The stretch of the Olentangy Trail near Ohio State University's campus that has been closed for over a year reopened this week to bike and foot traffic.
Plenty of bicyclists and joggers were out and about on Wednesday, enjoying the reopened Olentangy trail from just south of Lane Avenue until 12th Avenue. The trail was closed during a $68 million project to mitigate flood risks to campus during extreme storms. Ohio State also continued work on a new parking lot for Ohio Stadium nearby.
Mike Demko was biking south and had just discovered the trail had reopened. He was pretty blunt about what he thought about the 15-month detour.
"It sucked. It took me out of my routine. So I like this much better. It's just a nice, easy ride. It's away from the highway. It's just consistent now. No more stoplights or anything like that," Demko said.
The detour took people across traffic on Woody Hayes Drive and right alongside the east side of Ohio Stadium and the recreation fields next door. It linked back up with the trail at 12th Avenue next to the construction site for the new Wexner Medical Center Tower.
Demko said he rides the trail 3-4 times a week from Worthington down to the riverfront on the Scioto Trail. He said he's been doing it for years.
Most of the trail section is now freshly paved. But most of the surrounding land still looks like a construction zone as trees and plants re-grow.
Kate Hammond, an rising Ohio State senior studying health sciences, was walking the trail Wednesday wearing a Grateful Dead shirt and listening to The Chain by Fleetwood Mac.
Hammond said she is glad the trail is back open, but was happy to get to walk the detour through parts of campus she didn't get to visit often.
"I'm just like excited to see new people just kind of walking by and the cleaning up of the river and more trails opening up by the river and stuff like that," Hammond said. "So I'm excited (for) more vegetation, more wildlife around here because it's so like city life, you know?"
There is more construction along and on the Olentangy Trail besides this project. The city has started constructing what it is calling the "Final Gap" of the Olentangy Trail between Como Park and Northmoor Park.
That project will build a bridge across the river and back again, adding a new section of trail. Right now the trail diverts onto city streets south and north of North Broadway.
There is also new construction at the trail off of Dodridge Street where a construction crew is building a set of stairs from the trail up to the road.
