City Council agrees to increased bid for traffic signal upgrades

The city of Painesville and the Ohio Department of Transportation will move forward with plans to replace portions of the city’s traffic signal system after ODOT received bid prices that were higher than initially expected.

Painesville City Council unanimously authorized an agreement with the state agency at its Feb. 6 meeting. According to the resolution, the project will include the replacement of traffic signal systems along two city corridors at an estimated cost of $876,960. That bid is an increase of $130,060, or approximately 17 percent, over the original estimate.

According to City Engineer Leanne Exum, ODOT indicated that the increase was the result of increased costs for the controller and radars that will be used in the proposed signals.

Painesville has asked the Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency to share half of the cost of the increase, said City Manager Doug Lewis, who noted that the agency is already set to cover roughly half of the original estimate. The city had not received an answer from NOACA as of the Feb. 6 meeting.

Lewis added that the city’s contribution will be evenly split between its general and electric funds, whether it pays for the entire increase or only half.

The initial proposal in the city’s Feb. 6 city manager legislative reports suggested using $250,000 that the city set aside from the general fund for additional road costs, but Lewis noted that council members expressed concerns with that idea.

“When residents hear ‘road levy,’ they think road,” said Councilman Jim Fodor. “They don’t think lights.” He added that he was “not ok with taking money from the road allocation to fund” the new traffic signal systems.

Councilman Nick Augustine later expressed agreement, adding that he appreciated the Finance Department’s revised spending plan.

As The News-Herald reported in August, the proposed changes to the city’s traffic signal system will replace technology from 2002 that Exum

said no longer connects to a central computer system.

She noted at the time that the project will include traffic signals on US Route 20 from the city’s eastern limit with Painesville Township to Fern Drive, covering Erie Street and a segment of Mentor Avenue, as well as state Route 283 and Richmond Street from the intersection with Erie Street to the Fairport Harbor village line.

The new fiber-based system will allow ODOT to coordinate the city’s traffic signals along Mentor Avenue through Painesville city and Painesville Township, Exum said, with discussions of potentially expanding to Mentor as well. The goal is to improve the flow of traffic along the corridor, which she added will reduce emissions.

The project will be partially funded by a Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality grant, which is funding from the Federal Highway Administration that was awarded through NOACA. Exum said that the grant will cover $367,500. The city’s general and electric funds are set to pay for the remainder of the original estimate.