- Florence Mayor Julie Metzger-Aubuchon said the city cannot support KYTC’s proposed Dixie Highway lane reduction after an independent review of its potential impacts.
- The mayor raised concerns about traffic diversion onto neighborhood streets, access to businesses and the Florence Post Office, and effects on municipal services.
- KYTC paused the project on Feb. 17 following opposition from local officials and residents in Florence, Erlanger and Elsmere.
Florence Mayor Julie-Metzger Aubuchon has come out against the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet’s Dixie Highway road diet plan, citing concerns over safety, traffic congestion and impact on municipal services.
KYTC’s proposal drew pushback from several city officials in Erlanger, Florence and Elsmere, as well as from members of the public. Following a citywide review of the proposal’s impact, the mayor decided that the project, as currently constituted, was not viable.
“It’s something that we think will impact multiple jurisdictions, and so there just needs to be a lot of communication and a lot of thought and planning, and I just don’t feel like that we as a city felt like this is something we can embrace,” she told LINK nky.
In February, KYTC unveiled a “road diet” plan to reconfigure a 1.5-mile stretch of Dixie Highway between Turfway Road and the Dixie Highway/Commonwealth Avenue intersection. KYTC’s proposal calls for reducing the road’s current four-lane configuration to three lanes. The current setup is two lanes running in each direction, divided by yellow lines. The proposed changes narrow the roadway to one lane running in each direction, with a shared turn lane in the middle.
Dixie Highway, also known as US-25, is a state-maintained road running through multiple southern and midwestern states. The area in question extends through Erlanger, Elsmere, and Florence.
KYTC officials have contended that the road diet plan would decrease crashes and enhance roadway safety without causing significant disruptions. According to KYTC, there have been up to 640 crashes in the area over the past five years, with approximately one-third involving rear-end collisions.
“While this portion of Dixie Highway currently has two lanes in each direction, it functions like it has a single through lane as vehicles stop in the left lane to make turns, creating backups and increasing the risk of rear-end collisions,” KYTC Department of Highways District Engineer Bob Yeager said in a news release. “In the right conditions, modifying lanes maintains, if not improves, the level of service of moving traffic while improving safety. It’s been done in Campbell County, large cities like Louisville, and nationwide with meaningful safety improvements.”
On February 12, Metzger-Aubuchon announced that the city engineer would conduct an independent technical review of KYTC’s proposal. The review focused on analyzing traffic flow, congestion effects, and overall corridor performance, particularly during peak periods and for interstate diversion efforts.
Metzger-Aubuchon told LINK nky that after reviewing KYTC’s proposal, she concluded the city could not support the project in its current form.
“We wanted to look at what their proposal was, how that was going to impact secondary streets, how it was going to impact residents trying to get out of, let’s say, for example, the post office,” she said. “Once we put all of that data together, we made the informed decision that this is not something that we feel like we can support as a city.”
Metzger-Aubuchon clarified that her opposition was her own, although she noted that the city council has been supportive of the city’s efforts to evaluate and challenge the proposal. She said the opposition recommendation came from City Attorney Thomas Nienaber.
“I don’t want to speak for council; they are their own body, but they have embraced our efforts to date,” she said. “Several have been involved in the process as well.”
Metzger-Aubuchon said that she, along with Florence city officials, felt that reducing lanes could divert vehicles, including commercial traffic, onto neighborhood streets that were not designed to handle higher traffic volumes, creating potential safety issues for residents and children.
Furthermore, she expressed concern about how the project would affect access to important destinations within the city, such as the Florence Post Office–located just off Dixie Highway–that generates high volumes of daily traffic and serves both residents and businesses.
Beyond concerns about traffic flow, Metzger-Aubuchon raised several concerns over the project’s impact on trash collection along the corridor, pedestrian safety for students walking near schools along Dixie Highway, and the redesign’s overall effect on day-to-day operations for residents and businesses within the city.
As of now, Metzger-Aubuchon said the city has not yet placed a formal resolution opposing the road diet plan on its agenda, largely because the project is still under state review. KYTC announced an official pause of the project on Feb. 17, following feedback from the public and affected municipalities.
To date, the City of Elsmere is the only municipality in Northern Kentucky that has officially opposed the project, passing a formal resolution on February 15. Several Erlanger officials have also publicly opposed the plan, although the city has not adopted a formal resolution against it.
