DAYTON, Ohio (WDTN) — The city of Dayton wants to make streets safer and they’re going after funding to try and make just that happen.
The city of Dayton is submitting a competitive application for funding in Fiscal Year 2023 under the Rebuilding American Infrastructure with Sustainability and Equity (RAISE) discretionary program. The city is applying for $19.4 million from the Federal Highway Administration.
Dayton has worked on different transportation projects throughout the past decade and it has been successful making streets safer through expansions of streets downtown. The project has created corridors on the east and west sides of the city.
If the city obtains the money, city leaders say they’ll expand those efforts.
“Working on this whole project really for the last ten years, we’ve put in a lot of major projects and the plan was to keep doing this stuff through the next 20 years,” City of Dayton Civil Engineering Chief Engineer Jon Weinel said. “But this grant, if we do get this, we will accomplish in five years. What we’ll probably take is 20 to 30 years to do.”
The goal is to make travel and transportation safer for bikers, pedestrians, and drivers alike.
The city has plans to add roundabouts, bike lanes, and reduce lane sizes to slow traffic. They specifically want to highlight the west side, which historically struggled to help connect people to high paying tech jobs and other opportunities.
“There’s a big component to those disadvantaged communities on the west side that we’re giving access that have been neglected for years. We’re trying to get that, so they have access to these high quality jobs, these high quality aspects that’s going on.” Weinel said.
This is competition based funding. The city of Dayton will know if it has been selected by the fall.
