https://goo.gl/maps/UfMtDTRmQuHMKM1D7
I see the I-71 and US 35 intersections gets PA Turnpike treatment with OH 435 connecting the two freeways.
Interesting. I’m guessing local businesses don’t want a direct connection here for loss of revenue.
I'm sure that was part of it, though with the new US 35 freeway crossing being less than a half mile from the current exit, the spacing would have been too close to have a full direct interchange and maintaining local access without adding significant extra lengths to the new freeway construction.
There also isn't a direct connection between Interstate 75 and US 30: https://www.google.com/maps/@40.8316154,-83.9813971,3470m/data=!3m1!1e3.
I'm sure I've relayed this story before about Beaverdam. When the US 30 freeway was only constructed headed west from I-75, and US 30 joined it from an interchange where OH 696 now intersects Lincoln Highway. In the late 1990s, one of my engineering classmates interned at ODOT when they were designing/constructing the eastward extension. The truck stops at Beaverdam successfully lobbied to keep any direct I-75 connection from happening which is why we ended up with that garbage overbuilt trumpet with the left exit and entrance on eastbound US 30. Although the railroad line parallel with I-75 would have complicated any potential direct connection to US 30 even had the local politics not intervened.
Used to use the I-71/US 35 interchange more often but it's been a few years--it was never a big deal and the outlet mall, etc. were there first before the new US 35 freeway was built--so working around that was necessary. Moving a new interchange with I-71 far enough from there to have room was not worth it and still would not have been worth it to just leave the interchange with "old" US 35. (Even older Old US 35 passed through where the northern half of the current diamond interchange is, so there is Old 35 and Old Old 35 there. Sounds like a Godfather's Pizza commercial. "No way--Old 35's bridge went out with the tornado of '83!")
I use US 30 through the I-75 interchange relatively often and that loop ramp to US 30 EB is so excessive in distance, that if I am stopping at Speedway or something traveling east, I use the old road (Lincoln Highway) to OH 235 to get back on US 30. There is about an extra mile of looping with the huge trumpet with left exit/entrance. Indeed, though, there is the constraint of the rail line such that what they did is about the best they could do. Like the 71/35 interchange in Octa, the volume isn't heavy enough to bother with more direct access, and the access to the services at both Beaverdam and Octa works out.
It is interesting to wonder what they planned for US 30 east of Beaverdam when they built the stub/ghost interchange with Lincoln Highway. They linked the "new" US 30 coming in from the west with the old road heading east, but hitting it from the south with a bridge that ended up being torn down suggests they hoped to route US 30 to the north (versus the south of the old road where it is now). Was it just a good-enough plan to have the bridge there for the old exit from Lincoln WB to the "new" 30 heading west to Indiana to underpass instead of turning left across traffic, with no particular plan for where US 30 would go to the east? The wide separation of the sides of US 23 where the current western split of US 23 and US 30 near Upper Sandusky (leaving room for the stack that was built decades later) suggests that they had plans for some US 30 expressway way back when, with room for the tie-in left there by 1970.
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Topic: Ohio (Read 226762 times)