Wayne Avenue widening, road diet in the works to improve traffic, pedestrian safety

The Dayton City Commission recently approved a $2.4 million contract with L.J. DeWeese Co. to widen Wayne Avenue.

The highly traveled roadway will be expanded between Wyoming Street near Wendy’s and Sunoco to Waldo Street near Esther Price Candies.

“This will be a great safety improvement,” said Dayton City Manager Shelley Dickstein.

The project does not yet have a start date, but it should be completed by June 1, 2025, said David Escobar, Dayton’s city engineer.

The project, which has been in the works since 2019, will widen Wayne Avenue from four to five lanes, which will create a two-way left turn lane, Escobar said.

This will remove left-turning vehicles from the travel lanes, giving them a place to wait for gaps in traffic, he said.

“This widening should eliminate or significantly reduce rear-end accidents that occurred when vehicles were waiting to make their turn into Kroger or Walgreens,” he said.

That 0.2-mile stretch of Wayne Avenue also will get new sidewalks, curbs, street lights and pavement.

A section of Wayne north of there, between East Fifth Street and U.S. 35, is going to be put on a road diet.

Dayton wants to install traffic-calming features like new bump-outs and pedestrian-scale lighting at some intersections.

The city also plans to repair deteriorated curb, sidewalk, curb ramps and driveways.

The project seeks to slow vehicles down and improve the pedestrian experience.

Escobar said the project remains in the design phase, but it is expected to cost about $500,000. Work should begin in the summer of 2025, and construction is expected to wrap up by the spring of 2026.

Additionally, the city is working with the Ohio Department of Transportation and the Wayne Avenue Traffic Safety Coalition to try to improve another section of the Wayne Avenue corridor, south of U.S. 35 down to Wyoming Street, Escobar said.

ODOT is finalizing a contract with a consultant to study the corridor and provide recommendations to try to improve pedestrian safety and address speeding and distracted driving, he said.

Members of the traffic safety coalition say Wayne Avenue is very dangerous for pedestrians. They have said they would like to see the speed limit lowered, new bike lanes installed, crosswalk improvements and fewer lanes of traffic, though city officials have suggested the last request might not be feasible.