Columbus is creating a safety plan for Mount Vernon Avenue

On Apr 4, 2021

Remnants of a wreck sit on the side of the road March 30 as traffic passes through the intersection of Mount Vernon and North Champion avenues in the King-Lincoln-Bronzeville neighborhood on the Near East Side. The city is looking at ways to slow speeders and make the Mount Vernon corridor safer for drivers, bicyclists and pedestrians in the growing neighborhood.

Mount Vernon Avenue runs through the heart of the King-Lincoln-Bronzeville neighborhood. It is home to small stores and pharmacies, houses and a barber shop.

It’s also been home to speeders and the scene of many crashes, making it dangerous at times not only for motorists, but also for pedestrians and bicyclists as the neighborhood near Downtown continues to become more popular with developers and new residents.

So the city of Columbus is embarking on a plan to make the Mount Vernon Avenue corridor safer.

“Over the past couple of years, we’ve been concerned about crashes at some intersections and speeding in the corridor,” said Reynaldo Stargell, administrator of the city’s traffic management division.

“We felt like the best way to proceed was take a whole look at everything, the Mount Vernon corridor as a whole, what change can we make, and safety for all modes of transportation,” he said.

According to the city, there have been 192 crashes along the corridor since 2016, with 69 of them at the intersection of Mount Vernon and North Champion avenues.

The traffic signal at that intersection was removed on Feb. 6, 2017, as new apartments were being built on the site of the old Poindexter Village public housing complex. It was replaced by stop signs.

“Development comes in and traffic patterns totally change,” Stargell said.

Some residents and motorists say the traffic signal should be reinstalled, including Antoinette Parks, who was driving west on Mount Vernon Avenue in 2020 when her car was struck by a vehicle heading north on North Champion.

“He hit me on my driver’s side door, toward the front of the car.” Parks said. Her car was totaled.

“There are so many accidents there,” Parks said of the intersection.

Al Edmondson, whose barber shop sits just north of Mount Vernon on North 20th Street, said the city should not have removed the traffic signal.

“They’re going 50-60 mph,” Edmondson, the president of the Mount Vernon Avenue District Improvement Association, said of motorists passing through the corridor. “There hasn’t been a weekend when there’s not an accident.”

The speed limit along Mount Vernon Avenue is 25 mph.

“People definitely don’t go 25 down the street,” Parks said.

Edward Bryant, a West Side resident walking through the Mount Vernon Plaza last week, said he sees speeders, too. “You’ve got the foolish ones,” he said.

According to the most recent Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission traffic counts, 6,455 vehicles passed along Mount Vernon Avenue near North Champion daily in 2015, and 4,233 vehicles traveled Mount Vernon near North 20th Street in 2019.

Traffic management placed a camera at the Mount Vernon/North Champion intersection in 2019, and found that two-thirds of the cars approaching Mount Vernon on North Champion were not coming to a full stop, said Deb Briner, a city public service spokeswoman.

That’s one thing that led to the Bronzeville/Mount Vernon Avenue Mobility and Safety Action Plan.

People can take a survey at bronzevillemoves.com.

It asks questions about how people travel Mount Vernon Avenue, from driving to taking the bus to walking and riding scooters. It also asks what makes Mount Vernon easy or hard to travel, and how safe do they feel walking or bicycling there.

Henry Butcher, the owner of Creole Kitchen in the Mount Vernon Plaza and Parks’ father, said there are problems the city needs to address.

“You see people speeding,” Butcher said. “As a matter of fact, you see people running the stop signs.”

Stargell said fixes could include any number of things, from signs to traffic-calming devices, to new crosswalks, to reconfiguring intersections. The goal is to begin engineering and planning by June.

“The fact is that it is in response to a lot of changes that are happening, not just more vehicular traffic,” Stargell said. “More people are walking. There is more of an emphasis on serving people riding transit. We are making sure COTA (Central Ohio Transit Authority) is looped in as well.”