Decorative crosswalks difficult to maintain
City installed them in the 1990s to be attractive upgrades.
The brick crosswalks that Toledo installed starting in the 1990s throughout its central business district and at scattered prominent intersections nearby were supposed to be decorative improvements.
But over the years, street excavations and poundings from heavier vehicles — the latter especially along the downtown bus loop and on Summit Street — have left the bricks anything but attractive.
The crosswalks’ condition is “a textbook example of the lack of maintenance, when the city doesn’t do the work,” said Peter Ujvagi, whose tenure on Toledo City Council dates back past the first bricks’ installation. “They originally were exciting and distinctive, but we have either forgotten about, or were never capable of maintaining those crosswalks.”
“There was controversy when those were first put in as to how long they would last,” said Rob Ludeman, another council veteran who recounted skeptics calling the crosswalks “The Yellow Brick Road” when the first ones were built. “I like the pattern, but it has become a maintenance issue.”
Certain brick crosswalks along parts of Erie and Superior streets are slated for repair following water and sewer projects along those respective streets.
The others’ fate, meanwhile, depends on the results of a pending city study of downtown infrastructure and Toledo’s ability to follow through on whatever that study recommends.
Mannik & Smith, a local engineering firm, holds a $249,488 contract to survey the downtown street network and draft recommendations for repairs, modifications, and even details like the speed limits, said Karen Poore, deputy chief of staff to Mayor Wade Kapszukiewicz.
“As part of this plan, they’re going to look at all the crosswalks,” Ms. Poore said. “Downtown is now the fastest growing neighborhood in Toledo, and we need to look at everything.”
Ms. Poore said the study is expected to take about a year to complete, with results expected by early 2019.
Among the possibilities is that the study will recommend replacing some or all of the brick crosswalks with brick imprints on asphalt, added Ignazio Messina, the mayor’s communications director.
False brick of that nature was printed on several crosswalks near the Huntington Center during street improvements undertaken during the arena’s construction.
Large sections of the decorative crosswalks at intersections along Erie between Madison Avenue and Cherry Street were torn out while the water main below was replaced, along with intersecting pipes.
Tim Grosjean, a senior professional engineer for roadway design at the city division of engineering services, said those crosswalks and others along Erie will be repaired as part of a resurfacing project later this year, planned to follow the water construction.
“We have items in this project to rehabilitate those brick crosswalks,” Mr. Grosjean said before adding, “They definitely look worse within the bus loop, so we will have to focus on that.”
Once the Erie resurfacing is done, Mr. Grosjean said, those crosswalks “will look close to new.” That project is expected to take four months to complete once it starts in the spring.
One of the four legs of a brick crosswalk at Superior and Adams streets, meanwhile, was torn out last fall for preparatory work in advance of a sewer project associated with the Toledo Waterways Initiative.
New shafts connecting cross-street sewers to a sewage tunnel under Superior are to be installed during the next two construction seasons at Jefferson Avenue and Adams, Jackson, and Orange streets.
Of those four corners, only the Adams intersection has brick crosswalks. Julie Cousino, the city project manager for Toledo Waterways Initiative, said those too will be restored after construction is finished, as will be the printed brick pattern in the crosswalks at Jefferson and Superior.
The other two Superior intersections’ crosswalks have no decorative features.
But that leaves crosswalks on other downtown streets and at a few other nearby locations for which no definite repair plan has been made.
Some are in relatively good shape. But others have patches where utility crews, public or private, have removed sections of brick and then not replaced it in kind.
And at some intersections with heavier truck traffic — most notably at Summit and Cherry streets — the daily pounding pushed the crosswalks’ sand base out of shape. Rather than level off the sand underneath and re-lay the bricks, city crews filled in the low spots with asphalt, marring the crosswalks’ appearance.
In some cities, decorative crosswalks like Toledo’s have been installed only across streets that are load-limited to prohibit trucks and other heavy vehicles that cause such damage.
Ms. Poore said load limits could be explored as solution for parts of downtown Toledo, while acknowledging that some streets would be hard to restrict in that manner.
Cherry, Summit, Monroe, and Erie could fall into that group, because they carry state highway designations.
Utility repairs’ impact, meanwhile, could be mitigated with better communication among the various city departments and between them and Toledo Edison and Columbia Gas, Ms. Poore said.