Bexley, Columbus moving forward with Joint Livingston Avenue Plan

Chris Bournea
·3 min read
The cities of Bexley and Columbus convened a series of public forums over the past year to gather residents’ input on the Joint Livingston Avenue Plan.
The cities of Bexley and Columbus convened a series of public forums over the past year to gather residents’ input on the Joint Livingston Avenue Plan.

A plan designed to improve safety on the East Livingston Avenue corridor that borders both Bexley and Columbus, from Nelson Road on the west to James Road on the east, is one step closer to becoming a reality, having received approval from Bexley City Council.

City Council voted 7-0 June 28 to approve Ordinance 20-20, legislation that adopts the Joint Livingston Avenue Plan. For the past year, the cities of Bexley and Columbus have held a series of public workshops to gather residents’ feedback about the priorities to include in the plan, according to Bexley Mayor Ben Kessler.

The plan was prompted, in part, by residents voicing concerns about an increase in traffic accidents in recent years along East Livingston Avenue, he said.

“Residents latched onto that, they really pushed it,” Kessler said of residents’ involvement in the plan.

The steering committee that guided the drafting of the plan included representatives from the cities of Bexley and Columbus, as well as neighborhood groups, such as the Livingston Avenue Area Commission, the Southeast Bexley Neighborhood Association, the Mideast Area Commission, the Berwick Civic Association and the Livingston Avenue Columbus Ohio Safety Group.

“The Columbus residents on the steering committee voiced full support of the plan,” said Kelly Scocco, deputy director of the city of Columbus' department of public service.

The Joint Livingston Avenue Plan includes streetscape beautification, as well as improving traffic, pedestrian and bicycle safety. The plan’s near-term aspects include narrowing the street by painting stripes to reduce the number of traffic lanes from four to three, with one 11-foot-wide moving lane in each direction and one 11-foot-wide turn lane in between.

The first phase of the plan is to begin this summer, with a $1 million resurfacing of the residential area of East Livingston Avenue, between College Avenue and James Road on the east, Scocco said.

“We will be taking it down to a three-lane section,” she said.

Implementing the Joint Livingston Avenue Plan does not require Columbus City Council to adopt the plan through legislation, as Bexley City Council did, according to Scocco.

Columbus City Council did, however, approve the East Livingston Avenue resurfacing project as part of the city’s 2022 capital improvement budget, she said.

The Joint Livingston Avenue Plan also includes several long-term aspects – moving curbs closer to the street and making wider tree lawns to further narrow the road and slow down traffic, creating multi-use paths on both sides of the street in the residential section of the avenue and making wider sidewalks in the commercial section of Livingston.

“The next step that we are taking jointly is we are going after federal transportation dollars through the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission,” Scocco said. “We are working on a joint application where Bexley will be the lead applicant.”

Bexley and Columbus representatives are working through the details of the application to determine the scope of the work and corresponding dollar amount, with plans to submit the application to MORPC later this year, she said.

Bexley City Council Strategic Committee Chair Jen Robinson, who introduced Ordinance 20-20 and served on the Joint Livingston Avenue Plan Steering Committee, along with Kessler and fellow council member Monique Lampke, said the plan is an example of how municipalities can work together toward common goals.

Robinson said she had heard from residents who said they are hopeful that the plan will increase safety on East Livingston Avenue, enabling them to worry less about traffic accidents affecting the parts of their property that face the busy thoroughfare.

“I’m so excited for the people who live on Livingston who have said, ‘I now get to use my front yard,’ ” Robinson said. “Their property size has, in essence, doubled because this is something that’s going to happen.”

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This article originally appeared on ThisWeek: Bexley, Columbus moving forward with Joint Livingston Avenue Plan