The Ohio Department of Transportation is making plans to improve the flow of traffic in several major travel corridors that pass through central Ohio.
The multi-year plan for U.S. 23 will prepare the roadway between Waldo, Delaware and the area south of Interstate 270 for the traffic patterns expected over the next few decades. It's part of a statewide plan to make it easier to drive between Columbus and Toledo.
"The road is currently serving about 30% more traffic than what it was originally designed to handle," said Matt McGuire, ODOT public information officer in District 6.
McGuire said the U.S. 23 corridor action plan forecasts needs through 2050, and will take more than a decade to complete.
"They basically took the existing traffic volumes and forecasted that out to the year 2050, because we want to make sure that these improvements are going to do what we need them to do, in terms of improving that roadway operation in the long term," McGuire said.
The plan targets more than 30 locations along the route for improvements.
"Obviously, 23 is a very important corridor to this part of central Ohio from Columbus up through Delaware up into Marion County and parts north. And that 23-mile segment has around 39 traffic signals, so obviously a lot of congestion. Unfortunately, it is a corridor that we've had a lot of crashes and other safety issues on," McGuire said.
McGuire said ODOT plans to disrupt traffic as little as possible and that the projects will be spread out over time as funding comes in.
"Closing 23 is something we're going to seek to avoid at all costs," McGuire said. "But you're probably looking at various lane restrictions, where we're taking it down to maybe only one lane in each direction, possibly some short-term closures on some of the side roads. But again, it's difficult to say with certainty until we know kind of what the specific improvements are going to be, what those traffic impacts will look like."
He said to expect the first project to start south of Waldo.
"We have projects at U.S. 23 and Coover Road and U.S. 23 and 229. Both of those locations have some design funding already committed. So we're already beginning the development process for those locations," McGuire said.
Public meetings for both projects are expected to be held in the spring, according to ODOT.
McGuire said improvements will also continue on U.S. 33.
"So for our area, specifically on the southeast side of Columbus, we are advancing projects that are proposing to widen that section of U.S. 33, add a lane in each direction to alleviate some of the really heavy congestion that we see along that particular route," he said. "And then also a couple projects that are going to be looking to make some improvements to the existing 270 and 33 interchange, and then potentially looking at a new interchange on one of the local roads to add some additional connectivity to the local system."
