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Monday, October 29th, 2007

Columbus Inner Loop

The Columbus Dispatch has an interesting article today on the proposed construction to reconstruct I-70/I-71 through downtown. This is basically the south and west legs of the downtown inner freeway loop in Columbus, Ohio. I can tell you from personal experience that this segment of roadway is very confusing and features extensive congestion.

There were a few key telling stats. One was that there are 830 wrecks on that fairly corridor per year, making it Ohio’s most dangerous section of road. That’s over two accidents every single day. Reconstruction won’t start until 2011 and could take up to five years. That won’t be pleasant. Naturally I’d like to see that sped up, but this type of complex downtown construction which features many weaving ramps and lanes that must be untangled, plus various serious grade separations, will clearly take a while. The price tag is a whopping $800 million.

The article cites Indianapolis and Kansas City as places that also have two interstates crisscrossing downtown. You could also throw Atlanta in there in a certain sense. I haven’t driven Kansas City, but can tell you that Indianapolis and Atlanta have superior designs to Columbus. When building the original highways, ODOT bought into obsolete thinking about how most traffic would exit, not continue through interchanges, thus dropping through traffic on I-70 and I-70 to just one lane at times. Ouch.

While this project is welcome, the fact that Columbus will have to basically use its biggest pot of funding to fix a downtown freeway that shouldn’t be broken in the first place is bad news for the rest of the metro area.

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1 Comment
Topics: Transportation
Cities: Columbus (Ohio)

One Response to “Columbus Inner Loop”

David says:

October 30, 2007 at 6:20 am

Add to Louisville and Cincinnati to downtowns where multiple Interstates criss-cross. Louisville’s ‘spaghetti junction’ I-65; I-71 and I-64. Cinci has I-75 & I-71.

The former could solve many problems with the 8664 idea which is to end I-64 going west into downtown and pick it up again just west of downtown; build an eastern bridge and build a far southwestern bridge for I-265. Forget another downtown bridge and the rebuild of spaghetti junction. It would save billions vs current plans.

The end result is a complete loop around the city with I-265 and they should mandate that all thru truck traffic use that route

Reality is…it will not happen because it makes sense

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