, which frequently involved demolishing African American homes and businesses for projects like highways.
The era’s car-centric urban development in Dayton plowed through the once thriving Haymarket area, leaving the city segregated by the highway’s overpasses and desolate underpasses.
“I think there's a mental barrier, and it's because you're crossing that bridge or crossing that overpass,” Sauer said. “It becomes a mental obstacle to overcome.”
Sauer said he hopes the U.S. 35 study works toward correcting some of that development, dismantling barriers created by the city’s infrastructure. And, creating a more pedestrian friendly grid.
“I really think that encourages people to walk more or to bike more, those are the kind of things that I get excited about,” Sauer said. “We're changing it physically, but we're also changing the mental map of the city.”
Sauer has advocated for full removal of U.S. 35 and said the study is a positive step toward revitalizing the corridor, even if much of the infrastructure remains intact. He predicts that if the highway was fully removed, the street grid would absorb much of its traffic, as motorists replan their trips through the city.
“The best possible outcome would be for some sort of reconnection of 35 to the grid,” Sauer said. “It would look more like maybe Far Hills, a higher speed artillery with maybe a median and trees lining all sides of it and 35 mile per hour traffic.”
The Reconnecting Communities Pilot Program that is funding the Dayton project expired at the beginning of this year. So, if not renewed, the city will have to find another funding source to bring the study’s final plans into fruition.