During rush hours — and even not-so-rushed hours — eastbound traffic on Conant Street emerges from Maumee’s business district like cattle from a rodeo chute.
In fear that a driver with an especially heavy foot will nudge a car ahead onto the sidewalk or lose control on a curve at the Fort Meigs Memorial Bridge, city officials now plan to extend a short median east of Harrison Street several hundred feet closer to the bridge.
“If we had known the calming effect” the current island has had on traffic, “I would have included it two years ago” when the broader Conant Street reconstruction project was designed, said Patrick Burtch, Maumee’s city administrator.
Police Chief Josh Sprow said the current median, about 100 feet long, was intended more as a “respite island” for pedestrians crossing Conant near Harrison.
He said he couldn’t think of any crashes attributable to an eastbound driver’s rapid acceleration, and remarked that a speed-radar trailer staged near the Fort Meigs bridge, also known as the Maumee-Perrysburg Bridge, may be curbing some of it.