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ODOT will address dangerous curve on Route 43 in Amsterdam

AMSTERDAM — The Ohio Department of Transportation is starting work to remove a dangerous S-curve on state Route 43 in the village at a cost of $653,340.

The work includes new sidewalks and drainage, ODOT reported.

The state transportation department reported traffic will be maintained at all times with a 12-foot-wide width restriction.

Amsterdam officials went to the Brooke-Hancock-Jefferson Metropolitan Planning Commission about finding a way to remove the S-curve.

Mike Paprocki, BHJ executive director, said the the project started with traffic counts and site visits by BHJ officials.

“Once we visited the project area, we knew we had to do something,” Paprocki said.

He said the project was a good fit for the federal highway money BHJ receives as the region’s metropolitan planning organization.

“This project hits several goals adopted by our policy board,” Paprocki said. “It supports our economic vitality with the movement of goods, and straightening the S-turn improves safety on a major traffic corridor that connects our communities to the Canton-Akron area.”

BHJ officials had said that an S-turn, which winds one way and then another, can result from survey offsets. In those cases, one square piece of property stacks against another in a way that doesn’t line up straight, so the resulting road weaves along property lines.

“The turns in Amsterdam are so tight that two trucks headed in opposite directions cannot physically pass,” Paprocki said. “Truckers are aware of the problem. When we were doing site visits, we actually saw trucks come to a stop ahead of the curve and communicate by radio to pass one at a time.”

State Route 43, which runs from Steubenville to Cleveland, is a route used by oil and gas water trucks and Wal-Mart trucks headed to the distribution center outside Wintersville. When the road was scheduled for resurfacing, BHJ was contacted by ODOT to look into the traffic safety issues.

BHJ found that slightly more than 2,200 vehicles travel on both the northbound and southbound lanes through Amsterdam daily. Trucks made up 19 percent of the traffic headed north and 17.5 percent of southbound traffic.

Because of the issues found by the BHJ study, the organization’s Transportation Study Policy Committee voted to spend $460,000 of its federal dollars to remove the dangerous turn. ODOT used its funding for the design, right-of-way purchase and construction inspection, totaling more than $360,000.

The final piece of the financial puzzle, a 20 percent match, fell on the village itself, Paprocki said. Amsterdam also was awarded a $110,000 grant from the Ohio Public Works Commission to complete the funding needed for the project.

Paprocki said the bids for the project came in under estimates.

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