SYLVANIA, Ohio — Members of Sylvania's city government mirrored The Beatles Tuesday morning as they took an important trip across their own Abbey Road.
Mayor Craig Stough, with help from the Town Crier, led a dedication of the newly installed pedestrian hybrid beacon on Harroun Road at the Sylvania River Trail crossing.
A first for the city, a PHB is a traffic control device that increases the awareness of pedestrians using the crosswalk.
"We have a lot more people using the river trail since it expanded to the east side of Harroun Road to the Flower Hospital campus," Stough said. "This will make pedestrian traffic far safer."
The U.S. Department of Transportation backs up the claims that PHBs significantly reduce crosswalk crashes and reports that pedestrian-involved incidents were reduced by 69% in 2010 in cities with beacons.
Similar to a traditional crosswalk, a pedestrian needs to push a button to activate the light. But PHBs differ in that they use multiple lights to alert drivers.
"There are multiple red lights on the top to stop traffic," Stough said. "They will do much better than the old strobe lights."
PHBs have also been installed in several other northwest Ohio communities, including Toledo, Bowling Green and Delta.
Tuesday's dedication is just one check off a list of planned improvements in the city, according to Stough.
An intersection improvement project is scheduled at Monroe and Silica in spring 2023, and a project to improve downtown has already begun.
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