A plan to improve Akron’s Summit Lake neighborhood walkability and make it easier to move around the area is also helping test principles that could make other Akron neighborhoods more livable.
The 2025 Summit Lake Pedestrian Safety Master Plan, put together by city planners and the Akron Metropolitan Area Transit Study (AMATS), is part of the city’s attempts to rethink its planning policies.
“The idea with the plan was kind of looking at the neighborhood as a whole and figuring out what those missing connections are, and maybe where some of those weak spots are, that people would feel unsafe crossing,” said Dylan Garritano, an Akron City Planner who helped develop the plan.
One of the city’s poorest neighborhoods, Summit Lake is part test kitchen as the city shifts its planning policies, including new approaches to zoning, investment around the lakeshore, and renewed commitment to affordable housing initiatives.
All are part of efforts to change how residents perceive and interact with the neighborhood.
Residents report issues with walking in Summit Lake
Through public feedback sessions used to develop these plans, residents consistently reported issues with simply walking around the neighborhood.
“If we can’t get to the lakeshore, it doesn’t really matter what kind of improvements you’re doing, because if we don’t have a car, we can’t get to it,” Garritano said residents told him during the sessions.
Recognizing the need to understand these concerns, city planners applied for the AMATS Connecting Communities Planning grant and were awarded $40,000.
By reviewing neighborhood infrastructure and gathering community feedback, the city and AMATS teams identified core themes and priorities that residents wanted implemented.
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This included:
- Calls for new street layouts that are more pedestrian- and bike-friendly.
- Improvements to Lakeshore Boulevard to make the street safer and easier to cross.
- The creation of safe passageways to help navigate the neighborhood.
- The reconnection of residents to the lake shore.
Report combines resident feedback with hard data
The Pedestrian Safety Master Plan also sought to confirm anecdotal reports with hard data.
Lakeshore Boulevard, for example, effectively serves as a barrier between the bulk of Summit Lake residents and the lake’s amenities. Significant traffic passes through the neighborhood on this street, often at high speeds.
“We found out that over 80 percent of the traffic is exceeding the posted speed limit of 25, which we all knew, but having that data there is important,” Garritano said.
Major redesigns were not needed to meet city and community goals, so the report focuses on smart redesigns — often by simply repainting road lines.
Most recommendations center around what are known as “road diets,” which reduce the number of lanes on a road to calm traffic.
“Having just one lane of traffic creates a much more consistent pattern for people, and it’s a little more predictable,” Garritano said.
Plan’s ideas to be integrated into Akron road maintenance
While the city will integrate the plan’s recommendations into its ongoing road maintenance, the primary goal is to document feedback, produce quantifiable data and prepare how best to allocate limited funding.
“We did use this plan for a Smarter with America grant, which we applied for late last year and were awarded $25,000 for smaller-scale implementation,” said Garritano.
Though the plan is focused on Summit Lake, it is written so that aspects can be used in other neighborhoods as well. Core to this was the creation of a “Traffic Calming Toolkit” to act as a menu of options for the city.
The toolkit outlines ways to calm traffic, from simple safety reminder yard signs to more elaborate neighborhood road roundabouts.
“It’s actually broken down by the speed of the traffic, the volume of the traffic, and so it kind of identifies some of the best-practice measures that could be used to calm traffic in the neighborhood,” Garritano said.
“This was a really good opportunity for us to kind of look at Summit Lake specifically, but I think we’re also using it as a model for other neighborhoods.”
