Toledo/US 24 Corridor Meet (OH) - Saturday, May 31st, 2014

[DanTheMan414]

Confirmed by Sean Lyons, it's time to explore the new US 24 corridor through Ohio:

Saturday, May 31st, 2014 @ 12:00PM
Granite City Food & Brewery
at the Shops at Fallen Timbers
2300 Village Drive W #133
Maumee, OH  43537

DIRECTIONS: Take I-475/US 23 to the US 24 exit (#4), and follow US 24 West.  Get off at the first exit, Fallen Timbers Lane (#67), and turn right.  Granite City is inside the Shops at Fallen Timbers complex.

With the completion of the US 24 freeway northeast of Napoleon and around Waterville up to the I-475/US 23 vicinity in the last couple of years, US 24 is now a full four-lane facility between Fort Wayne and Toledo.  Join us as we explore the Ohio portion of the corridor, and quite possibly some other features in the Toledo vicinity.

Please RSVP by Friday, May 30th.

[getemngo]

I'll be there. I'm hoping to pick up some counties north of Columbus afterward too.

[jpi]

Wish I could go but comitted to a toy show in Cartersville, GA that day.

[hbelkins]

I'm a maybe.

[Brandon]

I think I'll be a maybe at this point (70%).  It's easy enough to do in a day trip.

[hbelkins]

BTW, I am not planning on doing a Louisville meeting on June 7. So if anyone was needing to decide between that one and this one, the Louisville meet has been taken out of the equation.

[Roadgeek Adam]

Got another event that weekend.

[A.J. Bertin]

I am planning on attending this.

[Laura]

I'm a maybe-no right now, mostly because we are trying to save money for our road trip out to South Dakota this July.

[A.J. Bertin]

I downgraded my RSVP back from a "yes" to a "maybe". I'm not sure whether I will attend at this point. I'm wondering what else will be on the itinerary besides the U.S. 24 corridor.

[hbelkins]

I had thought about trying to get up to this one, but right now it's very, very doubtful.

[DanTheMan414]

The itinerary is being finalized right now.  A lot has happened in the Toledo vicinity since the last meet there a few years ago, so plan on hitting up some of those features, as well.  (This may include a duck-into Michigan briefly to see the new US 223/US 23 interchange layout.)  We're just a little over a week from the Toledo meet.  We hope to see some of you there!

[hbelkins]

Giving a little thought about driving up to this.

A couple of questions:

1.) Do we have an itinerary yet? What time should the tour be over?

2.) Any suggestions on a route? I've driven US 127, I-75, US 68 and US 23 north. Yawns abound. Any decent alternative recommendations?

[DanTheMan414]

With the meet starting at noon, we're looking at a window of 2-5PM for the tour itself.  In addition to the new northeastern portion of the Fort-to-Port Corridor, the tour will also feature the newly reconstructed Salisbury Dr interchange off of I-475/US 23 in Maumee, as well as additional reconstruction of I-475 in the Toledo area, and a little detour into Michigan to check out the new roundabouts at the US 223-US 23 interchange.

I usually use either I-75 or US 23 coming up from the I-70 corridor, so I can't think of another alternative to check out at the moment.

[hbelkins]

Never mind. Due to several factors, I won't be able to make it.

[Brandon]

I will not be there tomorrow.  I took a rather long trip/day last Friday for family reasons over to the same area.

Have fun.

[lepidopteran]

As much as I'd like to go, since I used to live in Toledo and remember when US-24 was upgraded between US-23 and Stitt Rd., I'm a little far away.  But a few things to look out for:

• Note that while US-24 is 4-laned all the way to Ft. Wayne, it is not full-freeway, as there are at-grade intersections west of US-6 in Napoleon.  I think these are only lightly-used intersections that don't justify traffic signals, though.  East of Napoleon, where the highway is on all-new right-of-way, it appears to be limited access.
• Did you know that the Salisbury Rd. interchange is relatively new?  ISTR it was only added in the 1980s, some 15-20 years later than the rest of US-23.  I think it was built in large part to improve access to the Ohio Turnpike; they used to route traffic by OH-2/Airport Highway, then US-24 when that route got too congested. For some trivia on the name, about a mile west of US-23 on Salisbury Rd. is Albon Lake.  This was formerly known as Salisbury Quarry, and was a popular beach spot once upon a time.  Even further back, the quarry was served by a rail spur that ran due north of there.  Although the spur was abandoned at least 40 years ago, there is still a vestigial underpass below the Ohio Turnpike
• You know how the US-23/US-24 interchange is a full cloverleaf?  It turns out that to build it, they needed to reroute a railroad line.  This is the active track that sharply peels off the Wabash line (abandoned, now part of the Wabash Cannonball Trail) just north of the Fallen Timbers shopping center.  But the irony is, I think the track that was rerouted to build the cloverleaf, was once known as the "Clover Leaf Route" (Toledo, St. Louis and Western).


• On I-475, note the new light-duty bridge between the overpasses for Douglas Rd. and Sherbrooke Rd.  That's for a (proposed?) bike trail that used to be a part of the Toledo Terminal RR, a section which was ripped out only 4 years ago.  Naturally, bicycles only call for a lighter bridge compared to the heavy railroad bridge that used to be there.  But on GMSV, it looks like they put a new cap on the old piers.  And is that a tubular BGS gantry?