A plan to reconfigure a portion of Dixie Highway between Erlanger and Florence has been paused, after significant backlash from local residents.
The Kentucky Transportation Cabinet’s proposal would redraw Dixie Highway from Turfway Road to Commonwealth Avenue into a three-lane road — one lane going each way with a permanent left-turn lane. KYTC also plans to widen the lanes, add a bike lane and revamp sidewalks for pedestrians.
But late last week, Erlanger, Elsmere and Florence officials all said they had no knowledge of the re-configurement.
“We didn’t consider it a secret, we just didn’t tell anybody,” said KYTC Chief Engineer Bob Yeager at a city of Erlanger council meeting in response to an inquiry about the lack of public announcement from KYTC on the project.
He said the agency had decided the project was necessary based on traffic and accident data from the last five years.
'Avoid like the plague'
Amy Staten owns a hair salon on the stretch of Dixie Highway that would be affected. During the same council meeting, she expressed her concern.
“If clients can't get here conveniently, they're going to avoid this area like the plague,” Staten said later in her studio, waiting for her next client.
Staten, like many others, are concerned that the road diet would add to the high amount of traffic they already experience.
“I think that it'll just be a bottleneck and people will just try to stay away from Dixie Highway,” she said.
Yeager said the project was decided as a short-term, low-cost solution to increase safety for all and improve the flow of traffic. Just north of this stretch, Dixie Highway has five lanes, with a permanent turn lane and two traffic lanes on each side. But to widen the road throughout would require major configuration.
“If we went very far, we would have to take a number of homes, a number of businesses to widen it like it is just north of here,” Yeager said. He added that other options, such as prohibiting left turns and adding U-turns at intersections have proven not to be optimal.
Staten, like many other community members, said new research and studies must be done to determine the best solutions. Others, such as Scott Kimmich of Erlanger, said research has shown this has been an ongoing issue.
He recalled at the Erlanger City Council meeting that he had helped gather data back in 2000 that gave warning signs about the growing traffic issue.
“It was a government study that was put on the shelf by leadership in this community and never followed up on,” Kimmich said. “This is not a KYTC-created monster. It’s a monster we collectively in Northern Kentucky allowed to be created.”
Both sides agree that something must be done, especially as the road condition itself continues to deteriorate.
KYTC says it will hold additional public meetings in the coming weeks to gather input on the project.
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