Kettering, Oakwood to start $2.1 million Shroyer Road improvements

A $2.1 million improvement project for Shroyer Road is scheduled to begin later this year, thanks to funds from Montgomery County, Kettering and Oakwood.

The stretch in Oakwood will be different for drivers after the work is finished.

Kettering currently has $340,000 dedicated to its portion of the project, while Oakwood shoulders $536,000 of the financial burden. A $1.3 million grant from the Miami Valley Regional Planning Commission was awarded to both cities in an effort to help fund the two-mile road improvement project.

“It’s one big project that’s really two major components,” Kettering Assistant City Manager Steve Bergstresser said.

For Kettering, the project will run from the Stroop Road intersection to the Oakwood city limits near Dorothy Lane. Oakwood’s portion of Shroyer will then run to the Dayton city limits near Carmel’s Mexican Restaurant at Dellwood Avenue.

For the Kettering portion, most of the work will be repairing curbs and curb ramps, making any necessary repairs to the concrete base underneath the asphalt and resurfacing the pavement with new asphalt.

“We’re not changing the configuration of the roadway at all,” Bergstresser said.

In Oakwood, Shroyer Road will look much different as the city will implement a “road diet” plan for its portion that will reduce the total number of car lanes from four to two, with protected left turn lanes installed for safety.

“It works in a situation like ours where the traffic volumes are at a level that the single, through lanes can accommodate,” Oakwood City Manager Norbert Klopsch said. “It makes for a much safer roadway section because you provide a place for all the left turn vehicles to sit and wait in a safe place.”

Currently, there are two car lanes each for both north and southbound traffic. Once construction is complete, the Oakwood side of Shroyer Road will have one car lane for either direction and bike lanes adjacent to the car lanes. Planned in the center of the road are 16 raised medians that will be used as grass areas.

The medians and left turn lanes came as a result of a study done by Oakwood in 2014 that saw 43.3 percent of crashes on Shroyer in Oakwood were rear-end crashes, a trend Klopsch said can be attributed to the lack of dedicated left turn lanes. A March 2016 safety study by the Kleingers Group found that the average daily traffic volume for Shroyer Road in Oakwood is 15,000 vehicles per day.

The study says “road diets” can function effectively on roadways with a maximum average daily traffic volume between 15,000 and 17,500 vehicles per day.

Construction on Shroyer Road starts this spring and will end in the fall.

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