Local News

City splitting Amos Road traffic study cost, seeking grant for corridor work

Traffic flow along Amos Road will continue to increase as developers keep building homes.

 

City officials know there is no easy solution to the problem that intensifies with traffic arriving and leaving both Loper Elementary School and the Golden Bear Preschool. 

 

With both the city and the housing developers in need of a traffic study, the cost of such an operation is being split.

 

Westport Homes, which is currently expanding the Twin Lakes subdivision and is closing in on the groundbreaking for a nearly 200-home subdivision further south, and Davis Homes, which is proposing a new subdivision near the preschool, will share costs of a full traffic study along with the city.

 

"We are splitting the cost with those developers that need that study," said Adam Rude, City of Shelbyville Plan Director. "We can get a traffic study of the entire road and see how we can fix the issues.

 

"Some things are obvious to fix but this one is not obvious and then will it be worth it to fix?"

 

Rude discussed the traffic study with the Board of Works Tuesday morning at its weekly meeting at City Hall. That prompted board member David Finkel to ask that the traffic study be done while school is in session to identify how congested Amos Road gets during student drop off and pick up.

 

Rude does not expect the traffic study to commence until later next month.

 

"There is still a lot of work to do before the counters go out," he said. "We will need to identify peak school days and peak non-school days. We will have to try to account for all the variations -- weekends will be different, what are the peak and non-peak times and mornings and evenings."

 

Corridor work

 

With the downtown redevelopment project in its final months, the city is already looking ahead at how to improve the State Road 9 corridor from Rampart Road south to the N. Harrison St. bridge.

 

In conjunction with the design group Taylor, Siekfer and Williams, the city will pursue grant money after a preliminary design and budget is created.

 

"There are a lot of infrastructure dollars coming down the pipeline," said Rude. "Shovel-ready projects will be funded first."

 

The city will look for aesthetic improvements such as street lights and sidewalks to the corridor that funnels south from Interstate 74 into downtown Shelbyville.

 

The entire stretch of road, now controlled by the city, also will need to be redone.

 

Rude expects the design phase to continue into late 2021 with grant money being awarded in 2022 which could push the start of the project into 2023.

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