State Lays Out Vision for U.S. 23 Corridor Through Central Ohio

[Ted$8roadFan]

For better or worse, Delaware County is becoming Ohio's Loudoun/Fairfax County anyway, so some version of this project will happen.

[I-55]

For better or worse, Delaware County is becoming Ohio's Loudoun/Fairfax County anyway, so some version of this project will happen.

If there's a perfect comp, it's Hamilton County, IN. Both are suburban counties north of a 900,000 person city in neighboring states. Both are seeing most of their development in cities along a multilane US highway (US 31 and US 23). Toledo-Columbus is a similar regional traffic pattern as South Bend/Kokomo-Indianapolis.

The difference is that Delaware County now is where Hamilton County was 10-15 years ago. US 31 and Keystone Parkway (old SR 431) have since been converted to freeways and the same is happening to SR 37.

Indiana did have several advantages over Ohio for freeway conversion. All 3 routes in Indiana (31, 431/Keystone, 37) all had full medians and more robust access control (wider R/W and no drive approaches). As such, US 31 was able to be widened to a 6-lane interstate grade freeway with a 36' grass median, and Keystone and SR 37 maintained their typical section. US 23 has no median for most of the route between I-270 and Waldo. Any conversion would have to alter that typical section significantly. US 23 also has narrower R/W and a significantly higher intersection density (including private drives and a cemetery entrance), making it more difficult to maintain local access and convert intersections to interchanges.

The option Ohio has that Indiana didn't is being able to bypass the existing route. I-71 parallels US 23 much closer than I-65 or I-69 ever get to US 31, which opens the possibility of creating a connector route to alleviate the regional traffic from the suburbs. The question after becomes whether US 23 is capable of handling the local traffic. Only time will tell for that one, though I imagine it won't take long to find out. INDOT is already rebuilding the US 31 interchange with I-465 after just 10-12 years of operation because the traffic forecasts are already being overrun (Hamilton County grew from 308,000 to 387,000 people from 2015-2025. At the time of engineering beginning in 2010 there were 276,000 residents).

[carbaugh2]

ODOT has released the preferred alternative ahead of the next round of public meetings. It also has a brief video describing the process to come up with it. The maps and video are all available at https://publicinput.com/23-71study. The detail from the video not on the map is that the estimated cost is between $650-740 million.

I don't have an opinion of the route; I'm just thankful that ODOT is documenting each step of the process in a timely manner. Even with the public comments, I still see the General Assembly including the connector- if not the entire corridor- as a separate line item in the transportation budget bill next spring. There are too many legislators from the US 23 corridor for this to not be included.

EDIT: I'm also including this Axios profile piece on South Bloomfield as I am also anticipating what the study due to be released in December has in mind for the section from I-270 on the south side of Columbus to Chillicothe.