The City of Lima is soon set to start to some road construction on Elm St. They have got a plan in place that in the long run will ease traffic in the area.
The city will shut down Grove St. on Monday, April 30, 2018, for the demolition of a warehouse off of Elm St. It is the first step of a project to build a railroad underpass between Bellefontaine Ave. and Shawnee St. The project will also rework the intersection of Elm, Bellefontaine, and Calumet St, building a roundabout in the hopes that it will ease traffic just as the one in Shawnee did.
"In Shawnee, there used to be backups on Friday, evening especially, about a quarter of a mile in each direction," says City Engineer Kirk Niemeyer. "Now, you can move through there just about any time of the day with ease, so we hope that results here as well."
The building of the roundabout will have the biggest impact on traffic because, in order to make it work with the underpass, crews will have to drop the roundabout section of the road 4-5 feet.
"We're tying it to a grade separation, so we have a 20-some foot lowering of the roadway on Elm St. and that has to tie into that intersection so everything will be dropped significantly," says Niemeyer. "There's a lot of dirt to move, there's a lot of utilities to move so all those things, yeah, it's going to impact traffic but we're going to try and keep that to a minimum."
The project is set to wrap up in November of 2019.
