CLEVELAND — The Ohio Department of Transportation, the Ohio State Highway Patrol and the Cleveland Division of Police have had a lot of time to think about traffic picking up over the last several weeks and how increases to traffic volume will depend on what additional measures they take.
Traffic volume has decreased statewide as much as 47% during the pandemic, but the drop in traffic volume hasn’t been a sudden hit, more so a gradual shift over time. With the decline in traffic, ODOT has been able to have construction crews work on projects during the day that would normally be reserved for overnight.
“The reason we restrict those maintenance projects to overnight hours is because if we were to close lanes during a normal day it would create some serious traffic backups. Now since those traffic volumes are lighter overnight, that’s when we do that work. Here lately we’ve seen those lighter traffic volumes during the day. So we’ve allowed those crews to do that work during the day instead of just restricting it to the overnight hours,” said Matt Bruning, spokesperson for ODOT.
Meanwhile, OSHP has responded to fewer crashes and is handing out a fraction of speeding tickets with less cars on the road, but the citations for high speed offenders are slightly up.
“What we’re reminding folks is as we progress and move into these next steps, to be extra mindful of obeying the traffic laws so folks don’t have to be in a position where we’re unnecessarily exposed or they find themselves facing additional financial hardships due to a traffic citation or a court date because of something that’s totally avoidable,” said Sgt. Ray Santiago, of OSHP.
Cleveland police tells News 5 they will be following current guidelines regarding masks and social distancing and will be moving back to rush hour procedures as needed.
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