(The following article by Jane Prendergast was posted on the Cincinnati Enquirer website on August 26.)
LOVELAND, Ohio — A group working to improve railroad transportation throughout Ohio will buy a new system to regulate traffic lights at two intersections near the downtown tracks.
The Ohio Rail Development Commission will spend about $90,000 to buy computerized devices that communicate directly with railroad crossing warning systems. The units, called I-SPIs, can control nearby traffic lights to ease congestion .
The system will detect an oncoming train two minutes before it hits the tracks and start changing lights so traffic doesn’t continue all the way to the tracks and stop. It also will monitor that crossing gates are completely lowered and have battery backups that will keep the lights working when power is out.
They’ll be installed for the West Loveland Avenue crossings at Karl Brown Way and Second Street, possibly in October.
The battery backups alone will be significant, said City Manager Tom Carroll.
“Now when the power goes out, we use three police officers to control traffic,” he said.
A spokesman for the commission could not be reached Friday. But the commission’s safety programs manager, Susan Kirkland, complimented the city’s cooperation in a letter last week to Carroll. Often times when the commission works with a city on a project, she wrote, state officials find little interest from the community.
But in Loveland, the railroad has an impact on the redevelopment project the city is trying to do. It involves turning about six acres around Broadway and Second Street into townhomes, offices, retail space and restaurants and could mean $30 million or more in private investment.
Developers mentioned that train noise could affect the marketability of the new residences. The city is considering creating a railroad quiet zone that would mean trains would have to be quieter.
But officials first wanted to know how much, if anything, in other improvements the state would be willing to pay for.
Kirkland wrote that the commission might refer other Ohio communities to Loveland to check out how the system works.
The city already has spent about $10,000 to upgrade the traffic controls at the Five Points Intersection, the third spot where the railroad goes through downtown. That was part of a bigger project there that included replacing water and sewer lines as well as installing replacing stop signs with traffic lights.